192 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTF YEARS. 



be free to consider, with perfect freedom of mind, all 

 the advantages which the project presented. The 

 Wyse canal was to follow the thalweg of the river 

 Chagres, pass under the Cordillera by means of an 

 immense tunnel, and reach the Pacific slope by the 

 valley of Eio Grande. In the course of the discussion 

 the authors of this scheme, in obedience to the advice 

 given them, agreed to substitute for the tunnel a 

 deep cutting in the mountain, and the Mexicans, it 

 may be added, have set the example in this respect, 

 the cutting at Desague being 220 feet through, while 

 that of Panama will not exceed 290 feet. Two ob- 

 jections had struck the Technical Commission, and 

 it was, I think, very striking evidence of the advan- 

 tages which the Panama project possessed in the eyes 

 of the experienced engineers sitting upon it, that it 

 was they who urged the authors of the project to 

 overcome their objections. 



The first of these objections bore upon the sudden 

 risings of the Chagres Eiver. This river rises so 

 rapidly that it has been known to rise more than 

 twenty-five feet in a single night. The question was 

 how to get rid of the waters, the irruption of which 

 would have been dangerous in the making and work- 

 ing of the canal. M. Wyse first proposed to form a 

 vast reservoir of the overflow of these waters, in 

 immense excavations which would admit of an outflow 

 of over 330 cubic yards a second. But this did not 

 satisfy the Commission, which urged that it was no 



