The Panama CanalHaskin, Frederic J. (Frederic Jennings)
History
The Panama Canal
Haskin, Frederic J. (Frederic Jennings)
Panama Canal (Panama)
Nothing seems to have been overlooked in the plans that have been made
to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal at San Francisco. There
will be a working model of the Panama Canal, with a capacity of
handling 2,000 people every 20 minutes. A reproduction of the Grand
Canyon of Arizona will be another feature. The liberality of the
prizes offered is indicated by the fact that premiums in the
live-stock exhibits alone aggregate $175,000.
One of the greatest events of the exposition will be the rendezvous of
representative ships from the fleets of all the nations of the earth
in Hampton Roads in January and February, 1915. Their commanders will
visit Washington and be received by the President. He will return with
them to Hampton Roads and there review what promises to be the
greatest international naval display in history. After this a long
procession of fighting craft, perhaps accompanied by an equally long
procession of tourist steamers, private yachts, and ships of commerce,
will steam out of the Virginia Capes and turn their prows down the
Spanish Main to Colon. Here the canal authorities will formally
welcome the shipping world and pass its representatives through to the
Pacific, whence they will sail to San Francisco, there to participate
in the great celebration during the months which will follow. It may
be that this great procession will be headed by the U. S. S. _Oregon_,
whose trip around South America in 1898 proclaimed in tones that were
heard in every hamlet in the United States the necessity of building
the great waterway.
In addition to the great exposition at San Francisco, another will
throw open its gates during 1915--the Panama-California Exposition at
San Diego. This exposition will be held at a total outlay of, perhaps,
$20,000,000. Nearly $6,000,000 is being spent on a magnificent sea
wall. The San Diego and Arizona Railway is being built on a new and
lower grade for nearly 220 miles. About $5,000,000 will be spent in
making the exposition proper in Balboa Park. Over 11 miles of docks
and a thousand acres of reclaimed land for warehouses and factory
sites will be ready when the exposition opens on January 1, 1915. The
fair will have 30 acres of Spanish gardens. A great Indian congress
and exhibit will be held, representing every tribe of North and South
America. This exposition will in nowise interfere with the big show at
San Francisco, but will be supplemental to it.
When the Suez Canal was finished, its opening was celebrated by the
most magnificent fete of modern times, the profligate Khedive Ismail
Pasha apparently endeavoring to outdo the traditions of his Mussulman
predecessors, Haroun al Raschid and Akbar. The fete lasted for four
weeks, Cairo was decorated and illuminated as no city, of either
Occident or Orient, ever had been before. The expense of the month's
carnival was more than $21,000,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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