BATTLING WITH THE PANAMA SLIDES 



141 



are, more properly speaking, structural 

 breaks. 



As the big ditch neared final grade 

 the depth was so great that the down- 

 ward pressure from the top of the 

 embankment forced the weak rock at the 

 bottom to crumble, and this led to great 

 fissures in the ground back some distance 

 from the edge of the embankment. These 

 would gradually widen, and the material 

 would sweep downward and outward and 

 upward into the bottom of the canal, 

 often raising the bottom 10 to 20 feet 

 higher than it was a few hours before. 



The great slide on the west bank at 

 Culebra, covering some 75 acres of 

 ground and involving millions of cubic 

 yards of material, is the best example of 

 this kind of slide. Nearly half of all the 

 sliding material on the canal strip was 

 embraced in this great movement. 



It began in 1907, and during the more 

 than six years of its activity it required 

 the dismantling and removal of half of 

 the village of Culebra to keep out of its 

 way. Now it was the American living 

 quarters that had to go ; now it was the 

 big Y. M. C. A. club house, after being 

 shored up repeatedly in the hope of sav- 

 ing it ; now it was the penitentiary, and 

 so on. If the cut had gone much deeper 

 it might have been the very Administra- 

 tion Building itself that would have been 

 next to go. 



THE FAMOUS CUCARACHA SLIDE 



The other principal type of slide is rep- 

 resented by Cucaracha, a mass of soft 

 earth with no rock reaching down deep 

 enough or holding strong enough to keep 

 it from sliding in, slipping across a 

 smooth surface beneath it. 



Cucaracha scared out the French. It 

 is said that when they were working 

 along at her toe and she began to give 

 them a tropical imitation of a glacier 

 sliding down into a stream, they saw 

 their visions of a sea-level canal disap- 

 pearing into the realms of impossibility. 

 At any rate, they promptly quit exca- 

 vating at the bottom of Cucaracha and 

 left her as a problem for the Americans ; 

 and a problem she declared herself to 

 them back as far as 1905. 



Cucaracha has been like the poor — a 



problem always with the canal engineers. 

 Every time they got a little nearer toward 

 the final bottom of the cut, Cucaracha 

 would take a fresh slide, sometimes 

 shooting millions of yards of material 

 down the embankment and across the cut 

 with such force that her toe would turn 

 to the opposite bank, some 60 feet or 

 more (see page 146). She kept this up 

 in season and out, bottling up the south 

 end of the cut, and so preventing the 

 work from going forward that Colonel 

 Goethals finally determined to let the 

 water in and to dredge her out. He is 

 now inviting her to do her very worst. 

 He has a, dredging fleet ready to take 

 her out as fast as she comes in, and it 

 now looks as if she has slid until she can 

 slide no more (see page 148). 



Meanwhile Colonel Goethals, in keep- 

 ing with a suggestion made by Division 

 Engineer Cole, decided to attack Cuca- 

 racha in the rear. She had slid and kept 

 a-sliding until she went away back past 

 the summit of the hill, and so it was de- 

 cided to sluice off all the material that 

 would drain away from the canal. 



The plan worked well, and Cucaracha, 

 in her final struggle against the engineers, 

 finds herself beset before and behind, 

 and soon she will become a thing of the 

 past forever. But during her unremit- 

 ting fight she has shut up Culebra Cut 

 dozens of times, has brought 50 acres of 

 ground, scenery and all, into the cut, and 

 has required the removal of some eight 

 or nine million cubic yards of material. 



Fortunately the two great hills, Gold 

 Hill and Contractor's Hill, stand like 

 Gibraltars, and rear their heads proudly 

 above the majestic scene below. They 

 seem to be of solid rock wherever there 

 might be danger of slides if they were 

 not. Gold Hill is flanked by Cucaracha 

 on the south and by East Culebra slide 

 on the north, but has never given any 

 sign of wanting to join the flowing pro- 

 cession into the cut. It rises 652 feet 

 above the sea and is the highest hill in 

 the canal region. 



HOW THE MOUNTAIN CAME TO 

 MOHAMMED 



The slides have played many fantastic 

 tricks in the course of the construction 



