The Panama Canal

The Panama Canal

 

The Panama Canal has been cut across the Isthmus of Panama, the narrow neck of land joining North and South America. A Journey through the canal takes us from the pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

The French were  the first people to try to cut the canal , but they were unable to do so .Not only were he engineering difficulties very great , but the climate was very unhealthy , for the pools and marshes were the breeding groun is of mosquitoes which carried the germs of fever. Then the districts had been made healthy by the doctors, then the engineers were able fever. Then the districts had been made healthy by the doctors, then the engineers were able to start work.

It took ten years to build the canal ,and in 1914 it was opened for shipping .our ship enters the canal at Balboa ,and ,after traveling  for a short distance passes through two locks ,and lifted up 54 feet above the level of the pacific ocean .The vessel is towed through the locks by electric locomotives , called mules ,which run along each wall.

Then, after passing through a third lock which lifts her another 31 feet, the ship moves slowly through the Culebra Cut, where part of a mountain had to be cut right away.

The vessel now travels across Lake Gatun; its shores are surrounded by wooded hills, and islands decked with trees and flowers rise above its green waters. At the end of the lake the ship passes through three more locks that lower her 85 feet to the level of the Atlantic Ocean. We reach the ocean itself at Colon.

In about twelve hours we have traveled fifty miles through a canal that has been cut across a continent. What a tremendous undertaking it must have been for those patient engineers!