CHAPTER IX
HOW THE AMERICANS BUILT THE PANAMA RAILROAD
PANAMA was the last stronghold, as it had been the first colony, of Spain in the three Americas, but when the Isthmus somewhat languidly declared its independence in 1821, the commander of the royal troops did not consider the former "Treasure-House of the World" worth the snap of a flint-lock. For since 1740, when trade had left it for the Cape Horn route, Panama had withered up into a place of almost no importance. Now that the old Spanish prohibition of foreign trade was removed, the Isthmus expected to share with the rest of Spanish America in a great commercial revival.
But though foreign ships now came to the village at the mouth of the Chagres, for which Porto Bello was presently abandoned, the difficulty of getting their cargoes across the Isthmus was too great. Many schemes were advanced for building a horse-car line or digging a canal, but nothing ever came of them. Year after year, the torpid little community lay between its two oceans and "drowsed the long tides idle," till it woke to new life with the discovery of gold in California, and the coming of the Forty-niners.
Thousands of Americans were poled and paddled up the Chagres in overcrowded dugouts to Cruces, and rode over the old paved road, now no better than a worn-out
