BATTLING WITH THE PANAMA SLIDES 



137 



Culebra Cut began to look like a fin- 

 ished job, with only a little hump in the 

 middle mile to be taken off. Then one 

 night, while the canal army was asleep, 

 she poured down into the south end of 

 the cut an avalanche of material that 

 filled it up to the 67-foot level, bottled up 

 the railroad exits from that end, and did 

 sundry other evil things to the plans of 

 the engineers (see page 146). 



When I heard about it I went up to 

 Culebra to talk with Colonel Goethals as 

 to its bearing on the immediate future. 

 After passing the time of day I asked 

 him how he was, to which he replied : 



"Well, about the best way I can ex- 

 press it is to say that I am 'home-sick/ 

 Cucaracha looks bad, but she is not by 

 any means the greatest of my woes. I 

 trampled over her this morning, and the 

 basalt dikes that are peeping out seem to 

 indicate that she will be 'dead' before 

 very long. But over here on this side of 

 the cut," pointing out the window of his 

 office as he spoke, "there is beginning to 

 show an indication of a new break, and 

 if the actualities prove as bad as the in- 

 dications suggest, it will outdo anything 

 we have had to contend with yet." 



And as he spoke I saw the tears well 

 up in the eyes of that man of iron, and I 

 understood what those slides were cost- 

 ing him. I knew then whence had gone 

 that buoyancy of youth which I had met 

 in 1908 and that enthusiasm of purpose 

 which I had seen in 1910. Now instead 

 there was the grim determination of a 

 veteran of a thousand conflicts, who 

 would fight on to the end only because 

 Duty's voice ever spoke louder in his ear 

 than Pleasure's. 



NO ONE COULD EORETELL TH E SLIDES 



The determined character of the slides 

 that beset the canal engineers is strik- 

 ingly shown by the amount of their ma- 

 terial that had to be removed in com- 

 parison with the total excavations for 

 each year. Prior to 1910 they presented 

 no serious obstacle, since the canal was 

 not deep enough to create the unbalanced 

 condition necessary for their develop- 

 ment. Up to that year the excavations 

 on account of slides were only 7.87 per 

 cent of the total excavations. 



During 1910, however, they became 

 more active, and seven weeks out of the 

 52 would have been required to take care 

 of the 14.83 per cent of all excavations 

 which represented the slide debris taken 

 out. In 191 1 there was a still greater 

 activity in slides, and, omitting the extra 

 difficulties they imposed, it required 13 

 weeks to take out the material they 

 brought into the cut, this material 

 amounting to 26.30 per cent of the total 

 excavations for the year. 



The succeeding year saw the cut going 

 still deeper and the slides growing larger 

 and still more bothersome, so that 34.5 

 per cent of the excavations of that year 

 were of slide material, whose removal 

 required 18 weeks. 



During the year 191 3 the cut ap- 

 proached final grade and the slides set a 

 new record, requiring 46 per cent of the 

 total excavations for the year, which 

 accounts for 24 weeks' work. 



The present year, beginning July 1, 

 1913, saw only two months required for 

 the final bottom to be reached in the cut, 

 outside of the material brought in by the 

 slides, so that at least 44 weeks of this 

 year are chargeable against the slides. 



SLIDES HAVE DELAYED THE COMPLETION 

 OE THE CUT BY 22 MONTHS 



From all this it must appear that the 

 bare work of removing the material from 

 the cut brought into it by the slides, leav- 

 ing entirely out of the reckoning the im- 

 mense handicap in the prosecution of the 

 regular work that they involved, held back 

 the completion of the cut by 22 months 

 at least. 



It is certainly reasonable to suppose 

 that all the delays the slides imposed 

 held up the work by eight months, so 

 that but for them we might have seen 

 a cut through Culebra Mountain, with a 

 bottom width of 300 feet, completed by 

 January 1, 1912, in five years; whereas 

 the most conservative estimate had set 

 down eight and a half years to make a 

 cut with a bottom width of 200 feet. As 

 a matter of fact, the amount of material 

 that was contained in the cut as origi- 

 nally planned, 53,800,000 cubic yards, 

 was removed before the end of the cal- 

 endar year 1910, or in less than four 



