Panama and the canal . the diseases that lurk in the filth ofthe cities and the deadly air of the swamps. Consumption,typhoid, malaria, plague, and yellow fever, cut down therailroads workmen until the wonder is that the road wasever completed. Beyond the Chagres river Are the paths that lead to death—To the fevers deadly breezes,To malarias poisonous breath! It has been said that one life was sacrificed for everycross-tie on the railroad track. This is, no doubt, total loss of life was about 2,500. It was a fight ofAmerican daring against terrible odds. But such engi-neers as Colon
Panama and the canal . the diseases that lurk in the filth ofthe cities and the deadly air of the swamps. Consumption,typhoid, malaria, plague, and yellow fever, cut down therailroads workmen until the wonder is that the road wasever completed. Beyond the Chagres river Are the paths that lead to death—To the fevers deadly breezes,To malarias poisonous breath! It has been said that one life was sacrificed for everycross-tie on the railroad track. This is, no doubt, total loss of life was about 2,500. It was a fight ofAmerican daring against terrible odds. But such engi-neers as Colonel George Totten and James Baldwin weresuperior to all the evil powers of the jungle, and the roadwas built. Eight million dollars,—five years of exhausting labor,— io6 THE RAILROAD COMPLETED over a thousand of lives,—that was the price paid for forty-eight miles of railroad away off in Panama. On the 27th of January, 1855, a strange sight was seen inthe City of Panama,—the first locomotive that ever crossed. Heki: ax Last Was a Railroad Across the Isthaius. the American continent from ocean to ocean,—and this,too, fourteen years before it was possible to cross the UnitedStates by rail from the Atlantic to the Pacific. First Trans- ^ continental Hcrc at last was a railroad across the Isth- mus. Shiploads of goods headed for thePacific need no longer be sent on the long journey aroundSouth America. Commerce came to Panama at once. Even SUCCESS 107 before it was completed, the road had taken in more thantwo million dollars. It soon made fortunes for its builders,and has paid handsomely ever since. In the first forty-sevenyears this little railroad earned nearly $38,000,000 of clearprofit for its owners. Surely a railroad can have a story as romantic as thebloody career of a gang of pirates, even though led by HenryMorgan. CHAPTER IX WATERWAYS ACROSS CENTRAL AMERICA In the first part of our story of Panama we learned thatthe greatest disappointment of Cohimbuss life wa
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