34 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



I imber was very cbeap, but the increased price 

 i)t' stumpage has been the cause of more ac- 

 i-urate and painstaking methods. 



The ' ' strip estimate ' ' is one much used at 

 this time and gives satisfactory results. I 

 will describe it briefly. 



The estimator and one (or two) assistants 

 subdivide the tract into 4-acre blocks, then a 

 lineman is started on one of the lines pre- 

 viously run, and the estimator takes a posi- 

 tion fifty-five yards inside the strip to be 

 counted, then both go forward, the estimator 

 (>ounting the trees and calling them to the 

 lineman, who tallies them, each variety being 

 kept to itself. AVTaen you have gone forward 

 one-quarter mile you will have listed all the 

 (imber on five acres, or if two linemen are 

 used, the second man keeping himself on a 

 f-traight line, as the estimator does, by means 

 of a hand compass, twice the amount can be 

 counted in the same length strip. Now the 

 estimator by observation and actual measure- 



ments can decide on the number of board feet 

 the average tree of each class contains, and 

 by multiplying these average tree amounts by 

 the number of trees of each kind counted, you 

 have obtained as nearly as possible, without 

 actual measurement, the amount of timber on 

 the strip counted. These counted strips are 

 I hen used as a basis for estimating the bal- 

 ance of the timber, the frequency of the 

 counts being governed by the regularity of 

 the growth. 



Anotlier method, and a more accurate one, 

 is the ' ' tree to tree ' ' method, in which the 

 estimator and one assistant go to each mer- 

 chantable tree, estimate and record the 

 r.mouut it will cut in board feet, and mark 

 the tree so that it will not be taken into con- 

 sideration again. 



Calipering gives good results where the 

 woods are open, but in brushy or cane woods 

 the metliod is too costly. „ ^ Spain 



A Trip to Panama 



By J. Gibson McIlvain, Jr. 



On Friday, October 21, my father, J. Gib- 

 son McIlvain, Frank P. Miller of the Frank 

 P. Miller Paper Company of East Downing- 

 ton. Pa.; Frederick E. Sayen of the Mercer 

 Rubber Company, Hamilton Square, N. J., 

 and I sailed from New York on the steamship 

 Prince August Wilhelm, with a party of min- 

 ing engineers and their friends, on a trip to 

 Panama and the Canal zone, under the au- 

 spices of the American Institute of Mining 

 Engineers. 



We spent October 25 and 26 in Havana. 

 1 had visited this place before and was very 

 much pleased to find conditions in this city 

 considerably improved and more prosperous 

 than on my previous trips. On October 29 

 we arrived at Kingston, Jamaica, from where 

 we went to Constant Spring. We visited the 

 Castleton Gardens, fourteen miles distant. 

 These beautiful botanical gardens contain not 

 only fine specimens of trees that grow in Ja- 

 maica, but many from foreign countries. 



On Tuesday, November 1, we sailed into 

 Colon harbor, and as soon as our baggage 

 was transferred to a special train we were 

 taken across the isthmus to Ancon. After 

 spending the afternoon about the city of 

 Panama we wore ready for a week 's work go- 

 ing over the canal. 



Early next morning we started through the 

 Culebra cut by special train, stopping here 

 and there as we wished, in order that wo 

 might see the work and try to grasp its mag- 

 nitude, and to watch the different kinds of 

 machinery at work on this great undertaking. 

 The Culebra cut was started by the French, 

 and a considerable amount of dirt was re- 

 moved by them. The deepest cut at Gold 

 hill is 534 feet, at Contractor's hill 410 feet. 

 The highest point on the center line is 312 

 feet, and then it tapers off on both sides to 

 the Pedro Miguel lock on the Pacific and the 

 Gatun lake on the Atlantic side. It is about 



eight miles long, 300 feet wide on the bot- 

 tom, with a 45-foot channel. 



We next visited the Pedro Miguel lock 

 and the Milaflores locks and dam, the power 

 houses and pumping stations, where this work 

 is being carried on, and went to Balboa, 

 where we took tugboats up to the canal, al- 

 most to the Milaflores locks, and saw the 

 dredges, rock crushers and drills at work on 

 this part of the canal. 



