Newspapers / The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, … / June 7, 1908, edition 2 / Page 1
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BIOHIBECTION vjZIlntx Pages. mm Manufacturer the- Pianos . in WThiaft ' Umide ' The letter which follow was writ ten The Observer from the Canal ' Zone by kr. Robert Q. Love, former ly of Wort MilL 8. C, now employed in rovernment work on the Panama qanal. Hla deecrtptlon of the , work and hl conclusi'ons are Initerestlnj. . C Bai Obispo, Panama, May 2 . !a naU canal, canal! Dl. dig. dlt Make . the dirt fly! . Get It out! Rush it out! Shovel it out! , Haul it out! Throw It out. Any way to get It ouc! The- Americans are doing: It , Here where the valley are being filled in, the hllla removed, the couraes of the river turned and the mountain made low there are alway .things which, aa Shakespeare would aay, "Qlad the ear and pleaae the eye" and . vice versa. And when one goea about and aeea the great work that is atlll to be done, and the enormoua pile of money that are aUU to be expended by .Uncle Sam In order that a water way be made from ocean to ocean for the ahlpa of-all the nation to pans peacefully through instead of making that long and often periloua and tempestoua voyage around Cap Horn, he 1 convinced that Uncle Sam la-up against the biggest and moat expensive Job of the yeara. Even with the rapidity and efficiency the great work is being carried on now. it will take time and toil and bag of, money not a few. to makea water way through theae rock-ribbed hill that link the Ande to the Rockies. - JTever before ' .ha there been o much done on the iathmua a at the present time. - Any day U 1 worth mora than dollar . to . one who ha seen It not to come and see . how Uncle Sam,' who broke loose from England' claims In 177. who thrash ed England aaln in Mil who scat tered Mexico's armies back in the 40's, and drove 8pain home irt '88, is waging, war against the 1 hllla and mountains on the . line of the canal and against the deadly diseases com mon to tropical countries. A differ ent sort of warfare to be sure, but It Is being carried on with greatest suc cess, and the - canal "Them . thar Amerlcans'li dig. dig, dig till the dlg gln' alnt no more." Simple- word but true! "Indeed a mighty conflict 1 being waged between the defense of the eternal hills and the stupen dous resources of , modern engineering."- , --CV : , ' ' . In the canal prism at San Pablo re three big hllla which, back In the O's, defied the French; but now, ven though they stand as grim and defi ant as ever. Uncle - Sam toucheth them and: they smoke. Now and again a charge of dynamite consisting of from twelve to twenty tons Is set off at a single blast. . and the hills, when the freat dep .echoes die away, are ahattrred and crumbled the atrata on strata of rock is shaken and . turned about. And thus the hill day by day dwin dle slowly and suy ty away as those huge, hungry monsters called steam hovels gulp and swallow them down ifi.f!! I f i I ? T It .r'' Siy Piano FpoM the Time Honored Firm oF The Artistic Piano Manufacturer, and Secure the PIANO of PIANOS, Many families who have bought - cheap pianos, usually through misrepresentation, could have avoided this serious nusfortiine by having dropped a postal card to No 5 West Trade St,, Charlotte, N. G, the Southern home of the great honse of Chas IVL StiefL Those who have not bought and intend to buy will be wise to take this advice We can send one of our salesmen to any point in North or South Carolina within twenty-four hours, and one cent spent in a post card will save you many dollars 5 and be the means of your securing the best piano made Write to-day Convenient terms if desired ' of the Stieff and Shaw With the Sweet Tune. Sam S : ; In huge chunks-and driven , by the controlling; hand of man, seem almost human In their way and fiercer than a demon In terrific wrath.. All day the' hundred and hundreds of engines ar going; the drill whir ring; and pounding in such a way as to convince even the moat skeptical that some time In the years yet to come the canal will be finished by Uncle Sam's forces trained soldiers Of the tropics! . Great work this! and with the greatest nation on earth to back It up it Is sure to end In tri umph. : ( . .. , ; . ' The French did a great work here they prepared In the wilderness a way for the canal but here the de fiant forces of the hills and the deadly archers of Tellow Jack brought the great eagle of France from the crags to the clods and, wounded and suffer ing, he