GEMS OF THE GLOBE: FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN

Midway in the fortnight of your coast-to-coast voyage comes one of the world's greatest travel experiences, the transit of the Panama Canal that cuts no less than 7,500 miles from the old sea route between the coasts of North America, the course around Cape Horn of the California gold seekers, and of many another sailor before and since their time. Whether you approach the canal from the Caribbean, westward-bound, and briefly call in early morning at the piers of Cristobal Colon, or halt at Balboa Basin on the Pacific side of the isthmus in the clear light of midday, the canal is ready to receive you. The transit falls into three principal phases: the climbing of the water staircase of the locks at either approach from the sea, the crossing of Gatun Lake, and the descent to sea level. The distance between the lock systems is 35 miles all the way at an elevation of 85 feet above sea level and through fresh water from the mountains impounded by the great Gatun Dam in which the Atlantic locks are set. The level of the lake is maintained by a control reservoir in the hills. There is magic in the trip through. In the short space of 7 hours and in 50 miles from sea to sea, you are transported from the waters and climate of one grand geographical division of the earth's surface to another. A transition that the old-time sailor beating around Cape Horn could achieve only in many weeks of weary sailing. Now let us go through the canal. There is a thrill even in the approach to the locks. The pilot banks deep in tropic growth. When your ship has entered the first lock, a great concrete chamber 1,000 feet long, water admitted through the lock floor under pressure of the great volume in the lake above, comes bubbling up to the surface and the ship begins rising at the rate of 3 feet a minute. It is a strange sensation that comes with the rising of your ship weighing 34,000 tons and you with it. When the ship has come up to the level of the water in the chamber next ahead, great gates open and she goes forward into the second lock. Here, the lifting process is repeated. In the third lock, the ship reaches the level of the lake and is prepared to proceed under her own power. Let us see here a little more of the technique of putting a big ship through the canal. Electric tractors or mules draw her forward. A central control tower is the nerve center of the locks. Electric power, and turned on from the tower, moves this great gate, each leaf weighing 450 tons. This ship is one of the Panama Pacific liners, the largest that transit the canal on regular voyages. The control board shows the operator in charge every mechanical movement in the locks. Here, a miniature gate top starts to open. And in the lock, the gate it represents moves at exactly the same pace. A safety chain across a lock has its counterpart on the control board that shows when the chain is lowered and ships may go ahead. As water rises in the lock chamber, lifting a ship, a gauge in the control tower shows its progress to the desired level. So goes the passage of the locks, though not like this. Frankly, you are looking at a bit of trick photography, as you may have guessed. But interest in the transit of the canal is not confined to the passage of the locks. Gatun Lake, 65 square miles in area, in itself is something of a marvel. Along its shores, beauty speaks with a compelling voice. Few strangers are prepared for the varied and appealing charm of its changing moods, or the wealth of growth along its banks. Exotic blooms line portions of its shores. Most striking is the tall Cortez tree, the wild corn with a mass of pale yellow blossoms. Here and there, the gaunt skeleton of a forest giant, killed when the lake was formed more than two decades ago, stands in the still backwaters. Here also, half hidden from passing eyes, are many little banana plantations on land leased by the canal authorities at $2 an acre a year. Very simple and picturesque is life on these tiny farms. The wants of the tenants, some are Indians, are few and easily satisfied. The native canoe, is shaped from a tree trunk, is their delivery wagon. And in it, they transport their crop to the nearest landing on the canal, where pickup boats gather the fruit for ships that take it north. Across Gatun Lake, the canal channel follows the old course of the Chagres River, now flooded, up which from the sea came in turn the Spanish explorer, colonist, soldier, priest, and trader, the English buccaneers bent on the sack of Old Panama, and the American gold seeker bound for California, all headed for the Cruces Trail over the mountains from the head of river navigation. Today, the ancient trail, for three centuries America's only transcontinental highway, may be seen by tourists where it is crossed by a modern road. A little waterfall splash down over the high bank into the waters of the canal, while mighty Gold Hill looks down on passing ships at the point where actually they steam through the continental divide. As a matter of course, your transit of the canal ends at a lock, where in a final setting of tropic verdure, you descend to sea level, later to go ashore for a vivid visit to Vietnam. This over, the ocean blue and the brisk trade winds again are yours for another peak of pleasant days in your voyage from coast to coast by way of Panama.