The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1883-05-23
The Panama Canal Alleged to be Inn.
practicable.

practicable.
As the work upon the Panama Canal
progresses, or, more strictly, as time
progresses. for in reality no work has
yet been done upon the canal, it be-
comes more and more evident that the
project Is impracticable, that the French
people have been drained of millions Of
money to no purpose, and that if the
drain goes on it will be hardly less GRIM
inal than an open fraud. The engi-
neers have been engaged at Panama
since January, 1881. There have been
$26, 900, 900 already expended, not
counting the cost of the Panama Rail-
road purchase, (S17, ,00O, which
will become utterly worthless should
any canal be built. And yet after more
than two years of effort and the expend-
iture of all these millions of money the
proposed canal is still in the survey and
experiment period, no real canal work
has been done, and some of the most
important and difficult problems con-
nected with the construction have not
yet been settled, although they are the
very problems upon which success de-
pends.
A very brief review of some of these
problems will afford convincing proofs
of the impracticability of the whole
scheme. On that part of the line where
the heavy cutting will have to be done
there are six miles in which the cut will
vary from sixty to 224 feet. This
will be followed by four miles
averaging $50 feet, and this by four
miles averaging 250 feet. The great
| est depth of cut will be $50 feeti
In the absence of any diagram of such
a cut it may be described so that any
reader can compute for himself the
angle of the slope. The canal itself is
| to be seventy-two feet in width and the
| depth in some places is to be twenty
eight feet. A diagram would give an
| inverted pyramid seventy-two feet in
| width at the bottom, 426 feet in width
at the surface, and $50 feet from the
surface to the water of the canal.
| When it is remembered that slope of
forty-five degrees would give top
width of 1872 feet the abrupt descent of
the slopes in question may be imag-
ined. 1t is simply impossible that they
can stand, and it would only be ques-
ton of time how soon the canal would
be filed up. The cutting in the deepest
cuts is not through rock, but through
clay, saturated with water, which only
adds to the impossibility of the work.
Even on the Panama Road, where the
slopes are not nearly so deep or per-
pendicular, engines have been buried
and tracks and the piles on which they
are laid carried away. In that wet,
clayey soil such slopes could not stand.
| A buried steamer would be no more of
a novelty in such a chasm than a buried
1 locomotive in the Panama Railroad
cuts, and the depth of the chasm may
be imagined when the reader reflects
that these slopes rise to distance three
times higher than the masts of any
steamer that would venture through
such trap. As compared with this the
deepest cut in the heaviest work on the
Nicaragua line is but 101 feet, largely
j rock, while in the mean of the canal
the vessels would sail substantially on
the level, there being little or no slope
to the surface of the canal, and no rock.
There are other problems which two
years of investigation have not yet
settled. De Lesseps, with that same
cool audacity which led him to imagine
that he could keep the English fleet out
of the Suez Canal during the late war
has decided not to allow the tides at
Panama to have any effect, though every
engineer who has studied the subject,
including the International Commission
of Engineers, has decided that a tide
lock will be necessary, as no ship could
be managed in such current as the
tide will create in such a narrow chan
nell With the same audacity he pro-
poses to regulate the River Chagres by
dumping rock and earth into it and
forming a dam, which it is expected
wilrcontrol it when on the rampage. II
is a very lively river when it gets loose,
and last fall went up forty-two feet in
twelve hours, burying even the telegraph
lines out of sight. De Lesseps seems to
have the faith of Canute that when he
orders Nature she will obey him. 1t is
noticeable, however, that his engineers
and surveyors do not have such faith,
and that after two years of study they
have not yet settled the question Of
slopes, of tide locks, and of managing
one of the most unruly rivers in the
world.
The only things which seem to be
settled are that, after more than two
years since the engineers and surveyors
commenced operations, not a foot OF
the canal has been built, $43, 500, ,00C
have been spent and $4,000, 900 more
are Immediately due-a sum larger than
the amount required for the complete
construction of the Nicaragua Canal,
which can be built for about S40, ,OOO,-
600. In plain words, DE Lesseps has
spent a round S4S, ,OO0, 900 to see if the
Panama Canal can be built, and those
engaged upon settling the question are
not certain yet, not having solved the
very problems which are necessary to
success. In the face of this he has made
new estimates, which far exceed the
original ones, and is preparing to call
for more subscriptions. The venal
French press is at work with him, and
is well paid for its efforts to induce the
people to subscribe to the scheme. As
they read nothing but their own papers
and know nothing of the warnings con-
veyed to them in the English papers,
! there is danger that they may be fleeced
still further by this huge canal conf
dence game. 1t is surprising that the
Government itself does not come to their
rescue or warn them that they are throw
ing away their money. 1t is a canal
which will never be built, If it were
built it would never pay anything. In
either event their money would be
wasted. 1t is, in plain English, astu-
pendous humbug. Chicago Tribune,
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