CHAPTER XIII
HOW WE ARE BUILDING THE CANAL
TO give a complete history of the building of the Canal, from the arrival of the first American steam-shovel to the final merging of the construction into the operating force, would take a library of little books like this. The best I can hope for is to give the reader some slight idea of what we might have seen, had we crossed the Isthmus together, in the days of the canal-builders. Let us imagine that we are taking such a trip.
As we steam into Limon Bay, after a two-thousand-mile voyage from New York, you will notice the long breakwater that is being built out from Toro Point, to make this a safe harbor, and also to keep storms and tides from washing the mud back into the four miles of canal that run under the sea to deep water. Down this channel comes something that looks like a very fat ocean steamer, and when it reaches the end it rises several feet in the water, turns round, and waddles back again. This is the sea-going dredge Caribbean, busy sucking up the bottom into its insides, and carrying it away. This craft is painted white, with a buff super-
- ↑ The greater part of this chapter originally appeared in St. Nicholas, in February, 1912, and no better time could have been chosen for a trip to Panama, either in the flesh or in print. Then the great work, though so near completion that it was possible to see in it the finished design, was still being pushed with undiminished vigor.
