This page has been validated.
194
Panama Past and Present

true of the tool-box of the smallest switch-engine. From the top to the bottom there is neither skimping nor waste, but an efficiency like that of a Japanese army in the field.

At Pedro Miguel a ship from the Atlantic will begin the descent on the other side of the divide. The locks on the Pacific side are exactly like those at Gatun, except that instead of having all three pairs together, there is one pair here and two at Miraflores, with a little lake between. From Miraflores, the Canal is being dredged out at sea-level to its Pacific terminus at Balboa, where there will be great docks and warehouses and shipyards on land that has been made by filling in tidal marshes with dirt from the Gaillard Cut. As on the Atlantic side, the Canal will run four miles out under the sea to deep water; and to protect it from storms, a breakwater is being built from the shore to Naos Island, in the Bay of Panama. It is both strange and appropriate that the Panama Canal should have one of its entrances at this island, whose name, the Spanish word for "ship," reminds us that three hundred and fifty years ago it was the port of the city of Old Panama.