772 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 594. 



sixty-foot level. The time required, ac- 

 cording to John F. Wallace, is twelve, ten 

 and eight years, respectively. The cost 

 would be: sea-level, $230,475,725; thirty- 

 foot level, $194,213,406; sixty-foot level 

 $178,013,406. The yardage cost, 54.7 cents^ 

 is based on the following figures: Installa- 

 tion of plant, 1.5 cents ; mining, 11.2 cents 

 loading material, 11 cents; transportation 

 to dumps, 11.5 cents; dumps, 4.5 cents 

 maintenance of track, 8.4 cents; general 

 expense, 6.6 cents. From May 1, 1904, to 

 May 1, 1905, about 650,000 cubic yards 

 were excavated. The United States as- 

 sumed control May 24, 1904, so these fig- 

 ures practically represent what was accom- 

 plished during the first year of American 

 occupation. 



The enemies of the canal project are 

 legion, and to the friends of the inter- 

 oceanic waterway — which has now become 

 an accepted fact— the description I have 

 just quoted of the conditions that obtain 

 at Panama seems like a jeremiad of the 

 kind the congressional obstructionists de- 

 light in. But he who reads between the 

 lines will not find in the generally trust- , 

 worthy and unbiased account of the engi- 

 neer referred to any particular reason to 

 be discouraged about the canal. What it 

 all means is simply this: That on the first 

 of July, 1903, the United States lost the 

 greatest civil engineer our country has ever 

 produced— George Shattuck Morison, a 

 man who spared no effort to find out the 

 facts about isthmian canalization, and then 

 to lay these facts before the people in plain 

 language. Somewhere still in the 'sound- 

 ing laborhouse vast,' that 'immense and 

 brooding spirit' must be observing, with 

 something of his old, fine indignation, the 

 frenzied haste with which men and supplies 

 have of late been rushed to the isthmus, ere 

 any adequate provision has been made to 

 keep men well, and house them near their 



work. For instance, a party of engineers, 

 whose work has been of the greatest impor- 

 tance in determining the feasibility of the 

 Gamboa dam— the only alternative for the 

 practically discarded Bohio project— had 

 to wait six weeks to get their transits and 

 levels from the government storehouse. 

 Personal appeal and written protest alike 

 were unavailing. For another party, mos- 

 quito-bars were needed. No attention was 

 paid to a requisition, and finally the chief 

 of party stole them. 



Mr. Morison, who saw things in a big, 

 broad way, realized that when once the 

 Americans took over the control of the 

 canal zone, they would, with characteristic 

 American impetuosity, be in altogether too 

 much of a hurry to 'make the dirt fly,' 

 adopting the popular slogan. In his nu- 

 merous addresses delivered before scientific 

 societies — in statements made at hearings 

 before congressional committees — in short, 

 at every public or private opportunity, in 

 season or out of season — Mr. Morison dep- 

 recated haste. He insisted that we must 

 take two years to clean up the mess made 

 by the Spaniards and the French— to burn 

 the hovels, to drain the swamps, to petrolize 

 the breeding-places of the mosquito, to 

 build clean, wholesome houses for the men. 

 He went down there himself and put his 

 fingers into the dry-rot, and found there the 

 seeds of his own mortal illness. Whitewash 

 could not fool him, whether it covered the 

 walls of a-pesthouse or whether it concealed 

 some mishandling of canal affairs. A great 

 many men, since Mr. Morison died, have 

 paid tribute to his absolute honesty, and his 

 passion for exact statement based on accu- 

 rate observation. Had Morison lived, he 

 might have been able to check the tendency 

 to 'hustle,' in the scrambling ambition to 

 make dirt fly simply that the foolable part 

 of our country's population might be de- 

 ceived by a specious appearance of 'some- 



