Panama fever (14 page)

Lieutenant Wyse had been promised by de Lesseps that he would head up the operation in Panama. But no such appointment had actually materialized, and he had not been invited along. In the end he paid for his own passage, and engaged during the voyage in several heated rows with de Lesseps. The latter was not one to share leadership responsibilities or glory; Wyse was effectively dropped.

The arrival of de Lesseps in Panama was one of the biggest news stories the local press had ever covered. “Mr. Lesseps’ enterprise,” the
Star and Herald
proclaimed, “will… take rank with Columbus’ discovery of America.”

The
Lafayette
entered the harbor of Colón a little after 3 :00 p.m. on December 30. The party could not have arrived at a more clement, or misleading, moment: the dismal rainy season had just ended, the skies were cloudless, and the northwest trades blew in pleasantly from the Caribbean. Coming alongside the wharf, the boat was met, the
Star and Herald
reported, by “the committee of reception appointed by the government, the delegation from the State Assembly, and a large number of invited citizens.” At a little after 4:00 p.m. the landing stage was put on board, and all repaired to the spacious saloon of the
Lafayette
for formal addresses of welcome. One of the reception committee was an American diplomat, businessman and journalist Tracy Robinson. He remembered de Lesseps, in perfect Spanish, responding “very pleasantly” to the welcome, “wearing the diplomatic smile for which he was noted. He was then over seventy years of age, but was still active and vigorous: a small man, French in detail, with winning manners, and what is called a magnetic presence. When he spoke the hearer would not fail to be convinced that whatever he said was true.” All the time, the “enthusiasm from every class knew no bounds,” the
Star and Herald
wrote. “The flags of all nations were displayed, with the notable exception of that of the United States, and the reception can be said to have been a decided success.”

The next morning, together with his entourage of “distinguished engineers,” de Lesseps “made an examination of the harbour,” all the time holding forth about his enthusiasm for the project. Tracy Robinson remembered him invariably concluding every phrase with the assertion, “The Canal will be made.” “‘There are only two great difficulties to be overcome,’” the
Star and Herald
reported de Lesseps as saying, “‘the Chagres River, and the deep cutting at the summit. The first can be surmounted by turning the headwaters of the river into another channel, and the second will disappear before the wells which will be sunk and charged with explosives of sufficient force to remove vast quantities at every discharge.’”

At ten o'clock that same morning, a party arrived from the United States. This included Trenor Park, the diminutive boss of the Panama Railroad. On his visit to the United States prior to the Paris Congress, Wyse had met Park to discuss the “amicable agreement” stipulated by the Wyse concession from Colombia. Park, a successful Wall Street speculator, knew he had Wyse over a barrel—if an arrangement was not forthcoming, the Wyse concession was worthless. Wyse had offered to buy the railroad, and Park, who personally owned fifteen hundred shares, was happy to sell—at $200 a share, twice the market value. Several other Railroad board members were on the trip, along with a journalist from the
New York World
, José Rodrigues, and two American engineers who had agreed to be part of the Technical Commission: an army engineer named W. W. Wright, and Colonel George Totten, who had been in charge of the construction of the railroad back in the 1850s.

An hour and a half later, the entire party left Colón for Panama on the railroad. Halfway across, the train was met by the presidentelect of the state, and “a fine lunch was provided on the train, with wines &c, &c, and everything gave great satisfaction.” Yet another reception committee of local dignitaries and generals was waiting at Panama station in a specially erected tent. Also in attendance, it seemed according to Rodrigues, was “every one of the [city's] 14,000 inhabitants … shouting, struggling to get a glimpse of the distinguished guest.” Following more speeches, the party was conveyed in carriages to the Grand Hotel. Houses along the route were decked in French and Colombian flags, and no expense had been spared in cleaning up the city in honor of the “Great Engineer.” According to an occasional correspondent for the
New York Tribune
, “Such an air of neatness and real cleanliness has not pervaded this city of pigs and smells within the memory of its oldest inhabitants.”

