The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1901-09-29
GREAT FAILURES
OF The WORLD.
MONUMENTS THAT STILL TELL or
IMMENSE ASH BEGUN AND
ABANDONED By NAN IN
MANY AGES.

AZ J" A4S
ABANDONED BY MAN IN
MANY AGES.
The world Is full Of monuments to mans
ambitions and his failure to realize them.
The Tower Of Babel was the first recordeo
instance in which the impossible was at
tempted. 1t was the only effort probably
ever made to reach the sky by means Of
structure Of stone and mortar. yet there are
scores OF equally foolish undertakings OF
which nothing now remains but masses Of
ruins. One of these is a dry ditch that
crosses Egypt from the Red Sea to the
River Nile through rock and desert.
AT various places along the route sand
storms have filled and nearly hidden it.
but In the mountains a great rayine still
shows the marks Of the copper tools Of
Pharaoh Necho's slaves who toiled there
twenty-three centuries ago. A million and
a half men dug there for half a lifetime
trying to join the waters of the Red Sea
with those Of the Nile. Then one day came
an order from the King that the work
should cease. The oracles were unfavora-
BILE. II the King finished his great pro-
ject it would. they said. be for the benefit
of his enemies. And so the biggest piece
no hAS otAt a c Z q
left unfinished and wasted.
Cost neither In money nor lives was any
consideration with the Pharaohs. But cost
OF all kinds must be narrowly estimated
by the modern engineer. The dead city
that Hes baking into ruin on the Atlantic
coast two miles north of the River San
Juan del Norte is a dismal testimony to
arithmetic go1s wrong. 1t is a worlds rec
ord of wasteS expense.
In 1880 De Lesseps fioated the Interoceanio
Canal Company. with a capital of $4,000
coo. One hundred and two thousand two
hundred and thirty shareholders eagerly
bought TIP the 590.0 90 shares. On February
work began on the great Panama Canal
and for five years 5000 men and every re-
source OF modern engineering toiled against
fever. flood and quicksands. More and
more money was raised. till sl65 coo, goo had
been poured away in the work and another
sloo.W0,0e wasted in Europe on oficiaIism
and CONCESSIONS Ten years later and De-
Lessepss work was a ruin the world
has seldom seen. And now the Nicaragua
Canal scheme has supplanted the Panama.
and the ruined city. the empty bitches and
rusting machinery, already hidden by the
quick-growing tropical creepers. are all that
remain of this record failure.
There are calculated to be 400. 90. 600
cubic feet of masonry In the great wall OF
China. which has a total length of over
2.oW miles. At present several European
companies are endeavoring to obtain from
the Chinese Government concessions to pull
down portions Of this huge fertilization for
use as building material. -
The great wall Of China IS another OF
the worlds biggest failures. Built with
splendid solidity down in the valley ana
near the coasts. the work was skimped and
left unfinished on the hilltops. and when,
IN the Thirteenth Century, tho horde, Of
Genghiz Khan swept down from the north
they found little difficulty In making theft
way through 1t into the fertile land ie
guarded so badly. For the last 100 years II
mas been a monument of uselessness. -
Inc gold seekers who first tramped.
through the forests of Alaska on their way
to the Yukon were much puzzled by COM
ing across huge belts Of clearing among
the pines. For miles and miles a vida cut
had been made through the primeyal for
est; the trunks lay where they had fallen
and their stumps still showed the mark,
of forgotten axes.
THESE men had stumbled on the remains
OF a vast but stin unfinished piece of en-.
cheering which, though half a centurv a1o
the talk of the civilized world. has nov
been forgotten almost as entirely a. r. n
had never existed. In the early fftiea. be-
fore Cyrus Field had given to the world
his project for a cable across the Atlantic
America began to fret at her isolatioa,
from other nations. Her news from Eurone
was fifteen days old before it reached New
York She made up her mind to and this
state of things and consulted England and
Russia with a view to running a telegraph
line right through British territory, Alaska.
across Behring Straits and then via Siberia
to Europe. 3
For two years gangs Of navvies and dog
ems OF engineers were employed in clearing
what was then known ss the telegraph
trail. A wide road. nearly LOO miles long.
was cut due north and south. and there
is very little doubt that the work would
have been brought to a successful conclu-.
sion had not the completion Of the first
Atlantic cable. put a stop to, one Of tho
biggest and boldest engineering enterprises
ever attempted. "a
The rage for big things possessed the
world as strongly in past times as to-day
Kings and Emperors were, however. the
only people who could afford to indulge
such c~aprices and occasionally their desires
proved too much for their engineers to
carry out. ~
The great bell Of Moscow is a good ex-.
ample. This biggett Of bells is 70 feet
high. 60 feet round the rim and weighs 1e
tons. Tho founlry for its making was
erected on the dte where II was to be.
hung, but In spite Of this precaution thu
raising Of It proved too much for the skill
Of Seventeenth Century Russia. and 1t lies
to-day on tie same spot where it has re-
posed for ne past as years. -
Little Ragtag.