National Geographic: Adventures - Panama Canal: The Mountain and the Mosquito Page #2

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don't know what to do

with the staggering amount of dirt

that is being dug out of Culebra.

It is simply dumped

wherever space can be found.

Creating unstable mountains of debris

that crumble in the continual rains.

At Culebra,

the Spanish word for snake,

John Stevens,

the great American engineer is stymied.

Here, the French finally surrendered.

Here, John Stevens must

find a way through.

Topography is only half the problem.

In the work camps,

where three quarters of the work force

are impoverished West Indians,

the human toll is appalling.

Even Roosevelt's eager

American volunteers,

in their segregated barracks,

are barely surviving on rations of

crackers and sardines.

Crammed into hovels

with no toilets or running water.

Tormented by dysentery,

parasites and fear of yellow fever

- The Great Scare.

Desperate to defeat The Great Scare -

to restore the spirits of

his frightened workers -

Stevens visits Dr. William Gorgas,

chief medical officer of the canal.

In the yellow fever ward of the

Ancon hospital,

Dr. Gorgas introduces the victims

of this horrible plague.

Like Stevens, Gorgas has been

hand-picked by the President.

At 49 years-old,

he is a light-hearted Southerner

plunged into a nightmare

of tropical sickness.

In Cuba, newly freed from Spanish rule

by Roosevelt and his Rough Riders,

Gorgas has succeeded in virtually

eliminating yellow fever.

Panama has proved to be a far

more difficult assignment.

"When the United States

took possession in 1904

the Isthmus was generally looked on as

...the most unhealthy spot in the world

Probably it would not be extreme to say

that there is no other place

that has as bad a reputation."

He has been in Panama for

more than 13 months

when John Stevens joins him.

For Dr. William Crawford Gorgas,

it has been a year of anguish.

At Ancon, he relates the toll -

in the past few months.

Hundreds of other lives claimed by

malaria, pneumonia, chronic dysentery,

and, even, Bubonic plague.

John Stevens knows that his canal

cannot be built without human labor.

Stevens has to act quickly.

He has come to build a canal

but must fix a disaster.

In Panama less than a week,

he knows what he must do.

It is a decision

that will shock everyone.

With undiminished energy

despite the heat and rain,

John Stevens spends seven grueling days

inspecting every inch of

the biggest excavation in human history.

The men expect Stevens to order them

to speed up their work

on the President's Big Ditch.

Instead, he commands them

to lay down their tools.

Hundreds of workers and technicians

are shipped home to America.

John Stevens tells them

that the Panama Canal is unfit

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