rated and exhausted, they dragged themselves back to their quarters on the Telegraph, to toss until morning among the pitiless insects. Numbers were daily taken down with fever; and, notwithstanding that the whole working party was changed weekly, large accessions were constantly needed to keep up the required force. The works were alternately in charge of Messrs. Totten and Baldwin, one attending to the duty while the other recuperated from his last attack of fever."[1]
So they drove the line, over a trestle to the mainland, through the marshy lowlands to firmer ground at Mount Hope or Monkey Hill, then half built, half floated it over the deep Black Swamp to the banks of the Chagres at Gatun. A couple of ship loads of materials had been brought up the river to this point (now buried under the great dam) and by the first of October, 1851, the rails had been laid and working trains were running as far as Gatun. Two large passenger steamers, unable to cross the bar of the Chagres in a storm, were forced to put into Limon Bay, and their passengers, over a thousand in number, were only too glad to ride on flat-cars to Gatun and begin their river journey there.
When news of this unexpected passenger traffic reached New York, it sent up the value of the company's stock, which had fallen very low, for the original million dollars had been spent, and the road was far from completion. Now the steamers came reguarly to Navy Bay, where docks had been built, and a settlement had grown up as the island was cleared. Mr. Stephens proposed that this town be given the name of one of the founders
- ↑ "Handbook of the Panama Railroad,"
