Part 5

Does nature present insurmountable engineering difficulties to the Panama scheme? By no means: for after the Croton aqueduct, our own railway tunnelling and the Britannia tubular bridge, engineering difficulties have become obsolete. Are the levels of the Pacific and the Gulph of Mexico, which should be joined, so different, that if one were admitted the fall would inundate the surrounding country? Not at all. Hear Humboldt on these points.

Forty years ago he declared it to be his firm opinion that ‘the Isthmus of Panama is suited to the formation of an oceanic canal—one with fewer sluices than the Caledonian Canal—capable of affording an unimpeded passage, at all seasons of the year, to vessels of that class which sail between New York and Liverpool, and between Chili and California.’ In the recent edition of his ‘Views of Nature,’ he ‘sees no reason to alter the views he has always entertained on this subject.’ Engineers, both British and American, have confirmed this opinion by actual survey. As, then, combination of British skill, capital, and energy, with that of the most ‘go-ahead’ people upon earth, have been dormant, whence the secret of the delay? The answer at once allays astonishment:—Till the present time, the speculation would not have ‘paid.’

Large works of this nature, while they create an inconceivable development of commerce, must have a certain amount of a trading population to begin upon. A goldbeater can cover the effigy of a man on horseback with a sovereign; but he must have the sovereign first. It was not merely because the full power of the iron rail to facilitate the transition of heavy burdens had not been estimated, and because no Stephenson had constructed a ‘Rocket engine,’ that a railway with steam locomotives was not made from London to Liverpool before 1836. Until the intermediate traffic between these termini had swelled to a sufficient amount in quantity and value to bear reimbursement for establishing such a mode of conveyance, its execution would have been impossible, even though men had known how to set about it.

What has been the condition of the countries under consideration? In 1839, the entire population of the tropical American isthmus, in the states of central America and New Grenada did not exceed three millions. The number of the inhabitants of pure European descent did not exceed one hundred thousand. It was only among this inconsiderable fraction that anything like wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, akin to that of Europe, was to be found; the rest were poor and ignorant aboriginals and mixed races, in a state of scarcely demi-civilisation. Throughout this thinly-peopled and poverty-stricken region, there was neither law nor government. In Stephens’s ‘Central America,’ may be found an amusing account of a hunt after a government, by a luckless American diplomatist, who had been sent to seek for one in central America. A night wanderer running through bog and brake after a will-o’-the-wisp could not have encountered more perils, or in search of a more impalpable phantom. In short, there was nobody to trade with. To the south of the Isthmus, along the Pacific coast of America, there was only one station to which merchants could resort with any fair prospect of gain—Valparaiso. Except Chili, all the Pacific states of South America were retrograding from a very imperfect civilisation, under a succession of petty and aimless revolutions. To the north of the Isthmus matters were little, if anything, better. Mexico had gone backwards from the time of its revolution; and, at the best, its commerce in the Pacific had been confined to a yearly ship between Acapulco and the Philippines. Throughout California and Oregon, with the exception of a few European and half-breed members, there were none but savage aboriginal tribes. The Russian settlements in the far north had nothing but a paltry trade in furs with Kamschatka, that barely defrayed its own expenses. Neither was there any encouragement to make a short cut to the innumerable islands of the Pacific. The whole of Polynesia lay outside of the pale of civilisation. In Tahiti, the Sandwich group, and the northern peninsula of New Zealand, missionaries had barely sowed the first seeds of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that traded from the sea-board States of the North American Union to Valparaiso and Canton. The wool of New South Wales was but coming into notice, and found its way to England alone round the Cape of Good Hope. An American fleet of whalers scoured the Pacific, and adventurers of the same nation carried on a desultory and inconsiderable traffic in hides with California, in tortoise-shell and mother of pearl with the Polynesian Islands.

What then would have been the use of cutting a canal, through which there would not have passed five ships in a twelvemonth? But twenty years have worked a wondrous revolution in the state and prospects of these regions.

