National Geographic: Adventures - Panama Canal: The Mountain and the Mosquito Page #4

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He draws on his experience with

railways in the Rockies.

Instead of hauling men, in Panama,

the trains will be used

to cart the dirt away.

But to do it, the entire rail system

must be revamped to handle

such a heavy load -

exactly the kind of thing

Stevens does best.

"There is no element of

mystery involved.

The most important stage in any great

undertaking is the preparatory stage.

The digging is the least thing

of all."

While Stevens attacks

the Continental Divide,

Dr. Gorgas sends out

his own battalions.

Fumigation brigades burn sulfur,

clean up sewage, and seal windows.

"It would be impossible to fumigate

more extensively than we did... in 1905.

We had about 400 men

engaged in this work,

and they went over the whole town

three times,

fumigating every house in the town,

besides fumigating every block

each time a case of yellow fever

occurred in that block."

Screens are installed and water

barrels are covered.

Ditches where mosquitoes breed

are drained.

Quarantined clinics treat

and keep them in mandatory isolation.

Stylish, sleepless and impervious

to the heat,

Gorgas works around the clock.

He stretches Roosevelt's promise

of an unlimited budget

to the breaking point, importing

America's entire output for a year.

He orders $90,000 dollars

worth of copper screening

in a single shipment.

Nearly double his previous

yearly budget.

It is the largest

and most expensive - war

ever waged against

tropical disease.

Meanwhile, John Stevens

fights his own battle.

He dismisses the existing

rail line as

"two streaks of rust

and a right of way."

Using his legendary status

as a drawing card,

Stevens lures the best railroad men

in America to the Isthmus.

Within six months of his arrival,

he triples the work force to 24,000.

Stevens constructs the most durable

railway in history.

Double-sided tracks of the heaviest

rails on earth

allow the world's heaviest freight

cars to travel in both directions,

Track-shifting machinery moves huge

sections of rail line faster and easier.

A telegraph system, new bridges and

massive locomotive sheds take shape.

Stevens thinks big, and buys big.

He has decided that the French suffered

because their machinery was too small.

He will not repeat their mistake.

Every weapon in his arsenal

is enormous.

His coal-burning steam shovels weigh

Mechanical dinosaurs.

Three times larger than anything

used by the Parisians.

"Now I would like that

[French] plant

to a modern one as baby

carriages to automobiles.

This is no reflection of the French,

but I cannot conceive

how they did the work they did

with the plant they had."

But Stevens has learned another

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