The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

The charge was that $200,000 to $300,000 had disappeared from the Panamanian treasury, the discovery having been made only when Obaldía took office. Goethals appears to have learned of it first on October 8, 1908, in a confidential letter from Admiral Rousseau written when Goethals was away from the Isthmus on official business. “It is said Amador gets half the loot himself,” Rousseau reported. “Not only that Amador charged up to the Panamanian Government all sorts of private entertainment, presents, etc. given President and Mrs. Roosevelt, Secretary Taft, Secretary and Mrs. Root, and also Miss Roosevelt’s wedding present. The pieces charged up are 5 to 10 times actual expenditures. Obaldía and his party are ‘mad’ all the way through and threaten to publish far and wide just what Amador has done.” But as Rousseau further explained it had been agreed to keep the story “bottled up,” out of respect to Roosevelt and his family. Nor was any official alarm expressed over the larger animosities between the two peoples. If such feelings prevailed, the consensus seemed to be, they had always prevailed, from the time the first wave of gold prospectors came ashore in 1849. And doubtless there was no quick or ready solution. To the average American at work on the canal, the aggrieved pride or “smoldering wrath” of the Panamanian (to use the words of one reporter) was of only marginal concern. There would be time enough later to resolve such difficulties. For now the work was going too...