Page:Panama-past-present-Bishop.djvu/207

Rh forty feet of water. Some thought the Americans were prophesying a second deluge. "Ah, no, Señores," protested one old Spaniard, "the good God destroyed the world that way once, but He will never do so again." The Panama Railroad, too, has been relocated for its entire length, except for two miles or so out of Panama City, and a little over four miles between Colon and Gatun. Both the former station and the old village at Gatun (which is the place where Morgan's bucaneers and the Forty-niners, and all the other travelers up-river spent the first night) are now buried under the huge mass of the Gatun Dam, The former line of the Panama Railroad through the lake-bed, though double-tracked and modernized only a few years ago, has been completely abandoned. The new, permanent, single-track road swings to the east at Gatun, and runs on high ground round the shore of the lake to a bridge across the Chagres at Gamboa, a little above Bas Obispo. It was originally planned that the railroad should run from here through the Gaillard Cut on a "berm" or shelf, ten feet above the surface of the water, but the many slides caused this to be abandoned, and the line was built through the hills on the eastern side of the Cut. At Miraflores it runs through the only tunnel on the Isthmus. Because of the very heavy cuts and fills, the relocation of the Panama Railroad has cost $9,000,000, or $1,000,000 more than building the original road, although the new line is about a mile shorter. It is very solidly built, with steel bridges, concrete culverts, steel telegraph poles, made of lengths of old French rails bolted together and set up on end, and embankments