Panama Past and Present
RUINS OF THE CATHEDRAL TOWER, OLD PANAMA
Panama
Past and Present
By
Farnham Bishop
New York
The Century Co.
1916
Copyright, 1913, 1916, by
The Century Co.
Published February, 1913
Revised Edition, October, 1916
DEDICATION
To the Old Admiral, white and frail,
Red Indian, swarthy Cimaroon,
Conquistadores brave in mail,
Beneath the blaze of tropic noon,
To Morgan's swaggering bucaneers,
To gallant Nuñez and his men;
To Goethals and his engineers,
Who cleft the peaks of Darien.
INTRODUCTION
IT is eminently fitting that this book should appear at the present time. No more suitable occasion for a popular treatise on the Panama Canal can be imagined than the eve of the opening of the greatest trade route known in the history of the world.
A study of this noteworthy undertaking is of especial value to us because this is an American achievement, projected by the people of the United States through their representatives at Washington; paid for from the revenues of this nation; accomplished by the grit, sagacity, and perseverance of some of the greatest Americans of this generation. We are not intelligent if we are uninformed on such a subject; we are unwise if we fail to appreciate its significance; we are unpatriotic if we do not applaud the doings of such citizens.
Clarence A. Brodeur.
State Normal School,
Westfield, Mass.
PREFACE
THIS book has been made possible by the kind assistance of many friends, to whom the author wishes to express his deepest gratitude. First and foremost, thanks are due to his father, Joseph Bucklin Bishop; who, ever since he became Secretary of the Isthmian Canal Commission, has been the official source of information for all who have either written or lectured about the Isthmus of Panama. Colonel Goethals and the men under him, from gang-foremen to divisional engineers, have been uniformly courteous and helpful. The librarians of Harvard University, the New York Historical Society, and the New York Public Library, have given every facility for historical research. Special thanks are due to the publishers of The World's Work, St. Nicholas, and the Harvard Illustrated Magazine, for permission to republish parts of articles written for them; and to Professor Kemp of Columbia University for authoritative information concerning the geologic formation of the Isthmus, and the closing of the prehistoric Straits of Panama.
It is hoped that this book will appeal to the average boy, as it is mainly about the two things that interest him most: fighting and machinery. Limitation of space has forced the omission of many interesting details: how Balboa's bloodhound, Leoncillo or the "little lion," could tell a hostile from a friendly Indian, and was entered on the muster-roll as a man-at-arms; how the aged Spanish admiral leapt into the sea to save his sailors who had been blown overboard by the explosion of a jar of gunpowder, in the fight with Ringrose's bucaneers; how a fleet of smugglers bombarded Porto Bello, to be revenged on the custom-house officers; how a Scotch soldier of fortune captured the city of Colon with a railroad train; or how an officer of the United States Navy arranged and refereed a battle between Panamanians and Colombians across the tracks of the Panama Railroad, in 1901. It would take a book many times the size of this to tell a tenth of the wonderful story of Panama.
Farnham Bishop.
CONTENTS | |||
| CHAPTER | PAGE | ||
| I |
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| II |
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| III |
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| IV |
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| V |
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| VI |
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| VII |
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| XI |
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| XII |
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| XIII |
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| XIV |
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| XV |
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| XVI |
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| XVII |
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