File:Panama and the canal in picture and prose (1913) (14803029633).jpg

Identifier: panamacanalinpic01abbo (find matches)
Title: Panama and the canal in picture and prose ..
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Abbot, Willis John, 1863-1934. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York (etc.) Pub. in English and Spanish by Syndicate publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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none.But the history of the town thoughrunning over but sixty years is full ofhuman interest. It did not share withPanama the life of the Spanish domi-nation and aggression. Columbus,Balboa and the other navigators sailedby its site without heed, making forPorto Bello or Nombre de Dios, thebetter harbors. San Lorenzo, whose it is prac- ruins stand at the mouth of the Chagres River,looked down upon busy fleets, and fell beforethe assaults of Sir Henry Morgan and his bucca-neers while the coral island that now upholds Colonwas tenanted only by pelicans, alligators and ser-pents. The life of man touched it when in 1850 theAmerican railroad builders determined to make itthe Atlantic terminus of the Panama road. Sincethen it never has lost nor will it lose a true inter-national importance. Manzanilla Island, on which the greater part ofColon now stands, was originally a coral reef, onwhich tropical vegetation had taken root, and dieddown to furnish soil for a new jungle until by the repe-
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THE ONLY STONE CHURCH IN COLON The ritual is of the Church of England; the congregation almost wholly Jamaica negroes RAILROAD BUILDING IN A SWAMP 29 tition of this process through the ages a foot or two ofsoil raised itself above the surface of the water andsupported a swampy jungle. When the engineersfirst came to locate there the beginnings of thePanama railroad, they were compelled to make theirquarters in an old sailing ship in danger at all times shrubs defying entrance even to the wild beastscommon to the country. In the black slimy mudof its surface alligators and other reptiles abounded,while the air was laden with pestilential vapors andswarming with sandflies and mosquitoes. These lastproved so annoying to the laborers that unless their

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