The Portland daily press., 1886-06-01
THE PANAMA CANAL.
Gloomy View Taken by an American
Engineer.

New YORK, May 30.-A special to the Tri-
bune from Boston. says that A. P. Smith of
Salem, who for the last fifteen years has
lived il South America, and more recently
has been employed as an engineer by the
Panama Canal Company, has just returned
from Aspinwall. He tells an interesting
story in regard to the method of prosecuting
the work on De Lesseps' canal. He says:
During my stay in Aspinwall, thoroughly
inspected the canal, walking its entire
length of fifty-four miles. With sufficient
expenditure of life, money and time, the ca
nal will doubtless be finished; but if we fig
ure on the basis Of the work done during the
five years since the ground was broken, the
prospects Of finishing the canal in this CEN
fury are not brilliant, and getting it
done in 1889 is quite out of the question.
At present the outlook is bad. A great deal
of money is wasted. That portion Of the Ca
nal completed is at the eastern end and is
about eleven miles long. Here the country
is low and fiat, the banks rising scarcely SIX
feet on an average above high water mark.
The land is mostly of a clay formation.
Through country OF this Kind cut eighty
feet in width has already been made for
distance, as / have already stated, of eleven
miles, While forests have been cleared away
and other cuts have been at various points
along the line of the proposed canal, little
more than the eleven miles already referred TO
has been accomplished.
son every hand may be seen evidences of
mismanagement and gross extrayagances.
Money is literally thrown away and signs OF
jobs are more plentiful than mosquitoes In
July. Much of the work is let out by con-
tlact and all sorts and kinds OF people secure
the contracts. Take the matter of digging
and dredging. The American Dredging
Company has the contract of eXcavating the
lower part of the canal and for that purpose
employs about seven dredging machines and
about 1900 men, and contracts to Go the
work OF excavation for SO much per cubic
metre, providing no rocks, stumps or other
distractions are encountered. LII these are
found, the dredging company is to receive FL
per minute. Each dredging machine is pro-
yided with tower on the grain elevator
principle, and to the top Of this tower, usu-
ally from 90 to 80 feet in height, the mud is
lifted and thence dumped into chute 200
feet in length, a stream OF water also beng
pumped through the chute to help propel
the earth on its downward slide and to pre-
vent clogging.s
One of the many stupid eXpedients which
the caual company adopted for holding the
mud was to put up an ordinary wooden renee,
fastened with bamboo wlthes and stakes. VI
course in little while the pressure OF the
half-liqnid mud became too great for the
weak barrier to withstand, and down came
fence, mud and all into the canal again, to be
once more dredged out at an enormous eX-
pense.
"a yet more curious state of things exists
at places further in shore where other cuts
have been made by several different contract
ors. There have been no specifications IN
these contracts as to what shall be done with
the earth after it has been eXcayated: What
is the sresut of ehis omission? The con-
tractors simply load it on hand carts and run
it back a little way in the cut which they
have made and leave it there. The. conse-
sequence is that all this earth all these
stumps and stones, have to be eXcayated all
over again, to the immense profit of the con-
tractors.
On every hand are seen evidences of this
shittiessness, incapacity and gross eXtrava-
gance, if not of downright dishonesty. Here
Is another instance. The railroad runs close
posed canal and in the road the canal COM
pany holds the principal interests. AS 1
walked along | saw seyerei new locomotives
which had been side-tracked and allowed to
go to ruin They were built at an expense
of thosands of dollars each, and were sing
ply left here without so much as a shed or
covering of any kind for more than year.
They are now masses of rust and are worth
less. There was probably no reason for
their construction in the first place and it
looks like Job for somebody.
All along the line Of the projected cut are
piles Of iron, tons upon tons, for which there
is and can be no use Every steamer brings
it in and just as | was leaving the lstnmus
for home | noticedl that the last steamer
from France which had just arrived was
loaded down with iron. 1t is so cheap that
nearly all the barracks and houses OF the
laborers along the line are rooted with cor
rugated iron. The French contractor. under
whose supervision the work was carried on,
has been removed for extrayagance.