That night the hotel hosted a state banquet. The only woman present was Madame Louise-Hélène de Lesseps. She had been only twenty-one when she had married de Lesseps, then sixty-four, in 1869. She was as beautiful as the first Madame de Lesseps had been witty and brilliant. According to Tracy Robinson, she “gave éclat to the occasion …Her form was voluptuous, and her raven hair, without luster, contrasted well with the rich pallor of her Eastern features.” After the dinner, dancing and singing, spilling out into the plaza, went on for most of the night.

The next morning, the first of the New Year, de Lesseps was up early, in full regalia, for the inauguration of the new president, Damaso Cervara. After that, making good on his promise to dig the first spade of earth for the Panama Canal, de Lesseps organized a special ceremony at which his seven-year-old daughter, Ferdinande, would do the honors of turning the first sod. The symbolic act was to take place at the mouth of the Río Grande, scheduled to become the Pacific entrance to the future canal.

The steam tender
Taboguilla
took de Lesseps and a party of distinguished guests—which included the British consul Hugh Mallet and his twenty-year-old son, Claude—three miles to the site on the Río Grande where the ceremony would take place, following appropriate feasting and festivities on board. However, since late arrivals had delayed the
Taboguilla
, the Pacific tide had receded such that the vessel could not land at the designated site. Undaunted, de Lesseps was ready with a solution. He had brought a special shovel and pickax with him from France especially for the occasion. Now, declaring that the act was only symbolic anyway, he arranged for his daughter to strike the ceremonial pickax blow in an earth-filled champagne box. Each member of the Technical Commission then in turn took a swing at the box, and the whole work was blessed by the bishop of Panama. The passengers landed back at Panama City at 8:00 p.m., according to a local newspaper, “unanimous in their expressions of gratification with their delightful trip.”

The following day, it was down to business. The Technical Commission was run by Dirks and Totten, while the detailed work was parceled out among the more junior members. All the surveyors reported in to Dirks and Totten every three days. De Lesseps took a hands-off role, except for impressing on the men one vital factor. As the
Tribune's
correspondent reported, “His mind is unalterably made up on one point—he will have nothing to do with a canal with locks.”

As the surveys continued, de Lesseps threw himself into the coincident celebrations of the new president, the New Year, and the new canal venture. On January 3 there was horse racing: “Mr. Lesseps is an accomplished horseman, and joined in the pleasures of the day with all the zest and activity of youth,” reported the
Star and Herald.
On other days there were excursions with his children, two boys aged nine and ten, who, with their sister, seven, had also caught the eye of the locals. Robinson called them “as dark as Arabs and as wild.” On January 10, there was another ceremonial commencement of the canal work when a huge dynamite charge was exploded near the summit of the Continental Divide. Champagne flowed once more.

A great highlight of the trip was the wedding of Gaston Blanchet and Miss Maria Georgette Loew, the beautiful daughter of the owner of the Grand Hotel. For observers, it was the perfect embodiment of the new friendship and shared future between Panama and France. Held in the cathedral, “bright with myriad lights, and gay with the presence of a multitude of ladies and gentlemen of the best of our Panama society,” it was blessed with a performance at the piano by the French vice-consul and singing by Madame de Lesseps herself, “with great sweetness and expression.” The party afterward, inevitably held at the Grand Hotel, continued well beyond midnight.

There were balls and dinners most nights. All were resplendent with toasts and speeches. “You have seen the soldiers of Count de Lesseps,” one of the French party announced to a reception given by Colombian officials. “We have the faith to move mountains, or at least, in the present age, rend them asunder.” No one could believe the energy and enthusiasm of Ferdinand de Lesseps, now in his seventy-fifth year. He would dance “all night like a boy,” noted Tracy Robinson, and still be on the train at seven on some expedition “fresh as a daisy.”

In this atmosphere, optimism about the work of the Technical Commission abounded. De Lesseps proclaimed that the job at Panama would be easier than Suez, writing to his thirty-nine-year-old son Charles, in charge of affairs at home, that he couldn't believe that it hadn't been done already. The local press, too, reported that the new geological survey had shown the estimates of the Paris Congress to be pessimistic: “The engineering difficulties… are being solved one by one,” wrote one paper, “and when the present surveys are concluded the project will assume so positive and practical a shape that financial men in Paris and elsewhere will not hesitate to give it the attention and support it deserves.”

