Show THE fia PANAMA nafea CANAL into decay by the washings of the tropical floods 0 it is very sad I 1 use the word advisedly to see the present desolate condition of the works says bays E 11 seymour in the nineteenth century and as I 1 have before f ore said the large quantity of 44 plant deteriorating also the numberless houses for laborers nay villages even once teeming with human life and now empty and silent it if the work had been completed and tri tun these would only speak of manly toil well directed by great forethought care skill and intelligence of a high courage that had warred against a deadly climate and long and frequent pestilences and of a perseverance and energy that had resisted the enervating and demoralizing effects of life in a tropical and often marshy jungle till all these had deser deservedly led to success lut alaan the true picture is far different about eighteen and a half miles of the te canal are actually cut to their full width at the ocean level water line and lor for about half that distance the officials assured me they had boen been dug down to the full depth of twenty nino nine feet though since tho the works ceased lt at the end of 1889 no doubt much arth earth has been washed in again of these eighteen and a half miles thirteen bd a half are at the atlantic and five at the pacific end I 1 navigated all these waters in steam or pulling boats when to the eye the canal in many ports appeared as if finished of the mighty culebra cutting the least reduction in height is about sixty feet but in some places it has been cut down for over one hundred feet in depth the course of the canal is marked out throughout its length and generally I 1 should say not less than ten to thirty feet of cutting made but the tropical vegetation is quickly springing up and railroad rolling stock 1 and nd other pla plant iV are in places nearly hidden by jungle the nearest estimate I 1 could form from visiting the canal works and talking to the people on the spot the proportion of work done wat that az aa an approach to the first inte intention ution viz an ocean level canal not more than one fifth was accomplished complis hed leaving entirely out of consideration the question of damming and dealing with the chagros chagres river and its floods but that supposing the lake scheme were found quite feasible the result arrived at in 1889 1880 might equal one third of the whole at the most favorable estimate but it must be remembered that every month now the canal works are going backward from the ordinary process of nature which is especially active act ve in the topics |