The traffic of Chili has received a large development, and the stability of its institutions has been fairly tried. The resources of Costa Rica, the population of which is mainly of European race, is steadily advancing. American citizens have founded a state in Oregon. The Sandwich Islands have become for all practical purposes an American colony. The trade with China—to which the proposed canal would open a convenient avenue by a western instead of the present eastern route—is no longer restricted to the Canton river, but is open to all nations as far north as the Yangtse-Kiang. The navigation of the Amur has been opened to the Russians by a treaty, and cannot long remain closed against the English and American settlers between Mexico and the Russian settlements in America. Tahiti has become a kind of commercial emporium. The English settlements in Australia and New Zealand have opened a direct trade with the Indian Archipelago and China. The permanent settlements of intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Americans and English in Polynesia, and on the eastern and western shores of the Pacific, have proved so many _depôts_ for the adventurous traders with its innumerable islands, and for the spermaceti whalers. Then the last, but greatest addition of all, is California: a name in the world of commerce and enterprise to conjure with. There gold is to be had for fetching. Gold, the main-spring of commercial activity, the reward of toil—for which men are ready to risk life, to endure every sort of privation; sometimes, alas! to sacrifice every virtue; one most especially, and that is Patience. They will away with her now.

Till the discovery of the new Gold country how contentedly they dawdled round Cape Horn; creeping down one coast and up another; but now such delay is not to be thought of. Already, indeed, Panama has become the seat of a great increasing and perennial transit trade. This cannot fail to augment the settled population of the region, its wealth and intelligence. Upon these facts we rest the conviction that the time has arrived for realising the project of a ship canal there or in the near neighbourhood.

That a ship canal, and not a railway, is what is first wanted (for very soon there will be both), must be obvious to all acquainted with the practical details of commerce. The delay and expense to which merchants are subjected, when obliged to ‘break bulk’ repeatedly between the port whence they sail and that of their destination, is extreme. The waste and spoiling of goods, the cost of the operation, are also heavy drawbacks, and to these they are subject by the stormy passage round Cape Horn.

Two points present themselves offering great facilities for the execution of a ship canal. The one is in the immediate vicinity of Panama; where the many imperfect observations which have hitherto been made, are yet sufficient to leave no doubt that, as the distance is comparatively short, the summit levels are inconsiderable, and the supply of water ample. The other is some distance to the northward. The isthmus is there broader, but is in part occupied by the large and deep fresh-water lakes of Nicaragua and Naragua. The lake of Nicaragua communicates with the Atlantic by a copious river, which may either be rendered navigable, or be made the source of supply for a side canal. The space between the two lakes is of inconsiderable extent, and presents no great engineering difficulties. The elevation of the lake of Naragua above the Pacific is inconsiderable; there is no hill range between it and the gulph of Canchagua; and Captain Sir Edward Belcher carried his surveying ship _Sulphur_ sixty miles up the Estero Real, which rises near the lake, and falls into the gulf. The line of the Panama canal presents, as Humboldt remarks, facilities equal to those of the line of the Caledonian canal. The Nicaragua line is not more difficult than that of the canal of Languedoc, a work executed between 1660 and 1682, at a time when the commerce to be expedited by it did not exceed—if it equalled—that which will find its way across the Isthmus; when great part of the maritime country was as thinly inhabited by as poor a population as the Isthmus now is; and when the last subsiding storms of civil war, and the dragonnades of Louis XIV., unsettled men’s minds and made person and property insecure.

The cosmopolitan effects of such an undertaking, if prosecuted to a successful close, it is impossible even approximatively to estimate. The acceleration it will communicate to the already rapid progress of civilisation in the Pacific is obvious. And no less obvious are the beneficial effects it will have upon the mutual relations of civilised states, seeing that the recognition of the independence and neutrality in times of general war of the canal and the region through which it passes, is indispensable to its establishment.

We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of Universal Peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House respecting the forthcoming great Exhibition of Arts and Industry, ‘Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end—to which indeed all history points—the realisation of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning.’

Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace.

THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.

Down the lower shaft the young man continued to descend in silence and darkness. He did not know if he descended slowly or rapidly. The sense of motion had become quite indefinite. There was a horrible feathery ease about it, as though he were being softly taken down to endless darkness, with an occasional tantalising waft upwards, and then a lower descent, which made his whole soul sink within him. But he grasped the chain in front of him with all his remaining force, as his only hold on this world—which in fact it _was_.

From this condition of helpless dismay and apprehension, poor Flashley was suddenly aroused by a violent and heavy bump on the top of his iron umbrella! He thought it must be some falling miner, or perhaps his ponderous-footed elfin abductor, who had leaped down after him. It was only the accidental fall of a loose brick from above, somewhere; but the dead bang of the sound, coming upon the previous silence, was tremendous. The missile shot off slanting from the iron umbrella—seemed to dash its brains out against the side of the shaft—and then flew down before him, like a lost soul.

