The rapid increase of private building operations in Panama and Colon, and in the many smaller towns along the line, has given the labourer opportunities for selling his services to a variety of employers, and for years to come there will be a large demand for skilled workmen as well. CHAPTER VI _Canal Projects: Old and New_ The transcendent egotist who declared that had he planned the universe he would have made health and not disease infectious, would also surely have included in his schemes the omission of the narrow neck of land which joins the two American continents. For ever since its discovery, the isthmus of Darien has been but an obstacle that men have wished to overcome by cutting through it a waterway to connect the two oceans which it divides. Whether Cortez ever penetrated so far south as Darien or no, certain it is that he searched diligently for a passage to the Pacific, declaring this to be the one thing above all others he was most desirous of meeting with. For the best of all reasons, the persistent attempts to discover what was called the “The Secret of the Straits” proved unsuccessful, and it remained for human energy and ingenuity to create what nature had failed to provide. As far back as the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the newly founded city of Panama was fast becoming a flourishing emporium for Pacific trade, a proposition was put forward by Angel Saavedra for a canal across the isthmus, and thirty years later Antonio Galvao was suggesting no fewer than four different canal routes. Spain was, however, jealously guarding her new colonies and any information concerning them, fearing an awakened interest on the part of other powers. To such an extent did this policy prevail that, according to one authority, the mere proposal to open up navigation between the two oceans, or to explore the River Atrato with that object, was punishable with death. The Spaniards themselves possessed neither the skill nor the perseverance to carry out such a work as the excavation of a canal, and dreaded the undertaking of such a project by some more enterprising nation. [Illustration: AN OLD CHURCH AND BUILDINGS, PANAMA.] They relied upon ignorance as a means of prevention, and appealed to the superstition of the age by declaring that the disturbing of what was a design of nature would undoubtedly result in the vengeance of Heaven on anyone attempting such a work. The reports of the gold to be found in this region attracted the buccaneers, and led to their exploring the country to no small extent. It can readily be understood that the fame of their exploits and their success in acquiring rich treasure by no means accorded with the policy of His Majesty of Spain who, in 1685, closed down, by royal decree, the gold mines on account of their being such an attraction to the pirates, inducing them to undertake the transit from the sea of the north to the sea of the south, to the prejudice of the public cause.