Joseph Pennell's Pictures
of the Panama Canal

REPRODUCTIONS OF A SERIES OF
LITHOGRAPHS MADE BY HIM ON THE
ISTHMUS OF PANAMA, JANUARY—MARCH,
1912, TOGETHER WITH IMPRESSIONS
AND NOTES BY THE ARTIST

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1913

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY JOSEPH PENNELL

PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1912

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.

TO
J. B. BISHOP

SECRETARY OF THE ISTHMIAN
CANAL COMMISSION

WHO

MADE IT POSSIBLE
FOR ME TO DRAW
THESE LITHOGRAPHS

AND

WHO WAS ALSO GOOD
ENOUGH TO ACCEDE
TO MY REQUEST AND
READ AND CORRECT
THE PROOFS FOR ME

INTRODUCTION—MY LITHOGRAPHS OF THE PANAMA CANAL

THE idea of going to Panama to make lithographs of the Canal was mine. I suggested it, and the Century Magazine and Illustrated London News offered to print some of the drawings I might make.

Though I suggested the scheme a couple of years ago, it was not until January, 1912, that I was able to go—and then I was afraid it was too late—afraid the work was finished and that there would be nothing to see, for photographs taken a year or eighteen months before, showed some of the locks built and their gates partly in place.

Still I started, and after nearly three weeks of voyaging found, one January morning, the Isthmus of Panama ahead of the steamer, a mountainous country, showing deep valleys filled with mist, like snow fields, as I have often seen them from Montepulciano looking over Lake Thrasymene, in Italy. Beyond were higher peaks, strange yet familiar, Japanese prints, and as we came into the harbor the near hills and distant mountains were silhouetted with Japanese trees and even the houses were Japanese, and when we at length landed, the town was full of character reminiscent of Spain, yet the local character came out in the Cathedral, the tower of which—a pyramid—was covered with a shimmering, glittering mosaic of pearl oyster shells. The people, not Americans, were primitive, and the children, mostly as in Spain, were not bothered with clothes.

I followed my instinct, which took me at once to the great swamp near the town of Mount Hope, where so many of De Lesseps' plans lie buried. Here are locomotives, dredges, lock-gates, huge bulks of iron, great wheels, nameless, shapeless masses—half under water, half covered with vines—the end of a great work. I came back to Colon by the side of the French Canal, completed and working up to, I believe, Gatun Lock and Dam, and spent the afternoon in the American town, every house Japanese in feeling, French or American in construction, screened with black wire gauze, divided by white wood lines—most decorative—and all shaded by a forest of palms. Through these wandered well-made roads, and on them were walking and driving well-made Americans. There were no mosquitoes, no flies, no smells, none of the usual adjuncts of a tropical town.

At the end of the town was a