Joseph Pennell: Lithographs of the Panama Canal, Pt. 1

"At the Bottom of Gatun Lock"
by Joseph Pennell

From "My Lithographs of the Panama Canal" by Joseph Pennell: 

"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.  But it was not until January 1912, that I was able to go - afraid the work was finished and that there would be nothing to see. 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 the Isthmus of Panama ahead, a mountainous country with deep valleys filled with mist - like Japanese prints. Next day I started across the continent to Panama, for I learned the government headquarters were there, and, until I had seen the officials, I did not know if I should be allowed to work or even stay on the Isthmus. 

At Gatun I got off the train, and saw the tops of the locks only a few hundred yards away. From there I looked down into a yawning gulf stretching to right and left, the bottom filled with crowds of tiny men and tiny trains - all in a maze of work. Overhead, huge iron buckets flew to and fro, great cranes raised or lowered huge masses of material. As I looked, a bell rang, the men dropped their tools, and line of little figures marched away or climbed wooden stairs and iron ladders to the surface. The engines whistled, the buckets paused, everything stopped instantly, save that from the depths a long chain came quickly up, and clinging to the end of it, as Cellini would have grouped them, were a dozen men - a living design - the most decorative motive I have ever seen. For a second only they were posed, and then the huge crane swung the group to the ground and the design fell to pieces as they dropped off.

In the evening a ride of two hours took me over the thirty miles to Panama. The next morning I went to the Administration Building and presented my letters, though I did not know if I should be allowed to draw. But it seemed that everything had been arranged for me by the Commission, who, it also seemed, had been doing nothing for weeks but waiting my coming. I was clothed, fed, taken about in motor cars and steam launches, given passes on the railroad, and finally turned loose to go where I wanted and draw what I liked - and if anything happened or did not happen I was just to telephone to headquarters. 

The following day, donning my khaki and pocketing my pass and some oranges, I started for the locks at Pedro Miguel to get a drawing of the great walls that led up to the great gates, now nearly finished. I had come at exactly the right time. The walls were surmounted with great arches and buttresses - the most decorative subject, the most stupendous motive I have ever seen - almost too great to draw."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "My Lithographs of the Panama Canal" by Joseph Pennell.}