yielded himself to his enemies. Here- the great silent old ' French dredges, all stained with the storms of the years and with their once power ful machinery gone to ruin tell, pa thetically enough, as dd the hundreds and hundreds of little French engines and dump cars scattered here and there on every hill and In every jun gle, of a great work whose end was failure and of the ruin of many homes in sunny France; for many, even to the poor peasant, put their all, so his tory tells us. Into the canal enterprise and lost. - Everywhere ' are the grewsome sights of masses of ' ma chinery .of all kinds cast aside, now worthless, calling to mind the waste of thousands of lives sacrificed In the first effort to dig ths canal. AH, FRANCE. ' ' 'r "Upon the railroads' byways The worn-out engines He. ' ' And 'round their leaning sro'oke-stack The nesting awsllows fly. All lame, and blind and broken. , With bleared and twtatd steel; . With laan and" high-pitched boiler. And quaint and spidery . wheel. Now ahunted off the highways. The forsaken engines lie. ' , Mid graas upon the byways . They watch the trains go by; And to their rusty smoke-stacks r The nesting' swallow fly." - Much of the old French machinery has been taken to the shop and re paired and put Into use. The little French engine are called "splcetys,'' as In derision, for all bleared with smoke and grime as they are, they seem -almost ludicrous beside the modern . engines with their paint and brass work wonders, "all gay In gala dress." However, thousands of dol lars have been saved tyUnclr Sam's wisdom In putting Into use as many of these little castoff engines and dump cars as possible. - - - - - One cannot know now what a great help the canal will be to th commer cial world and. especially to the lum ber merchants' of the West, who are now forced to send their cargoes of lumber "all around the Horn. The great demand for .flr lumber now made by the great European bnlldera cannot be supplied by- the lumber merchants of Washington f and Ore gon, and they never receive the pries C.Hj for their lumber that they could de mand were the canal finished. It is Impossible-to send all the lumber by freight across the whole United States to New York and from thence to Eu ropean markets, so the voyage around the Horn Is necessary. On this voy age the lumber Is damaged to some extent by the sweating process it goes through with In the hold of the ships, because of the change in climate. Of course there would be tho same change the change from the land of now-laden' firs, to tropical palms were the canal 'finished but the change would not last so long and the lumber would not reach European markets in the mouldy and stained condition it does now after the long voyage through southern seas. One has said that here where Bal boa practiced such cruelty among the natives; where Morgan, the fearless buccaneer, made his daring raids and pilfering, Uncle Sam is doing for hu manity a work as great as did Living stone 'When he went Into the heart of Africa., When the canal Is finished, the trip from ocean to ocean will take only 12 hours, while now the voyage around the whole of South America takes at best from five to six weeks. And often on these voyages even as the yearly record show, fierce storms are encountered, valuable cargoes go down into the deep, and precious lives are lost. Such will not be when the' canal Is finished. The canal when It Is completed will be about fifty mile In length that la the embouch ure or mouth of the canal are that distance, apart, measuring from the ends of the deep water Jetties on the Atlantic, where the tide rises and falls only 18 Inches at most, to the deep water entrance on the Pacific where, the tide rises 20 feet , . At present there are la the canal sone about 6,000 laborers who have come from all parts of the world, even from far Denmark and the "land of the midnight sun;" from Arabia the land of fine horse, and Australia, cne land of sheep ani the boomerang! Te greater number of - colored la borers, however, are from Jamaica, Barbados, - Fortunes Island and other of the West Indian Islands. The greater number of white laborers are from Spain . and they receive the highest wages. The laborers that have given the best satisfaction so far aa work goes are the negroes from FortuneV Island. Great, tail, broad shouldered fellows they are with smiling faces, amiable dispositions, and muscles like the "village smithy under the spreading chestnut tree." and who. It seems, are seldom fa tigued, no matter how hard