aid the Republic of Panama ten million dollars for the lease on the
zone through which the canal passes, and are now paying the same
government two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year to keep them
in a good humor. We bought the ground again from individual owners and
have agreed to pay Colombia twenty-five million dollars to keep her from
raising a racket. We paid the French forty million dollars for the work
they did and the machinery they left so the whole thing, lock, stock and
barrel, ought to be ours without any question.

It was published on supposedly good authority that some of the machinery
we used was purchased from Belgium, that we could not make it in
America. While visiting Mr. P. B. Banton, the chief office engineer,
some time ago I asked him about this and he said the only machinery
Belgium furnished was to the French. We tried to repair and use part of
this but it had to be discarded entirely.

We purchased two gigantic cranes to use in the work from Germany, but
one of them collapsed and both had to be rebuilt by American machinists
before they would do the work they were guaranteed to do. The only parts
used in the canal that were not made in America, according to Mr.
Banton, are some gigantic screws which were made in Sweden. It so
happened at that time that Sweden was the only country that had
machinery to make such screws, and while we could have easily
constructed such machinery, it was cheaper to get them from Sweden and
this was done. After making this statement, Mr. Banton got the drawings
and explained them, and later on I saw some of them in the Gatun-Locks.
If I remember correctly they are about eight inches in diameter and
forty or fifty feet long.

Speaking of drawings and blue prints this official said: "There are more
than eighty thousand drawings in this one room." Of course, the original
blue prints and complicated drawings of the canal are sealed up in a
great bomb-proof vault, kept dry by electricity. Although I had passed
through the canal on a ship and rode up and down it on the train it was
only after talking an hour with this engineer and then going into the
control station tower and watching boats taken through the Gatun lock
system, going into the tunnels below and watching the gigantic cog
wheels and wonderful machinery, that I began to appreciate the real
ingenuity and brain work of this colossal achievement.

On his last voyage to the new world Columbus visited Pan