736 Presidential Addresses 



the Department the situation of affairs. At about 

 5.30 P.M. I again went on shore, and received notice 

 from the general superintendent of the railroad that 

 he had received the request for the transportation of 

 the troops and that they would leave on the 8 A.M. 

 train on the following day. I immediately went to 

 see the general superintendent, and learned that it 

 had just been announced that a provisional govern- 

 ment had been established at Panama that Gen- 

 erals Amaya and Tobal, the Governor of Panama, 

 and four officers, who had gone to Panama in the 

 morning, had been seized and were held as prison- 

 ers; that they had an organized force of 1,500 

 troops and wished the government troops in Colon 

 to be sent over. This I declined to permit, and 

 verbally prohibited the general superintendent 

 from giving transportation to the troops of either 

 party. 



It being then late in the evening, I sent early in 

 the morning of November 4 written notification to 

 the general superintendent of the Panama Railroad, 

 to the prefect of Colon, and to the officer left in 

 command of the Colombian troops, later ascertained 

 to be Colonel Torres, that I had prohibited the trans- 

 portation of troops in either direction, in order to 

 preserve the free and uninterrupted transit of the 

 Isthmus. Copies of these letters are hereto ap- 

 pended; also copy of my notification to the consul. 

 Except to a few people, nothing was known in Colon 

 of th,e proceedings in Panama until the arrival of 

 the train at 10.45 on tne morning of the 4th. Some 

 propositions were, I was later told, made to Colonel 



