448 



NATURE 



[October.;, 1909 



ihem. Thesr other papers fell into two groups, viz. deep 

 water and railway communications. The problems of 

 wheat transport are (i) to bring ocean steamers to the 

 nearest possible point to the wheat fields, and (2) to handle 

 and transport the grain to the ports as efficiently as 

 possible. At present ocean-going steamers drawing not 

 more t!;an 27J feet of water can reach Montreal at all 

 tides, and this depth is being increased to 30 feet. Ships 

 drawing 14 feet of water can pass between Montreal and 

 Lake Erie by the lower Ottawa river, the Lachine and 

 Rideau canals. Lake Ontario, and the Welland canal. Erie, 

 Huron, Michigan, and Superior can be navigated by vessels 

 drawing 20 feet of water, the depth of water in the Soo 

 locks. If the depth of water in the lower Ottawa river, 

 and in the Lachine, Rideau, and Welland canals, in all of 

 which the depth is now 14 feet, could be increased to 

 22 feet, ocean steamers of, say, 7000 tons, by taking in 

 or discharging the last looo tons at Montreal, could reach 

 Lake Superior and charge or discharge cargo at Port 

 Arthur, the nearest point to Winnipeg. Thus, subject to 

 a small proportion being transhipped at Montreal, cargoes 

 could be carried in bulk by ocean steamers of the size of 

 oidinary tramps between Port Arthur, in the very heart 

 ol the continent, and any Atlantic port. 



This route, however, is open to serious objection in 

 that it lies through the Detroit River, and is liable to 

 interruption by political difficulties with the United States. 

 A new canal route which is not subject to this objection 

 has been surveyed. The scheme, which is called the 

 Georgian Bay Canal Scheme, provides for a canal between 

 Montreal and Lake Superior by way of the Ottawa River, 

 Lake Nipissing, and the Pickerel and French rivers, having 

 a minimum depth of 22 feet and locks 650 feet long, at 

 a cost of 20 millions sterling. This canal would accom- 

 modate ships of the type now used to carry ore and coal 

 between Cleveland and Lake Superior, as well as ordinarv 

 ocean-going tramp steamers. .As a set-off to the cost, the 

 water-powers that would become available are put at 

 one million horse-power, and the value of the countrv 

 that would be opened up would be verv large. It seems 

 probable that the work will be started before long. 



On this side of the subject three considerable papers 

 were read. Colonel Anderson described the navigation 

 works on the St. Lawrence up to Montreal, and showed 

 maps of all the lights and buoys, and of the dredging 

 accomplished and still to be done.' Mr. St. Laurent placed 

 ill the president's hands copies of the Government reports 

 and plans of the Georgian Bay Canal surveys, and the 

 latter read a paper to the section on the subject. In 

 addition. Major George Stephens contributed an admirable 

 paper on the St. Lawrence River as an imperial high- 

 way, and on the importance of Montreal as a central 

 port of distribution. 



The Hudson Bay route is not likely to be developed in 

 the immediate future, and little reference was made to it. 

 The Canadian Northern Railway has surveved a route to 

 Churchill, on the Hudson Bay, ' though the mouth of the 

 Nelson may ultimately be preferred, as it is said that this 

 river, draining lands far to the south, even beyond the 

 U.S. frontier, is very free from shore ice. In the future 

 Canadians look to the Nelson River being made navigable 

 up to Lake Winnipeg, and from there the Saskatchewan 

 niav carry ships to the foothills of the Rockies. 



Mr. T. E. Schwitzer, assistant chief engineer of the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway, contributed a paper on some 

 important works on that railway. The Lethbridge Viaduct 

 is an immense structure, more than a mile long and more 

 than 300 feet high, and the mode of construction was 

 strikingly bold and effective. The revision of the grades 

 in Kicking Horse Pass, involving the construction of two 

 long spiral tunnels in the rock,' was also described, and 

 the great increase obtained in the loads hauled bv a given 

 engine-power. Careful grading on lines where the heavy 

 loads of grain and other material usual in Canada are 

 hauled is of extreme importance, and much was said on 

 the cost of rail transport both in this paper and in two 

 others by Mr. Macoherson and Mr. Lanigan. Mr. Duncan 

 Macpherson described the organisation of the surveying 

 parties for the new line between Monckton and ^^'innipeg, 

 to be continued to the Pacific coast as the Grand Trunk 

 Pacific. It is this line which is interrupted near Quebec 

 NO. 2084, VOL. 81] 



