The labors of the smaller committees, which met elsewhere in the building, were minimal and of little significance. One group concluded that the canal would be opened ten years hence and accommodate an annual traffic roughly twice that at Suez. (In the committee’s report it was stressed that such traffic should not be anticipated for the first year of operation, but de Lesseps would choose to disregard that.) Another group, estimating world commerce, a committee headed by Nathan Appleton, of Boston, the delegate from the United States Chamber of Commerce, met only three times and accomplished nothing. A committee on ship dimensions concluded that the canal need be no wider or deeper than Suez, and a committee on tolls, hamstrung to do much of anything without knowing what the Technical Committee would decide, made a gallant guess. With tolls set at $3 a ton, it was thought the canal could bring in a gross revenue of $18,000,000 a year, which was worked out to mean an annual net profit of no less than $8,000,000, or a return of 8 percent on a canal costing $100,000,000.
The deliberations of the Technical Committee, held in the auditorium, remained the focus of attention, the “impartial serenity of science” being pretty well shattered at the very first of these sessions on May 16.
The first speaker was to have been Admiral Ammen–another of de Lesseps’ courtesies–but the trunk containing the reports and maps from the American surveys had been delayed somewhere between Liverpool and Paris. So it was Commander Selfridge who spoke instead and his subject was the Atrato River route, which should have been no problem, and would not have been, had Ammen been willing to let Selfridge simply have his say. Ammen, however, thought very little of any and all Atrato River schemes; nor did he wish anyone to get the impression that Selfridge spoke as an official representative of the American government; nor apparently did he like the idea that Selfridge was even in attendance; nor does he seem to have much cared for Selfridge personally. (What the issue was between them remains obscure.) Ammen openly challenged certain of Selfridge’s claims and in no time a sharp and rather undignified argument resulted between the two: Ammen insisting that he, as the rightful head of the American delegation, should have the final say; Selfridge refusing to defer to the august admiral (now retired) and insisting with equal conviction that he had a perfect right to be heard and, further, that he could speak with authority since he at least had been there.
Selfridge would be asked to address the committee again in another few days. His explorations in Darien, his advocacy of a canal a niveau, his passable French, all made him a popular figure. (Later, the congress at an end, Selfridge would receive the Legion of Honor for his pioneering efforts in Darien.) But the Atrato scheme, though a “projet sans écluses” never really had a chance of attracting serious attention, as Ammen should have recognized, and it was put aside just as soon as Selfridge had had the opportunity to speak his piece. What was interesting to the delegates was the tone of the exchange between the two eminent Americans–to see how intensely, how passionately, such an issue could matter to fellow countrymen, fellow officers and gentlemen.
Ammen had his turn the following day, the crucial trunk having been located meantime, and was followed immediately by Menocal. The effect was stunning. “When it came to the turn of Messrs. Ammen and Menocal to give their figures and estimates of the different routes, a complete revolution took place,” wrote Dr. Johnston. “The great body of able engineers who had come to seriously study the question without prejudice, were astounded to find that nobody in Europe knew anything about the question. The expose of the American delegates was a revelation . . . .”
Ammen’s part was a brief overall description of the American surveys, but the maps and plans he used to elaborate his remarks had an instant effect, since nothing of the kind had been seen before in Europe. Then followed the “technical exposition” on Nicaragua by Menocal.
A Nicaragua canal would involve fewer engineering problems than a canal at any other possible location, the audience was informed. The cost, based on an actual survey of the line, was so much less by comparison that for economy reasons alone a Nicaragua canal had to take precedence. The plan was for a lock canal, a sea-level canal at Nicaragua being out of the question.