The locks are built in pairs, so that they 

 can be operated as we do a double track rail- 

 way. They have a usable width of 110 feet 

 ;ind length of 1,000 feet. The gates will be 

 operated by electricity. There will be 12 

 locks in all, 6 on each side, requiring 46 

 gates, with 92 leaves, which will be steel 

 structures, 7 feet thick and 65 feet long, and 

 from 47 to 82 feet high, weighing 400 to 750 

 Ions each, a total of about 57,000 tons of 

 steel, the contract for which has already been 

 let. 



The Chagres river, with headwaters in tin- 

 mountains, through which the Culebra cut is 

 made, flows into the Atlantic ocean at Fort 

 Lorenzo, and the Gatun dam is put across 

 this river at Gatun. It is 9,040 feet long, 

 about one-third of a mile thick at the base, 

 300 feet at the top, and 115 feet above the 

 sea, and raises the water in the river to a 

 level 85 feet above the sea. This spreads 

 the water of the Chagres river over a big ter- 

 ritory, formiug the Gatun lake, with an area 

 nf 164 square miles. By damming up the 

 Chagres river, which has been known to raise 

 50 feet in a day when there is a freshet, this 

 river is practically turned into a lake, and 

 consequently the silt which comes down the 

 river at the present time will bo deposited in 

 the lake before it ever reaches the canal, and, 

 having such a tremendous area lo spread over, 

 the raise in time of freshet will not be very 

 great. 



To a person not familiar with the building 

 of dams, it would seem like a risky proposi- 

 tion to put up a dam which would impound 

 such a lake as the one described, but the im- 

 mense proportions of this dam and its con- 

 struction are such that there is no fear what- 

 ever that it will give any trouble. It is sim- 

 ply an immense pile of rock on each side with 

 dirt dredged into the center, and when it is 

 finished and covered with a tropical growth 

 it will look like a great big hill. 



The canal through this lake and the Cule- 

 bra cut varies from 300 feet to 1,000 feet on 

 the bottom, the most of it being from 700 

 feet to 1,000 feet wide. The distance from 

 deepwater to deepwater is 50 ^{. miles; from 

 shore to shore 40% miles. By putting in the 

 Gatun dam, which forms the Gatun lake and 

 raises the water to a heighth of 85 feet, about 

 two miles of the canal is constructed with 

 practically no digging. The dirt from the 

 Culebra cut is being used in the breakwater 

 in the Pacific ocean, which is built from near 

 Balboa to the Island of Naosi, about three 

 miles, and in the Gatun dam. 



The health conditions in the Canal zone 

 are admirable. The swamps are well drained 

 and the streets in Panama and Colon are well 

 paved and generally in good order. The 

 houses and camps for the workmen, which are 

 supplied by the government, are well con- 

 structed, open and airy, with wire screens all 

 around. The commissaries are run by the 

 government, without profit. The supplies are 

 good and moderately priced. 



About 5,000 white people, mostly Ameri- 

 cans, working on the canal, are paid on a gold 

 basis. Excluding these, the labor is mostly 

 Spanish and Jamaica negroes. They are paid 

 on a silver basis, or with money the value of 

 which is about half that of gold. 



Too much cannot be said in favor of the 

 organization of the work, for which Colonel 

 Goethals and his fellow commissioners are 

 responsible. Every gang of laborers has a 

 good man in charge, who knows what is to be 

 done and how to do it. A spirit of loyalty 

 prevails throughout and the men labor to see 

 ilie work finished, not merely to draw their 

 pay. 



The work, according to the revised estimate 

 of 1908, will cost in round numbers as fol- 

 lows: 



Engineering and construction $297,766,000 



S.anitation ' $20,0.13,000 



Administration 7,382.000 



■ 27,435,000 



French Canal Company 40,000,000 



Republic of Panama 10.000,000 



Total estimated cost of the canal. $375, 201,000 



In addition to this $3,300,000 has been spent 

 in the cities of Panama and Colon for paving, 

 water works, sewers, sanitation, etc. This 

 sum will be returned to the United States 

 treasury by water rents during the next fifty 

 years. 



The commission expects to have the canal 

 ready to be formally opened to all commerce 

 on January 1, 1915, but vessels will undoubt- 

 edly be put through the canal during the 

 early part of 1913. 



A visit to the Panama Canal, seeing the 



