RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
temper and it was thought best to keep them "merely guessing" while the negotiations between the Secretary of War and the Panamanian government were in progress, and much of Mr. Taft's time, therefore, was spent behind the closed doors of President Amador's council chamber.
In the meantime I made myself familiar with the wonderful American project which brought the Panama Republic into existence. The Canal then was a sorry sight. The public clamour in the United States was for "making the dirt fly," but it did not look to a mere layman as if we could ever make it fly fast enough or in sufficient quantities to really bring the two oceans together. All along the line of operations the old French machinery lay buried in pathetic ruin in a tropic jungle which had all but effaced the evidences of the French enterprise, and such conditions of general unhealthiness prevailed as made it seem almost too much to expect that any kind of clean-up programme could be made effectual.
But all that story has been told; told in actual accomplishment with which all the world is familiar. I am only glad that I saw Colonel Gorgas and his men in that initial and contagious enthusiasm which, being sustained, resulted in a record of which we are all so proud.
The Panamanians are nothing if not expansively hospitable. On the 4th of December, after we had been on the Isthmus a couple of weeks and while the results of the official negotiations were still, as far as any one knew, "in the lap of the gods," an ocean steamship was chartered by a company of hosts, and about three hundred guests, the élite of the whole republic, were invited for a picnic party to the Pearl Islands in the Bay of Panama, and a sail out into the Pacific Ocean. It was an all-day expedition and included the exploration of the beautiful little group, some pearl-diving for our especial benefit, a most amazing luncheon, and a dance on deck, to the music of a stringed band in gay and
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