" Following the example of
Havana other centres were attacked, at Vera Cruz and in Brazil, with the
same success, and it is safe to say that now, thanks to the researches
of Reed and his colleagues, with proper measures, no country need fear a
paralyzing outbreak of this once dreaded disease.
The scientific researches in the last two decades of the nineteenth
century made possible the completion of the Panama Canal. The narrow
isthmus separating the two great oceans and joining the two great
continents, has borne for four centuries an evil repute as the White
Man's Grave. Silent upon a peak of Darien, stout Cortez with eagle eye
had gazed on the Pacific. As early as 1520, Saavedra proposed to cut
a canal through the Isthmus. There the first city was founded by the
conquerors of the new world, which still bears the name of Panama.
Spaniards, English and French fought along its coasts; to it the founder
of the Bank of England took his ill-fated colony; Raleigh, Drake, Morgan
the buccaneer, and scores of adventurers seeking gold, found in fever an
enemy stronger than the Spaniard. For years the plague-stricken Isthmus
was abandoned to the negroes and the half-breeds, until in 1849,
stimulated by the gold fever of California, a railway was begun by
the American engineers, Totten and Trautwine, and completed in 1855,
a railway every tie of which cost the life of a man.
Pages:
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304