THE PANAMA CANAL.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2623, 4 May 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PANAMA CANAL.

When Mr. Froude was in the West Indies two or three years ago, he heard all sort, of dismal accounts of the Pmama Cnnal. So much f-o, that he has told us in his last book of travels—" The English in the West Indies"—that " if half the reports that reach me are correct, in all the world there is not, perhaps, now concentrated in any single spot so much swindling and villany, so much foul disease, such a hideous dung-heap of moral and physical abomination, as in the scene of this far-famed undertaking of nineteenth century engineering." That is pretty strong for a beginning ; but those who arc acquainted with Mr. Froude'a style of writing, will easily understand with what force and vigour he describes the unhealthiness of the climate, and the abominations to which he rofers in the sentence I have quoted. Ah to the actual progress of the work, he was told that, '' half buried in mud, lie about the wrecks of costly machinery, consumed bv rust, sent out under lavish orders, and found unfit for the work for which they were intended. Unburied altogether, lie also skeletons of the human machines which have broken down there, picked clean by the vultures.'' Now, while we must make some allowances for exaggeration—and Mr. Froude admits the possibility of that—there can be no doubt that a great deal of this dismal story is quite true. Friends of mine, who have visited Colon within the last few years, have assured me that the scene of this great enterprise is "a hell upon earth A 1.