Flashley now felt a wavering motion in his descent, while an increasing current of air rose to meet him; and almost immediately after, he heard strange and confused sounds beneath. Looking down into the darkness, he not only saw a reddening light, but, as he stared down, it became brighter, until he saw the gleam of flames issuing from one side of the shaft. He fully expected to descend into the midst, and ‘there an end;’ but he speedily found he was reserved for some other fate. The fire was placed in a large chasm, and appeared to have a steep red pathway sloping away behind it. He passed it safely. From this moment he felt no current of air, but his ears were assailed with a variety of noises, in which he could distinguish the gush of waters, the lumbering of wood, the clank and jar of chains, and the voices of men—or something worse. Three black figures were distinctly visible.

In a few seconds more, his feet touched earth—which seemed to give a heave, in answer. His descent from the upper surface had not occupied longer time than has been necessary to describe it, but this was greatly magnified to his imagination by the number, novelty, and force of the emotions and thoughts that had attended it. He was now at the bottom of the William Pitt Coal Mine, nine hundred and thirty feet below the surface of the earth.

A man all black with coal-dust, and naked from the waist upwards, took hold of Flashley, and extricating him from the chain girdle and iron umbrella, led him away into the darkness, lighted only by a candle stuck in a lump of clay which his conductor held in the other hand.

Over all the various sounds, that of rushing waters predominated at this spot; and very soon they turned an angle which enabled Flashley to descry a black torrent spouting from a narrow chasm, and rushing down a precipitous gully on one side of them to seek some still lower abyss. Another angle was turned; the torrent was no longer seen and its noise grew fainter almost at every step.

The passage through which they were advancing was cut out of the solid coal. It was just high enough for the man to walk upright, though with the danger of striking his head occasionally against some wedge of rock, stone, or block of coal, projected downwards from the roof. In width the sides could be reached by the man’s extended hands. They were sometimes supported by beams, and sometimes by a wall of brick, and the roof was frequently sustained by upright timbers, and limbs or trunks of trees. In one place, where the roofing had evidently sunk, there stood an irregular row of stunted oak trunks, of grotesque shapes and shadows, many of which were cracked and gaping in ragged flaws from the crushing pressure they had resisted; showing that, without them, the roof would certainly have fallen, and rendering the passage more ‘suggestive’ than agreeable to a stranger beneath. Here and there, at considerable distances, candles stuck in clay were set in gaps of the coaly walls, in the sandstone, or against the logs and trunks. The pathway was for the most part a slush of coal-dust, mixed with mud and slates, varied with frequent nobs and snaggs of rock and iron-stone. In this path of intermittent ingredients, a tram-road had been established, the rails of which had been laid down at not more than 15 inches asunder; and moving above this at no great distance, Flashley now saw a dull vapoury light, and next descried a horse emerging from the darkness ahead of them. It seemed clear that nothing could save them from being run over, unless _they_ could run over the horse. However, his guide made him stand with his back flat against one side of the passage—and presently the long, hot, steamy body of the horse moved by, just moistening his face and breast in passing. He had never before thought a horse’s body was so long. At the creature’s heels a little low black waggon followed with docility. The wheels were scarcely six inches high. Its sides were formed by little black rails. It was full of coals. A boy seemed to be driving, whose voice was heard on the other side of the horse, or else from beneath the animal’s body, it was impossible to know which.

They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade, which appeared to close their journey abruptly. But it proved to be a door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own careful good will and pleasure. The road was still through cuttings in the solid coal, varied occasionally with a few yards of red sandstone, or with brick walls and timbers as previously described. Other horses drawing little black coal-waggons were now encountered; sometimes two horses drawing two or more waggons, and these passed by in the same unpleasant proximity. More _Sesame_ doors were also opened and shut as before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat, and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of an ‘infernal small _trapper_,’ in allusion to some neglect of duty on a previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age, one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management, to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys, after anybody has passed.

