690 Mr. A. Henry Savage Landor [June 18, 



Personally, after a careful inspection of what is being done, I 

 have confidence in the work of the American engineers. There have 

 been slides, it is true, owing to subsidence of the soil under what is 

 called the " South rock-toe." I believe that there have been five slips 

 at that point, the accumulated rock settling down for a few feet until 

 it reached an angle of repose on a harder stratum below. A great 

 deal of fuss has been made by newspapers over the last mishap, 

 which indeed is of no engineering importance. A thousand more 

 serious slips occur every year along railway embankments and roads, 

 and no one takes the slightest notice of them. 



The dam as it is being planned by the Americans is so big that 

 to my mind nothing will move it. If it does sink at all in some 

 portions owing to the instability of the substrata on which it is 

 built, it will sink before it is finished, when there will be plenty of 

 time to repair it before the lake is filled. In its entirety I do not 

 personally see how it could possibly give way, except, of course, under 

 extraordinary circumstances, such as a severe volcanic commotion, a 

 general subsidence of the entire region, or some such catastrophe. 



You are told that Panama is an earthquake region. In Panama 

 city Js the old San Domingo Church destroyed by fire. In the 

 interior of this church one can admire a curious architectural feat 

 in the shape of a flattened arch with an elongated span of 40 feet. 

 It could never have remained in its position for nearly 200 years if 

 earthquakes had been violent in the Canal zone or near it. 



The Gatun Dam when completed will follow an irregular line, 

 almost like an unfinished letter " S." The spillway will occupy almost 

 tlie centre of the dam, controlHng and conveying in a N.W. direction 

 the surplus water into the West diversion. The excavation of the 

 Spillway is nearly completed. The floor of the Spillway is to be 

 covered with concrete for its entire width of 285 feet, and for a dis- 

 tance of 960 feet north of the Spillway Dam. The thickness of the 

 floor will decrease from its maximum of 4 feet at the dam to 1 foot 

 at its northern end. Concrete is being laid at the rate of 299 cubic 

 yards a day. 



Towers for the unloading cableways were in course of construction 

 at Gatun. One set of the duplex towers had a complete cableway 

 and the main cable of the duplex line in place. One of the unloading 

 buckets had been hung. Seven of the eight towers of the Gatun 

 lock cableways had already been erected, and the eighth was nearing 

 completion. 



On the S.E. side of the dam will be the lake, at an elevation 

 of 85 feet above mean sea-level. A set of three twin locks will 

 raise ships from sea-level to the 85-foot level lake, or lower them 

 from the lake to the sea-level, as the case may be. The locks are 

 situated in the hillside, against which the eastern end of the dam is 

 solidly resting. 



In order to prepare for the two parallel sets of three locks at 



