II MOUNT HOPE
Reading edition
NEAR Mount Hope, which—for the French—should be called the Slough of Despond, or the Lake of Despair, is a huge swamp about a mile or so from Colon, on the left bank of the French Canal, seen on the right of the lithograph. This swamp is now filled with all sorts of abandoned French machinery. Dredges, locomotives, and even what seem to be lock gates, show amid the palms in the distance. Huge American cranes for raising this French material—which the American engineers have made use of—and discharging cargo from the ships in the French Canal—which is here finished and in use—loom over the swamp, the banks of which are lined with piers and workshops full of life—a curious contrast to the dead swamp in which not a mosquito lives, nor a smell breathes.