The route of the canal was similar to that laid out by Vanderbilt’s engineer, Orville Childs, in the early 1850’s. The San Juan River would be made navigable by building several small dams and these would be bypassed with relatively short canal sections. Going west, up to the lake, there would be about forty miles of canal in total and ten locks. From the lake to the Pacific, a distance of only sixteen miles, there would be another section of canal with ten more locks descending back to sea level. The entire route, from Greytown to Brito, on the Pacific, would measure 181 miles, or more than three times the length of the Panama route. But as with the Childs’ scheme, 56 of those 181 miles were already provided for by Lake Nicaragu a and almost 70 miles of the San Juan could be made navigable for seagoing ships. So that left only 50-odd miles–58.23 according to Menocars figures–of actual canal construction, or not much more than the length of a Panama canal.
The cost of such a canal he put at $65,600,000, a third less than the price being quoted by Lieutenant Wyse for his project.
It was a polished, confident performance lasting five hours, and it was made to look even better by the speaker who followed–Lieutenant Wyse. Menocal had spoken as one who had appraised all sides of the problem, seen to every detail, who had covered every foot of the ground on his own Two legs. He was the thoroughgoing professional, the voice of experience. Wyse, by contrast, was often vague on details, unsure of his facts. He talked, said one delegate, as though he had dreamed up his entire plan without ever having left Paris.
Wyse, General Türr, Armand Réclus, and several others associated with them had been present from the first session, and though they were not accredited delegates, and so in theory had no real power or say, they were, as members of the Societe de Geographie, perfectly at home in such surroundings and known to all. Wyse, as it happened, was the recipient of the Society’s gold medal for that year, for his Darien explorations. Yet virtually from the moment he began to speak of his Panama project it was clear to a large number of delegates that he had little substantive knowledge of the terrain and that there was really no such thing as a Wyse Survey. And whereas Menocal had encouraged questions at the conclusion of his remarks and answered them to the satisfaction of every engineer present, Wyse was at a loss to defend his plan on even the most fundamental level. Specifically, he did not know what could be done about the Chagres River, which stood in the path of any canal taking the route of the railroad, or how, when he went down to sea level, he could cope with the twenty-foot tides of the Pacific.
When on Monday, May 19, General Türr and Lieutenant Réclus appeared before the committee and talked for several more hours, they contributed scarcely any more than Wyse had.
Tuesday, May 20, Menocal took the platform again. It was his professional judgment, as a result of three months in the Chagres valley, that any attempt to build a Panama canal would be disastrous. The absolutely unavoidable problem was the river. Any canal at Panama–a lock canal, a sea-level canal–would have to cross the river at least once, possibly several times. If a sea-level canal were cut through the river, the result, as anyone could readily picture, would be a stupendous cataract. The fall of the river into the canal would be 42 feet and this measurement was based on the level of the river in the dry season, when the river was only a few feet deep. In the rainy season the river could be instantly transformed into a torrent. It could rise 10 feet in an hour. At flood stage it could run as much as 36 feet deep, he said, and measure 1,500 feet across. The cost of controlling so monstrous a force–if it could be done at all–was beyond reckoning.
When he first went to Panama, in 1875, his own intention, he said, had been to plan for a sea-level canal. He had abandoned the idea as soon as he grasped the true nature of the Chagres River. Any plan that did not take the river into account was alt
ogether unrealistic.
Lieutenant Wyse asked to be heard. Where had the speaker obtained his data? From actual surveys and from local authorities, Menocal replied. His figures had been obtained through surveys in the field.
The official American plan for Panama was for a lock canal that would dispense with the problem of the Chagres by going over it. Menocal had designed a colossal stone viaduct 1,900 feet long to carry the canal over the river at a point known as Matachin. The elevation of the canal at the viaduct–the summit of the canal, that is–was to be 124 feet, and to carry the ships to this height there were to be a total of twenty-four locks (an equal dozen in either direction from the summit). To build such a canal would cost $94,600,000, a figure that startled a large number of his listeners, since it was approximately what Wyse was claiming for the cost of a canal at sea level.
Menocal believed it to be as ingenious a solution as possible, considering the circumstances, but he had no heart for it. In good conscience he was unable to recommend a Panama canal of any kind. Even a lock canal, he emphasized, would always be threatened by possible floods, and he further warned that the deep cuts that would have to be made through the Cordilleras at that section known as Culebra–even for a lock canal–would be subject to persistent mud slides.
