Joseph Pennell's pictures of the Panama Canal E-Book

Joseph Pennell

• Herausgeber: Joseph Pennell
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

THE idea of going to Panama to make lithographs of the Canal was mine. I suggested it, and the Century Magazine and Illustrated London News offered to print some of the drawings I might make.Though I suggested the scheme a couple of years ago, it was not until January, 1912, that I was able to go—and then I was afraid it was too late—afraid the work was finished and that there would be nothing to see, for photographs taken a year or eighteen months before, showed some of the locks built and their gates partly in place.

Leseprobe

Joseph Pennell's pictures of the Panama

Canal

By

Joseph Pennell

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION—MY LITHOGRAPHS OF THE PANAMA CANAL

I. COLON: THE AMERICAN QUARTER

II. MOUNT HOPE

III. GATUN: DINNER TIME

IV. AT THE BOTTOM OF GATUN LOCK

V. THE GUARD GATE, GATUN

VI. APPROACHES TO GATUN LOCK

VII. END OF THE DAY—GATUN LOCK

VIII. THE JUNGLE THE OLD RAILROAD FROM THE NEW

IX. THE NATIVE VILLAGE

X. THE AMERICAN VILLAGE

XI. THE CUT AT BAS OBISPO

XII. IN THE CUT AT LAS CASCADAS

XIII. THE CUT FROM CULEBRA

XIV. STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK IN THE CULEBRA CUT

XV. THE CUT—LOOKING TOWARD CULEBRA

XVI. THE CUT AT PARAISO

XVII. THE CUT LOOKING TOWARD ANCON HILL

XVIII. LAYING THE FLOOR OF PEDRO MIGUEL LOCK

XIX. THE GATES OF PEDRO MIGUEL

XX. THE WALLS OF PEDRO MIGUEL

XXI. BUILDING MIRAFLORES LOCK

XXII. CRANES—MIRAFLORES LOCK

XXIII. WALLS OF MIRAFLORES LOCK

XXIV. OFFICIAL ANCON

XXV. FROM ANCON HILL

XXVI. THE CATHEDRAL, PANAMA

XXVII. THE CITY OF PANAMA FROM THE TIVOLI HOTEL, ANCON

XXVIII. THE MOUTH OF THE CANAL FROM THE SEA

INTRODUCTION—MY LITHOGRAPHS OF THE PANAMA CANAL

THE idea of going to Panama to make lithographs of the Canal was mine. I suggested it, and the Century Magazine and Illustrated London News offered to print some of the drawings I might make.

Though I suggested the scheme a couple of years ago, it was not until January, 1912, that I was able to go—and then I was afraid it was too late—afraid the work was finished and that there would be nothing to see, for photographs taken a year or eighteen months before, showed some of the locks built and their gates partly in place.

Still I started, and after nearly three weeks of voyaging found, one January morning, the Isthmus of Panama ahead of the steamer, a mountainous country, showing deep valleys filled with mist, like snow fields, as I have often seen them from Montepulciano looking over Lake Thrasymene, in Italy. Beyond were higher peaks, strange yet familiar, Japanese prints, and as we came into the harbor the near hills and distant mountains were silhouetted with Japanese trees and even the houses were Japanese, and when we at length landed, the town was full of character reminiscent of Spain, yet the local character came out in the Cathedral, the tower of which—a pyramid—was covered with a shimmering, glittering mosaic of pearl oyster shells. The people, not Americans, were primitive, and the children, mostly as in Spain, were not bothered with clothes.

I followed my instinct, which took me at once to the great swamp near the town of Mount Hope, where so many of De Lesseps' plans lie buried. Here are locomotives, dredges, lock-gates, huge bulks of iron, great wheels, nameless, shapeless masses—half under water, half covered with vines—the end of a great work. I came back to Colon by the side of the French Canal, completed and working up to, I believe, Gatun Lock and Dam, and spent the afternoon in the American town, every house Japanese in feeling, French or American in construction, screened with black wire gauze, divided by white wood lines—most decorative—and all shaded by a forest of palms. Through these wandered well-made roads, and on them were walking and driving well-made Americans. There were no mosquitoes, no flies, no smells, none of the usual adjuncts of a tropical town.

At the end of the town was a monument, a nondescript Columbus, facing nowhere, at his feet an Indian; but it seemed to me, if any monument was wanted at Colon, it should be a great light-house or a great statue towering aloft in the harbor, a memorial to the men who, French and American, have made the Canal.

Next day I started across the Continent to Panama, for I learned the Government headquarters were there, and, until I had seen the officials, I did not know if I should be allowed to work or even stay on the Isthmus. But at Gatun I got off the train, determining to do all I could before I was stopped—as I was quite sure I should be. I saw the tops of the locks only a few hundred yards away, and, turning my back on the stunning town piled up on the hillside, walked over to them; from a bridge bearing a sign that all who used it did so at their own risk I looked down into a yawning gulf stretching to right and left, the bottom filled with crowds of tiny men and tiny trains—all in a maze of work; to the right the gulf reached to a lake, to the left to mighty gates which mounted from the bottom to my feet. Overhead, huge iron buckets flew to and fro, great cranes raised or lowered huge masses of material. As I looked, a bell rang, the men dropped their tools, and lines of little figures marched away, or climbed wooden stairs and iron ladders to the surface. The engines whistled, the buckets paused, everything stopped instantly, save that from the depths a long chain came quickly up, and clinging to the end of it, as Cellini would have grouped them, were a dozen men—a living design—the most decorative motive I have ever seen in the Wonder of Work. I could not have imagined it, and in all the time I was on the Isthmus I never saw it but once again. For a second only they were posed, and then the huge crane swung the group to ground and the design fell to pieces as they dropped off.