the work may be. " . Laborers receive anywhere from SO cents . Balboa to 40 cents an hour, which 4 worth Just half as much as United States money. Among the la borers there Is not so much sickness as In former days for the - sanitary work has been of" the very brt end yellow fever has-been driven from his lair. Under1 the trl-colors of France Tellow Jack weilded his scepter with great power and many were bis vic tims, but under the Stars and Stripes he has been mercilessly driven from home and conquered. Ths sanitary department has done a wonderful work on the Isthmus and many lives have been saved from the clutch of that merciless demon' of the tropica. And now, under these conditions thers are worse places to live than Panama. For married person life la far more Mo - v wilmoth, manager.. pleasant than for bachelors, for mar ried quarters are given free and fur niture and all other things that go to make up successful houae keeping are furnished, except food. Drinking water is delivered everyday, coal and wood needed for, cooking is furnished and electric lights have been Installed. Colon, which was once a pest hole of filth and dlaease, is now a far better and cleaner town than ever before, and the streets which once were places of mud and foul smells, are paved and kept in good condition all the time. The sanitary revolution that has taken place In Colon and Panama is the marvel of the present time. Ev erywhere the corps of workers known as ths mosquito brigade go about cut ting out larvae breeding places . of the amoplleles, or malarial moaqulto Every little pool of water, even If It Is no larger than a tea cup and every little stream la covered with drop of crude petroleum oil which . means death to the yellow fever mosquito. Everything likely to harbor the mos quito In Panama haa been done away with even to collecting and destroy ing all old rain - barrels, or cast-away boxes or tin cana In fact, everything that would hold rain water for rain water Is the special breeding place of the yellow fever, mosquito. This pest which has been the cause of death and suffering In past yeara haa been banished--from the canal sone; and some time ago the officials sent by the Peruvian government to study the ex terpatlon methods of this dangerous species of mosquito had to go to the head of the sanitary department and secure one from his laboratory. But with all the wsste places budd ed by the sanitary-department there re styi places In Colon and Panama where foul are the smells of the street and where If one walks he walks In filth. Down at the fish wharfs In Panama City, where the fishing smacks come In. there are sights the gruesomeness of which and the fllthl ness of which the mind of man can hardly grasp. There on the shore, under those foul Wharfs, one may aee every day thousands of fish rotting In the son among; the wreckage brought In ty the tides. 'Here hundreds of vultures gather and scramble and fight over the rotten fish all 1 the while gulping strenaously and keep Ins; themselves out of the wsy of the feet of the fishermen. - Where the fish are rotting in the sun there are the birds gathered together. And at times some of these vultures have been known to eat so much that they were unable to -fly and aa they sat all huddled np on the wreckage under the wharfs the tides came In and drowned them. The tongues of all the nstlons mingled with the gulptngs and the whirring; of the wings ef the vultures ts to one whoWs unaccustom ed to such a sickening sight. That human beings can' live In such sur. rounding Is afmost Incredible. In striking centrest-with this Is the Pal ace of President Amador, of the Re public of Panama, with the guards In brilliant uniforms and th music of the tinkling fountains among the fragrant flowers. In ths palace they walk on carpets down en the fleh wharfs men and women walk on filth. But to see real beauty on must leave th city and go out Into the Jungle . . Here are Immense palm, the very personification of besuty and grace; charming and enormous ferns, dense thickets of grateful bamboo, ths canes so useful to the natives; I. I 1 I Ml n I S ! n - r W. Air 1 V' . " X2S JUk xjwx Insects with strange shapes, and nolay llzarda; frightened and Intelligent quanas hundreds of them; birds with strange voicea and plumage so gay that they seem like fragments of a disintegrated rainbow; big trees liter ally covered with beautiful orchids, which set orchid dealers wild with de light. Just recently a flagman on an I. C- C. dump train took three or chids to the States