“The surprise and painful emotion on the part of those who had plans a niveau, and of their many friends in attendance, can hardly be conceived,” wrote Daniel Ammen. “The fact stared them in the face that the plans which they had presented so confidently for adoption were absolutely impracticable.”
“From this moment,” observed Dr. Johnston, “the Congress became a real Congress and not a sham.”
All together the Technical Committee was to consider proposals for fourteen different points on the map of Central America. Frederick Kelley’s old San Bias plan was presented, for example. The Mexican delegate, de Garay, spoke for Tehuantepec. But these other options were rejected one by one. In less than a week the issue had come down to the Wyse plan for Panama and the American plan for Nicaragua, and to a great many delegates, having heard Menocal, the choice had been narrowed to Nicaragua. Had a vote been taken at the conclusion of Menocal’s remarks on Panama, it is probable that the congress would have picked Nicaragua, as de Lesseps himself conceded privately. But with de Lesseps in charge nothing of the kind was even to be considered.
Behind the scenes he was extremely busy, talking to the French delegates in a manner that “would do credit to a modern American political boss.” There could be no turning back. They could agree to no decision other than Panama. “That was the French route,” wrote Dr. Johnston; “they had been manufacturing enthusiasm for that route; the bankers and the public would not give a cent to any route that was not patronized by M. de Lesseps and Lieut. Wyse. So that to abandon that route was to abandon entirely for France the glory of cutting the interoceanic canal, and that was not to be thought of for a moment.”
By now, moreover, it was commonly understood that large sums of money were at stake. A Panama canal company had been formed in secret, it was rumored. “We were to be brought face to face with the singular spectacle of a congress which had become serious and honest, and which saw its way clear to the truth,” observed Dr. Johnston, “and yet which was obliged to remain dishonest, and carry out the original plan, no matter by what means. . . . It was the game of ‘I see you, and go you one better,’ played by men who had no cards, but plenty of money.”
Nor, it should be emphasized, were the warnings voiced solely by the Americans. A noted French engineer named Ribourt, one of the builders of the Saint Gotthard Tunnel, urged the delegates not to misjudge the magnitude of the undertaking. To cut through Panama a niveau, to dig a tunnel such as Lieutenant Wyse spoke of, would require not less than nine years of continuous labor, even if the work went on twenty-four hours a day. The cost, said Ribourt, would be at least twice what Wyse was saying. In the view of the revered John Hawkshaw a sea-level canal was physically impossible, since it would have to provide for the entire drainage of the Isthmus at that point. The tunnel being advocated would not be big enough to handle such a volume of water, he said, let alone any ships.
Wyse and Réclus were livid. Réclus could respond only with a rapid list of extraneous claims and countercharges. When the chair requested that he confine his remarks to the subject under discussion, Wyse all but shouted that their plans were being constantly attacked yet they were never given a chance to defend them. His manner, noted Daniel Ammen, was “very excited.”
Wyse and Réclus, meantime, were working all hours making drastic revisions. The idea of a tunnel was dropped. Their canal would be an open cut from ocean to ocean. The Pacific tides, they announced, would be handled by a tremendous tidal lock at that end of the canal. The Chagres would be “diverted” into a man-made channel, although Wyse was less than clear as to how this was to be managed.
The week that de Lesseps had thought sufficient to settle all issues and problems had by now passed and a consensus seemed farther away, less likely than ever. So on Friday, May 23, he “threw off the mantle of indifference,” as one delegate wrote, and convened another general session in the auditorium. “He is tenacious as well as able,” observed Dr. Johnston, “and did not propose to suffer a defeat.”
