BATTLING WITH THE PANAMA SLIDES 



149 



landing, while the remains of an ancient 

 fishing village are in evidence. 



The intention of the canal engineers is 

 to cover the banks of the canal through 

 Culebra Cut with vegetation in order to 

 prevent those small slides that come 

 down through erosion. As soon as the 

 angle of repose is reached this work of 

 tropical forestation will begin, and when 

 the ships of the future use the canal they 

 will sail between banks of tropic green 

 except at those places where the living 

 rock defies the efforts of the forester. 



I can find no more striking way to con- 

 vey to my readers the meaning of the 

 slides at Panama than by asking them 

 to remember that at one place where the 

 consulting engineers said the slope should 

 be such as to give a top width 670 feet 

 that width is now 1,800 feet ; the vastness 

 of the difficulties created by this differ- 

 ence can thus be somewhat appreciated. 



It is a most striking thing to look back 

 to the days of the consulting engineers, 

 in the light of what the completion of the 

 canal has shown, and to see how well 

 they appreciated conditions in Culebra 

 Cut, especially those who advocated a 

 sea-level canal. These men were so sure 

 that they knew what was beneath the soil 

 of Culebra Mountain that they did not 

 hesitate to proclaim with confidence that 

 Culebra Cut dug to- 40 feet below the sea 

 was no problem except that of removing 

 material. 



A member of the Isthmian Canal Com- 

 mission of 1899- 190 1 testified that it was 

 thoroughly known exactly what materials 

 would be encountered in the cut, and the 

 consulting engineers, taking their cue 

 from this, reported that the whole propo- 

 sition was an easy one. Henry Hunter, 

 chief engineer of the Manchester Ship 

 Canal, was so sure that a sea-level Cu- 

 lebra Cut would present no difficulties 

 that he announced it as his belief that 

 such a cut could be completed long before 

 the locks of a lock canal could be built. 



The entire majority declared that it 

 was as clearly demonstrable as anything 

 of such a nature could be that it would 

 be possible to use a hundred steam 

 shovels in the cut alone, and that a sea- 

 level cut could be finished in 11 years at 

 the outside. 



One engineer laughed at the idea of en- 



countering any trouble from Cucaracha 

 slide. "Why, I have tramped over it 

 every day for months, and with my ex- 

 perience with such slides I know that it 

 is only a question of proper drainage." 



Never did any set of men miss a proper 

 statement of conditions that would be 

 encountered more widely than the major- 

 ity of the board of consulting engineers. 

 They said the banks would stand up ; 

 that there would be no slides ; that a 

 hundred steam shovels could be used in 

 Culebra Cut ; that the cut could be built 

 to sea-level in less time than it would re- 

 quire to construct locks ; that a sea-level 

 cut would require the excavation of only 

 no million cubic yards of earth. 



The facts are that the banks failed to 

 stand up, to the tune of 30 million cubic 

 yards ; that there have been over 250 

 acres of slides ; that no more than 40 

 steam shovels ever could be worked in 

 Culebra Cut ; that locks a fourth larger 

 than those the majority members of the 

 board of consulting engineers had in 

 mind were built in less time than even a 

 lock-level cut was dug, and that a lock- 

 level cut has required the excavation of 

 almost as much material as they said a 

 sea-level cut would require. 



A FORTUNATE CHANGE OF PLAN 



The American people may thank their 

 stars that at such a juncture as we were 

 facing at the time the consulting engi- 

 neers made their report, there was a man 

 in the White House and a man at the 

 head of the War Department who dared 

 ignore the recommendations of the ma- 

 jority of that board. 



Had the change to a lock canal not 

 been made we would have worked up to 

 about the present time on a sea-level 

 canal, digging a tremendous ditch all 

 through that broad country from Gatun 

 to Gamboa, 20-odd miles, building a six- 

 million-dollar set of tidal locks at Sosa 

 Hill, building a six-million-dollar ma- 

 sonry dam at Gamboa, and doing divers 

 other things unnecessary to a lock canal, 

 at a total cost of some $50,000,000, only 

 to find, after all, just as the French dis- 

 covered, that a sea-level canal could not 

 be built within the limit of money and 

 patience set by the people behind the 

 project. 