Proceeding in this way, they arrived at a side-working close upon the high-road, in which immense ledges of rocks and stones projected from the roof, being embedded in the coal. In cutting away the coal there was danger of loosening and bringing down some of these stones, which might crush the miners working beneath. A ‘council’ was now being held at the entrance, where seven experienced ‘undergoers’ were lying flat on the ground, smoking, with wise looks, in Indian fashion, and considering the best mode of attack, whereby they might bring down the coals without being ‘mashed up’ by the premature fall of the rocks and stones together with the black masses in which they were embedded.

Among all the gloomy and oppressive feelings induced by this journey between dismal walls—faintly lighted, at best, so as to display a most forbidding succession of ugly shadows and grotesque outlines—and sometimes not lighted at all for a quarter of a mile; there was nothing more painful than the long pauses of silence; a silence only broken by the distant banging of the trappers’ doors, or by an avalanche of coal in some remote working. After advancing in a silence of longer duration than any that had preceded it, Flashley’s dark conductor paused every now and then, and listened—then advanced; then stopped again thoughtfully, and listened. At length he stopped with gradual paces, and turning to Flashley, said in a deep tone, the calmness of which added solemnity to the announcement,—

‘We are now walking beneath the bed of the sea!—and ships are sailing over our heads!’

Several horses and waggons were met and passed after the fashion already described. On one occasion, the youth who drove the horse, walked in front, waving his candle in the air, and causing it to gleam upon a black pool in a low chasm on one side, which would otherwise have been invisible. He was totally without clothing, and of a fine symmetrical form, like some young Greek charioteer doing penance on the borders of Lethe for careless driving above ground. As he passed the pool of water, he stooped with his candle. Innumerable bubbles of gas were starting to the surface. The instant the flame touched them, they gave forth sparkling explosions, and remained burning with a soft blue gleam. It continued visible a long time, and gave the melancholy idea of some spirit, once beautiful, which had gone astray, and was for ever lost to its native region. It was as though the youth had written his own history in symbol, before he passed away into utter darkness.

‘You used to be fond,’ observed Flashley’s companion, with grim ironical composure, after one of these close encounters with horseflesh—‘You _used_ to be fond of horses.’

Flashley made no reply, beyond a kind of half-suppressed groan of fatigue and annoyance.

‘Well, then,’ said the other, appearing to understand the smothered groan as an acquiescence—‘we will go and look at the stables.’

He turned off at the next corner on the left, and led the way up a narrow and steep path of broken brick and sandstone, till they arrived at a bank of rock and coal, up which they had to clamber, Flashley’s guide informing him that it would save a mile of circuitous path. Arriving at the top, they soon came to a narrow door, somewhat higher than any they had yet seen. It opened by a long iron latch, and they entered the ‘mine stables.’

A strong hot steam and most oppressive odour of horses, many of whom were asleep and snoring, was the first impression. The second, was a sepulchral Davy-lamp hanging from the roof, whose dull gleam just managed to display the uplifting of a head and inquiring ears in one place, the contemptuous whisking of a tail in another, and a large eye-ball gleaming through the darkness, in another! The stalls were like a succession of narrow black dens, at each side of a pathway of broken brick and sand. In this way sixty or seventy horses were ‘stabled.’

‘This is a prince of a mine!’ said the guide; ‘we have seven hundred people down here, and a hundred and fifty horses.’

They emerged at the opposite end, which led up another steep path towards a shaft (for the mine now had four or five) which was used for the ascent and descent of horses. They were just in time to witness the arrival of a new-comer,—a horse who had never before been in a mine.

The animal’s eyes and ears became more frightfully expressive, as with restless anticipatory limbs and quivering flesh he swung round in his descending approach to the earth. When his hoofs touched, he made a plunge. But though the band and chain confined him, he appeared yet more restrained by the appalling blackness. He made a second plunge, but with the same result. He then stood stock-still, glared round at the black walls and the black faces and figures that surrounded him, and instantly fainted.

The body of the horse was speedily dragged off on a sort of sledge, by a tackle. The business of the mine could not wait for his recovery. He was taken to be ‘fanned.’ Flashley of course understood this as a mine joke; but it was not entirely so. A great iron wheel, with broad fans, was often worked rapidly in a certain place, to create a current of air and to drive it on towards the fire in the up-cast shaft, assisting by this means the ventilation of the mine; and thither, or at all events, in that direction, the poor horse was dragged, amidst the laughter and jokes of the miners and the shouts and whistles of the boys.