For the first time now he spoke at length, alone on the dais, a large map displayed behind him. The audience hung on every word and he spoke as though they were all his dearest friends, as confident of their eventual support as he was in his own preeminence in such matters. Walking back and forth freely before the map, he talked effortlessly, without pause, without notes. He was more like an actor on stage, radiant, virile, his ideas phrased in the simplest, most direct, and sensible-sounding terms.
One had only to look at the map to see that Panama was the proper place for the canal. The route was already well established, there was a railroad, there were thriving cities at each end. Only at Panama could a sea-level canal be built. It was really no great issue at all. Naturally, there were problems. There were always problems. There had been large, formidable problems at Suez, and to many respected authorities they too had seemed insurmountable. But as time passed, as the work moved ahead at Suez, indeed as difficulties increased, men of genius had come forth to meet and conquer those difficulties. The same would happen again. For every challenge there would be a man of genius capable of meeting and conquering it. One must trust to inspiration. As for the money, there was money aplenty in France just waiting for the opening of the subscription books.
He knew his audience and he delivered every line with perfect confidence in its effect. His audience adored him.
II
It was later that same day that another of the French delegates, one who had had nothing to say thus far, came to the front of the auditorium to deliver the most extraordinary pronouncement of the entire congress. A man of genius stepped forward then and there, in fact, although no one, not even de Lesseps, perceived this.
He was Baron Godin de Lepinay–Nicholas-Joseph-Adolphe Godin de Lepinay, Baron de Brusly–a small, bearded aristocrat who was a chief engineer with the Corps des Ponts et Chaussees (the French Department of Bridges and Highways), and a man known both for his brilliance and his ill-concealed disdain for those who failed to agree with him. He had devised an original answer to the Panama problem, including Panama’s deadly climate, which he regarded as the most serious aspect of the problem. He was, as he told the delegates, one of the very few present who had had any actual experience with engineering construction in “the warm lands of tropical America.” This, as he did not say, had been the building of a railroad between Cordoba and Veracruz, in 1862, during which a third of the labor force and two-thirds of the engineering staff died of yellow fever.
His solution was what Philippe Bunau-Varilla would call the “Idea of the artificial Nicaragua.” Incredibly and tragically, the delegates paid him no attention. The Americans dismissed the plan as ridiculous. Menocal could hardly bring him
self to mention de Lepinay’s name in his report on the congress. Ammen referred only to the “plan,” in quotes, as an illustration of the extremes some of the French had gone to in an effort to rescue the Panama route. Had the delegates reacted differently, had they taken de Lepinay seriously, the story of the canal could have turned out quite differently.
He acknowledged the truth of all Menocal had said regarding the Chagres River. He himself had been considering the problem of a Panama canal for some years. The idea of digging down to sea level was thoroughly unrealistic if one understood the terrain and ought to be discarded without further fuss. Those who talked of diverting the Chagres River in some fashion were sadly misinformed and deceiving themselves. They were allowing the triumph at Suez to distort their capacity to see things for what they were. Suez and Panama must not be regarded as comparable, he said. The environmental conditions were opposite in the extreme. “At Suez there is a lack of water, the terrain is easy, the land nearly the same level as the sea; in spite of the heat, it is a perfectly healthy climate. In tropical America, there is too much water, the terrain is mostly rock, the land has considerable relief, and finally the country is literally poisoned.” To act in the same manner in places of such opposite character, he declared, would be to “outrage nature” instead of to benefit by it, “which is the primary goal of the engineer.”
His own plan–“the most natural method”–was brilliantly simple, a genuine stroke of genius, and, as time would tell, it was absolutely sound.
Like Menocal, he had concluded that the Chagres must be bridged, but instead of a stone viaduct at Matachin, he envisioned a bridge of water across most of the Isthmus. There would be two artificial lakes, with flights of locks, like stairs, leading up to the lakes from the two oceans. As Lake Nicaragua was the essential element in the Nicaragua plan, providing both easy navigation and an abundant source of water for the canal, so his man-made lakes would serve at Panama. Through engineering, in other words, he would create at Panama what already existed at Nicaragua.
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