and received for them from some Institute in New fork 1250. He was fortunate, however, In finding a rare species, for on the Isthmus there are more than a hun dred kinds of this lovely flower. But most of the flowers on the Isthmus have no perfume. Though beautiful In color they have no more fragrance than the flower on a lady's hat. This perhaps Is cauaed by the excessive rain fall here. The rainy season I on down here now and It is a land of yellow leggings, ralncoata and um brellasand mud Is everywhere. On fellow In a fit of bad temper caus ed by a - thorough drenching said that In Panama It rains Into ths bung hole of a barrel faster than It can run out both open ends. ' We smile at his exsggeratlon. but when It Is realised that fifteen feet of water fall In one season, it can be understood that there 1 certainly a rainy season in Panama, where the fall la not measured by inches, but by feet. In the four yeara that the Americans have been working on the canal there has fallen from the clpuds sixty feet of water. , It does rain in Panama! . . 'Tis no wqnder that the Chagres river, which is such a quiet little stream during th dry season, rises to such height and. with menac In It murmur, rushes along with de structive power In the rainy sesson. The Chagres river has cost the Pan ama Railroad more than a million dollar when at the voice of the thun der it arose suddenly from Its quiet nursing and rushed wrathfully along. The Panama Railroad haa cost more money and more lives than any railway of the same distance' in the world. It took six yeara to lay a single track from Colon to Panama, distance of 47 miles, and cost f 1.000,000. . And It is said by those who have wrltcen of those first strug gles of the Panama Railroad that for every tie they laid a man dfcd. So many were those killed by accidents and so great was the Inroad made Into their ranks by the deadly diseases of the tropics that the Panama Rail road cost 110,400 men their lives, it I Impossible for an American, who haa not visited th tropics and had experience In penetrating' tropical mo rass and Jungle to comprehend the difficulties, which the first promoters of the Panama Railroad had to con tend with, constructing this isthmian highway. And many of the many tourists who pass over the road now sad view from the car windows the beautiful scenery do not know that In years that have" passed thottsands-ef men hare looked out on these same green hills and died. There Is a double line now all the wsy across the Isthmus and the tropic Is far greater than ever before. Th L C. C. dirt trains, which are al ways heavily loaded, pas over these lines on their wsy to the dumps and so close do they run that the "block" operators are kept busy giving signals sll day. But when the canal la fin ished all thla old line of the P. R. R. will be under water; and. work la now being done to complete a new Southern Wareroom: 5 West Trade St. QHARLOTTE, N. (2. road from Colon to Panama to be us ed when the old line Is done away with at the completion of the canal. - In Panama one sees many quaint and picturesque, aa well as amus ing and pathetic, sights. Ib Panama City, where tne streets are so narrow, the houses ars so close together that from the upper balcony lovers could tell "the old sweet story" with only a street between. And here, also, where the children of 4 and years, "who never have need of clothes" roll and run about In the dust of the streets one can hear the eweet songs of the Spanish senoritas and the beau tiful tones of the Spanish guitars. Panama City Is the Sodom and Go morrah of the Iathmua, and' has S00 saloofta, notwithstanding the fact that whiskey and other Intoxicants csn be bought at almost every store. Truly the battle of the bottle needs to be waged here as It waa in Alabama, and In Charlotte. Panama-Is Just about, the slse of Charlotte, N. C and we do not wonder that one minister, see ing th awful vices In Panama, said that the only difference between Pan ama and hell was that Panama had a sea close by and hell did not. Here In the very shadow of ths great churches 'are - secret " pieces - where crime Is committed, and often on Sundays as. the beautiful church bells chime out men and women and chil dren go out to the bull fights and wit ness that ' most brutal of all sports, so common to Spanish countries the bloody bull fight- where the" babe In arms Is carried and to conduct which the city authorities send 00 per cent, of Its police force. ; v , The present City ' of . Panama Is bout six miles from old Panama