by the failure of the great cantilever bridge while under 

 construction. Mr. H. W. Lanigan wrote on the organisa- 

 tion for the collection and transport of grain in the wheat 

 area. As assistant manager of freight traffic on the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway at Winnipeg he has an intimate 

 knowledge of that subject. The policy of the Canadian 

 Government is to forbid the owners of elevators to trade 

 in wheat and to restrict them to the duties of collecting 

 and despatching, much as railways are restricted to the 

 work of carriers. The Government undertakes the inspec- 

 tion and grading of the wheat, and performs this work 

 with extreme care, so that the wheat is sold by the farmer 

 and bought by the ultimate purchaser strictly by grade, 

 not by sample. That is to say, the quality of the wheat 

 having been determined by the Government inspector, the 

 price paid per bushel is the current price for that quality. 

 The system is too complex for more than reference here, 

 but the advantage both to farmer and purchaser of an 

 authoritative determination of quafity is obvious. 



Besides the papers we have referred to, which are all 

 mainly of Canadian interest, three electrical papers were 

 contributed by Prof. Marchant, Prof. Thornton, and Mr. 

 E. A. Watson respectively, all dealing with three-phase 

 transmission lines. Other papers were by Sir John 

 Thornycroft, on skimming boats; by Colonel Ruttan, the 

 city engineer of Winnipeg, on the high-pressure water 

 plant of the city ; by Mr. C. B. Smith, on a new hydro- 

 electric power plant now being erected bv the city authori- 

 ties ; by Mr. C. E. Larard, on torsional tests on materials — 

 a very elaborate and detailed paper; by Prof. Coker, on 

 an optical method of exhibiting strain ; by Mr. Dugald 

 Clerk, on the work of the gaseous explosions committee ; 

 and by Prof. Foster, on a systematic examination of the 

 properties of the different coals of Canada now being 

 carried out at McGill University. We have left to the 

 last a paper on the Panama Canal by Colonel Goethals 

 and Sir William White's address. Colonel Goethals is 

 engineer-in-chief and president of the Isthmian Canal 

 Commission. The paper was a long one, and very fully 

 illustrated by lantern-slides. Colonel Goethals himself was 

 unable to come to Winnipeg to deliver it, but Lieut. 

 Goethals, of the United States .'\rmy, who has been 

 engaged on the canal under his father, gave an account of 

 it and exhibited the illustrations. It will be remembered 

 that the failure of the French operations was largely due 

 to two causes, one of which was the excessive mortality 

 among the labourers and staff from tropical fevers, and 

 the other the violent floods of the Chagres river. Since 

 that time the cause of tropical fevers has been traced to 

 the mosquito, and the .American engineers, with character- 

 istic thoroughness, have extirpated the mosquito over the 

 whole of the canal zone, thereby bringing the rate of 

 mortality to the figure of a well-organised town in a 

 temperate cfimate. The measures which have enabled them 

 to do this are of extraordinary interest, and the results are 

 almost romantic. The engineering difficulties, which were 

 mainly the floods of the Chagres, mentioned above, and 

 the enormous excavation of the Culebra ridge, have been 

 met by a design which promises to be quite successful. 

 The Culebra ridge is much nearer to the Pacific than to 

 the -Atlantic shore, and deep valleys run down from the 

 divide to the Caribbean Sea, one of which carries the 

 Chagres river. .Across this an im.mense earthwork dam, 

 the Gatun dam, is being constructed, forming a great lake 

 160 square miles in area in the centre of the isthmus. 

 The floods of the Chagres and of the other rivers, ' its 

 tributaries, flowing down these mountain valleys, can dis-. 

 charge themselves into this large body of water without 

 doing any damage to the canal works, however violent 

 the floods may be. The level of the water in the lake 

 is regulated by a spillway, built in a natural hill which 

 forms part of the Gatun dam, discharging below the dam 

 into the old bed of the Chagres. The surface of the lake 

 is 85 feet above the mean sea-level, and is reached by 

 three locks on each side. The lake is amply sufficient to 

 provide the necessary water for lockage and waste during 

 the dry seasons. Lastly, this high summit-level has re- 

 duced very largely the necessary amount of excavation in 

 the Culebra cut. Even then, however, this amounted to 

 i.io million cubic yards. Besides photographic views of 

 the works and machinery, there were exhibited copies of 



