[May 2006: Advance]: After visiting the Panama Canal, to see its worth, on the world stage, seeing it four times in four days, from the locks to the Bridge of Americas, to the lakes, etc; spending hours each day at the locks, and islands thereabouts, and talking to the Panamanians.
I wrote the following poem below, at the canal.
I was told this was the eighth wonder of the world, but then when I was in Haiti, in 1986, likewise I was told, their Citadel was the 8th Wonder of the world.
I have traveled the world over, and perhaps we have nine wonders of the world, the Panama being perhaps number 1 to 3, and the Citadel number nine, and we'd have to take one other wonder and put it into the missing category; the Panama Canal is really in a class of its own.
A wonder of the world it is Equal to 6000-plus, war ships Six pyramids by the Gaza strip.
With all its tunnels, and locks, Dams, lakes, fifty-one miles of it; Buildings, mess halls, bridges-- Structures and more structures; Spillways and much cartage; Bulldozers, trains--ten-years of it, Building: Excavations, constructions--: Like digging a big ditch, through Mountains, valleys, lakes--all All I say, all immense, immense With tons of cement and steel, Between silt and mud; and two Oceans between: obstacles One after another--yellow fever.
The Suez Canal is but a glimpse Of this immense task, in Panama; Unequal in every way, to its grandeur.
Afterwards:In building the canal, it took, ten years (by the Americans; the French, several); and cost $675-million dollars between France and America; 62,000-workers worked at any one time on the site(42,000 world die from disease, accidents, est.
); the site being 51-miles long, and ten miles wide.
There were three locks to build, a few dams, a lake or two, a mountain to blow up, and create a passageway through.
The French sold the rights to build the canal to America for $40-million dollars, after they had failed in its completion, at a cost of $300-million.
Today that price tag would be over 7-billion dollars.
It took 1600-hundred pounds of gold to pay the works each month; or 24-tons of Silver.
They had to produce five million loafs of bread, 100,000 pounds of cheese, 9-million pounds of meat, and 300,000 chickens each year to feed the hungry works.
In addition, they had to use 150,000-gallions of mosquito oil.
Its construction matter is equal to five Suez Canals.
The material taken out of the Panama Canal would be equal to six large -pyramids in Egypt.
It was an immense task, perhaps the mostperplexed since the landing on the moon; in all the history of mankind.
Note: Written in Panama, at the Canal, 5/24/06; #1360.