“Elsewhere” to all intents and purposes meant the United States, which remained the ghost at the banquet. Everyone knew that the United States was de Lesseps's next destination, and the
Star and Herald
anticipated a great welcome there for the builder of the Suez Canal. The publication of the Commission's report on Panama and de Lesseps's charm would, the paper concluded, gain “the moral, if not the material support of the people and Government of the United States.”

The same issue of the newspaper reported the provisional findings of the Technical Commission, which, it emphasized, were based on maximum costs. Further details were to be worked out during the trip to New York. With only a few minor modifications and improvements, the open-cut plan and route of Wyse and Reclus were approved. There would be a 40-meter-high dam at Gamboa to retain the Chagres, along with a channel running alongside the canal for the regulated flow of the river to the sea. Another smaller channel would keep river water from the canal on the opposite side. At Colón, a 2-kilometer breakwater would be constructed to protect the port, while at the other end of the canal a tidal lock would be required.

A study of the stability of rocks had led to the adoption of slope for the canal of 1:1, or 45 degrees, except on the summit division at Culebra, where a slope of a quarter to one was considered sufficient because of the hard rock. In the Culebra Cut, the canal would be 24 meters wide at the bottom, 28 meters at the waterline, with a water depth of 9 meters. Elsewhere, the canal would have a waterline width of 50 meters, but otherwise similar dimensions.

The cost of diverting the Chagres was increased substantially from the Congress estimate, as was the amount of spoil to be removed, now judged to be some 75 million cubic meters. Nonetheless, the overall increase in cost was slight, helped by the reduction of the contingency fund from 25 to 10 percent. Not including the expense of purchasing the railroad, interest on the capital, administrative outlay, and the sums due to the Türr syndicate and the Colombian government, the cost was now estimated at 843 million francs (US$168,600,000). The comparable figure from the Congress had been 765,375,000 francs (US$153,075,000). The time of construction was reduced from twelve years to eight. In Paris, the
Bulletin du Canal Interocéanique
crowed that in all, the work would be easier and quicker than had been previously believed.

This overall sum seemed eminently affordable. The Congress had estimated tonnage through the canal at six million a year. At 15 francs per ton, this would bring in 90 million francs annually, producing 10 percent a year on a capital of 900 million francs. If 15 francs a ton seemed high compared to Suez's 8 francs, the current cost of moving freight on the railway, including loading and unloading, was nearly 80 francs per ton.

However, there is no doubt that, overall, this was an optimistic estimate. With hindsight, the slopes deemed sufficient were wildly wrong; the plan for the Chagres would prove a minefield; furthermore, the reduction of the contingency fund to hold down the cost seems to be taking “putting a favorable gloss” to the point of dishonesty. In contrast, U.S. estimates under the Grant surveys had always included a contingency fund of 100 percent, a sensible move considering that the Suez Canal, for example, had gone over its original budget by some 128 percent.

The de Lesseps party left Panama on February 15. They depart, wrote the
Star and Herald
, “vastly to the regret of the people of the Isthmus of all nationalities … during their stay on the Isthmus they have taken possession of the public heart to an extent never before witnessed among us. The importance of Mr. de Lesseps’ mission, a preparatory step to one of the greatest undertakings the world has ever witnessed, did not prevent that courteous and affable gentleman from taking a vivid interest in our rather dull isthmus life, into which he and his amiable lady have infused new vigor and animation.” He headed for New York, “with heartiest best wishes.”

There were dissenting voices. Wyse, cast out from the project, wrote from Panama to Reclus on January 24: “Blanchet does nothing… the tachometers are broken. There is total disorder, waste, and disorganisation.” De Lesseps, Wyse alleged, was making a nuisance of himself by trying to grope
“les tétons des femmes.”
Tracy Robinson, who was so impressed with de Lesseps, and believed that “from first to last he was perfectly conscientious and honest,” pronounced him “too old, too eager, too vain of the glory it would add to his already great reputation.”