19 So Near and Yet so Far

N-A-M-E-R-I-C-A and S-A-M-E-R-I-C-A are two names printed in large letters across my map of North America and South America. Namerica and Samerica sound like brothers:Nam and Sam Erica. They look as if the Creator had pulled them just as far apart as He could without pulling them quite in two. They are held together by a little piece of land called Central America, and the very thinnest part of Central America—the part as thin as a leaf stem—is called the Isthmus of Panama: spelled “isthmus,” but sounded “ismus.”

On one side of the Isthmus is the Atlantic and on the other side the Pacific Ocean, so near to each other and yet so far. Ships that wanted to get from one ocean to the other couldn’t get across this little strip of land—they had to go the long way round, all the way round the bottom of Samerica,thousands of miles out of the way. There was no way at all round the top of Namerica, for both land and ice were in the way up there. It seemed a terribly long distance for a ship to have to go just because it couldn’t cross this little strip of land. It was as if you were motoring and the road came to a river and there was no bridge, and a sign said “Detour 10,000 miles.” It was the longest detour i. t. w. W. Naturally,people tried to find a way not to make that detour. Some men suggested wheeling ships across the Isthmus. They said, “Let us lift a ship out of the water on a kind of huge elevator, then put it on a huge truck, push it across the Isthmus to the other ocean, then lower it into the water again by another huge elevator.” But it seemed simpler to cut a canal across the Isthmus so that a ship might sail straight through from one ocean to the other. On the map this looked easy enough—just a snip with the scissors or a nick with a knife; but that little stem of land was over thirty miles across and there were mountains in the way too.

They have many earthquakes in Central America, and if one of these earthquakes had only cracked the Isthmus of Panama across and broken Namerica and Samerica apart it would have been very convenient; but earthquakes don’t do helpful things like that—they make cracks where you don’t want them.

Why did ships want to get from one ocean to the other,anyway? Why shouldn’t those on one side stay on that side,and those on the other side stay on the other side? Well—your mother goes downtown shopping for things to wear and things to eat and furniture for the house; so ships go shopping—shipping, shopping—around the World. Ships from the countries around the At-lantic Ocean go shopping to countries around the Pacific Ocean for tea and China dishes and silk stockings. And ships from countries around the Pacific Ocean go shopping to the countries around the Atlantic Ocean for things they want and haven’t got. That’s one reason why ships wanted to get from one ocean to the other, and they didn’t want to go the long way round, ten thousand miles out of the way, if they could possibly help it.So at last a company of men from France on the other side of the ocean, who knew how to dig canals—for they had already dug a long canal—started to dig a canal across the Isthmus.

Now the Isthmus of Panama used to be the most unhealthful place i. t. w. W. The Indians and black men who lived there didn’t seem to mind it, but with white men it was different. One out of every three white men who went there died of fever. The company of men from France set to work and worked for several years on the canal, but so many of their men died and so much money was spent and so little canal was dug that at last they gave it up, stopped digging.

Later the United States rented from the little country of Panama a piece of land forever, a piece of land ten miles wide like a belt right across the Isthmus. This belt of land is called the Canal Zone. But before the United States started to dig the canal they said, “We must make the Canal Zone a healthful and fit place for white people to work so that they won’t die as soon as we send them down there.” So they sent a famous doctor down to the Canal Zone to see if he could make the Zone a more healthful place for white men to live in.

This doctor found out that what made the Isthmus so unhealthful was—what do you suppose?—nothing but little mosquitos. These mosquitos were different, however, from those we have that merely leave an itchy spot where they bite.The mosquitos down there were of an entirely different kind.Some of them were town mosquitos and some were country mosquitos. The country mosquitos gave people malaria,which was bad enough, but the worst kind of mosquitos were the town mosquitos. They gave people a terrible disease called yellow fever—a disease that turned people yellow and killed almost every one who caught it. So the doctor said I’ll find out how to get rid of the mosquitos and keep them from killing the people. Accordingly, he went after the mosquitos first, and this is the way he killed them. The town mosquitos he killed with sulphur smoke—sulphur from Popocatepetl—and the country mosquitos he killed with oil—oil from Mexico too. Then he cleaned up the marshes and other places where the mosquitos lived and raised their enormous families, so that they had no place to live, and in these ways he changed the Canal Zone from the most unhealthful place i. t. w. W. to one of the most healthful places i. t. w. W.

Then, and not until then, the United States went ahead and made the Canal. They didn’t cut the land straight through, however, as the French had started to do, so that the Atlantic and Pacific could run together—that would have meant too much digging, even with dynamite, for dynamite blows up land, and the land has to be carried away after it is blown up. So the United States dug a ditch across the Isthmus on top of the land and used a river and a lake already there to keep this ditch filled with water. At each end of this ditch or canal they made locks to raise ships from the sea at one end, and to lower them to the sea at the other. So ships now go across from one ocean to the other, but most of the way they sail on fresh water, for neither ocean runs into the other. Namerica and Samerica are not cut apart—they are still joined and always will be, until the Creator does the separating.