THE PANAMA CANAL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3235, 12 November 1881, Page 4

THE PANAMA CANAL.

All who are interested in the Panama Canal—and the accomplishment of work would be an unquestionable boom to the Antipodes—will be sorry to hear that it makes but poor progress. M. De. Lesseps has proved himself a man of such vast energy and enterprise tbat ho might be expected to triumph over most But at Panama the struggle is less with engineering obstacles than with the lethal climate, an enemy too impalpable to be easily overcome. Moreover the efforts made to grapple with it have apparently been small. No care is given to those employed on the works no attempt to reduce the terribly insanitary condition of the marshy malarious spot. The percentage of sickness is in consequence extraordinary. Half the whole number of labourers are alwaws hors de combat. These ■workmen, mostly French and Spaniards, have but a poor physique to start with. They are the sweepings of the laage towns in the United States, aud they are gathered together to be shipped off to Aspinwall by steamer, whence they are sent on by rail to Panama. They get seventeen dollars per month as wages and their board, which is invariably rice twice a day and Bait fish, wihout on ounce of fresh meat. The poor wretches soon succumb. The prevalent disease is a kind of wasting of the system, under "which all strength and energy are drained away. Hundreds would leave but they have no money to pay the railway fare to Aspinwall, and they have no alternative but to drag out their wretched lives to the end. The , place abounds with alligators, snakes, and poisonous insects. The bite of latter is so noxious that loss of limb often follows. Medicines and all comforts are exorbitantly dear, liquors also, although- the chief trouble of the place is an intolerable thirst and a growing craving for alcoholic stimulant. As the outcome of all this the number of hands at work is never more than a hundred, and all there is to show is a certain amount of hearing erected and a few yards of soil turned. Afc this rate some years must elapse before the American Continent is pierced.—Home' News"..