that was pilfered and burned years ago by Morgan, the bucaneer. In old Panama are many beautiful rutna, among them, the Santo Domingo churcn which Is over 100 years old. Once there wss the sound of Joy and life In this old city, but now the spider pin hi web In her palace and the night owl sings hi ong from her towers. Very different from the ruins f these old palaces are the huts of the native scattered far on every hill and always made of bamboo. In build ing; such a hut a few posts are set In the ground establishing its else, snd to these, by means of vines or twisted bark, are attached many hor Isontal reeda or polea. Always the same style of steep roof Is made, con slating of a thick thatch of well secured palm leaves and for this pur pose a -species with a broad, fan-like leaf 1a used- Sometimes the entrance Is closed by a hinged door, but a piece or loosely swinging cloth does Just as well. . No effort is made to bar out chickens or pigs, and In many of these palm-thatched huts of bamboo one may see a mlmlclng monkey and one or two chattering parrots around the same table, a dog under the table, a pl In the deer way and a eat en the rafters. . All along the line of the canal and scattered far on every hill these lit tle n.uts are seen. To a newcomer these humble little homes are quite Interesting; and attractive. All through the week ss one passes to snd fro over the Isthmus hs sees scores of half-clad washerwomen alt ting on the hanka of the Chagres liv er, or standing waist deep In water, vigorously plying th paddle to piles of white elothea They clean the clothes without the aid of hot water F second section 908 (7 J: CO J 3C and often without the use of soap; but the clothes suffer. They pound ' the clothes with wooden paddlea made for that purpose; rub them with rock " and alwaya use the large stones In the ) atrram for washboards. . They pound- ' 'em, and turn 'em and fling 'em and ' sling and roll 'em and twist 'em tilt, the clothes are worn thin and often ruined. Then, after it. all., these, washerwomen, with faces-all smiling exact prices according; to the amount -of labor they used In cleaning the clothes snd not according to the con dition the clothes are in. If they spend three hours in ringing a iO-cent garment they wish 0 cents for tha work. Such are the washerwomen of the canal tone smiling., simple creature that they are! t These things all theae things that I have mentioned In this sketch and many more besides are Interesting to all on the canal sone, but one could . ' write for a far longer time than I have and not tell of all that Is being done her. To those who would1 know more to those who would 'get . a better conception of how Uncle Sam" la doing things In the "big ditch" "Just come and see." There's noth ing Ilk seeing for yourself, you know.' ROBERT O. LEE. Blackberry Pfc. ' Monroe Enquirer.- - , i It holds a placs In the estimation ot all lover of good thing to eat (hat no Other nrodura nt lin" : cuples. Blackberry pie bridges . the vuum wmica me millionaire and the $ pauper. - It Is found nn ih m.k.... table of tne 'haughty society lesder ' me oii-ciotn coverea pine table " of ' the lowly washer-woman. It la on the bill of fare of the grandest hotel and Is fed to the Inmates of the poor K house. The rich man who rides in his gasoline burarv snd the who rides the veds under tha freight . cars or steps from cross tie ta crossttc in tne Blistering sun meet on a com mon, level at the lunch counter and both order blackberry pie. In a word blackberry pie Is ths one article of diet which mskest the whole world kin. Blackberry time, good folks, is here. ! - VANISHED DATS. ' Anonymous. - By the stlllalde on the htllalda la Ken tucky aU Is atlll. For the only damp refreshment must be ' dipped up from the rill, No'th Cllna's stately tuler gives his soda . glass a shove, And discusses local option with the South Clina Oov. , It la useless at the fountain to be wlnk- rul of the eye. -... For th cocktail glass Is dusty and th " South IS going dry.' " ' '' . -" - - - - . . -AO the nightcaps sow have tassels and are worn upon the head. Not the nightcaps that were taken when nobody went to ted. And th breese abora the bluegraxs Is as solemn, ss. is death. For It besrs no piinnent clove-tars ct ! s odoriferous breath; And ech man can a!k a rha'.V'i-e v the star ara In the fky For the flusiaas now U Cji'.cjj '. ' South is going dT.
The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
June 7, 1908, edition 2
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