LOOKING INTO THE CULEBRA CUT FROM THE TOP OF A SLIDE, SHOWING THE BROKEN 



BANK 



more than could be drawn by all the 

 horses and mules in the United States. 

 It would fill a million and a half big 

 Lidgerwood cars, enough to make a string 

 12,000 miles long. These figures show 

 that the mere getting rid of this surplus 

 material is no mean job. 



But when you reflect that each yard of 

 this sliding material has rendered doubly 

 difficult the getting out of three yards of 

 other material, the true meaning of the 

 slides will begin to appear. There have 

 been times when 170 trains were going 

 out of the cut one day at the south end, 

 only to be stopped entirely the next day 

 by the Cucaracha slide getting busy. 

 Now there may be a dozen tracks in use 

 in the cut, and 24 hours later half of 

 these will be out of commission. That 

 is what makes the slides such serious 

 things to combat. 



THE GREATEST ENGINEERING WONDER OE 

 THE AGE 



It is no wonder that the lamented 

 Colonel Gaillard lost his health and his 



life fighting them. It is no wonder that 

 Colonel Goethals has aged 20 years in six 

 while struggling with them. But it is a 

 wonder, the greatest engineering wonder 

 of the age, that in spite of these difficul- 

 ties they have been able to remove 106 

 million cubic yards of material from the 

 cut in less time than it was estimated that 

 they could remove 53 million cubic yards. 

 And this wonder grows when I look at 

 their cost sheets and see them removing 

 a cubic yard for an average of 60-odd 

 cents, when it was estimated that, unhin- 

 dered by slides, the cost of removing a 

 cubic yard would be 98 cents. 



Speaking of the terrific strain involved 

 upon those who are responsible for the 

 battle with the slides at Panama, no inci- 

 dent in my life can stand out more viv- 

 idly than one I will now relate, illustrat- 

 ing the meaning of it all to the engineers. 

 Cucaracha slide resumed her old tricks 

 when I was on the Isthmus last May. 

 She had been quiescent for some time, 

 and it was believed that she had retired 

 from the fray for good and all. 



135 



