The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-03-25

the two locks which enclose 1t and sup pose that they are built in the ordinary fashion. The only way of effacing the summit level pond with, such locks would be by dredging the upper reach down to the level of the bottom of the lateral reaches (that is. the two lower reaches on either side of the two Iocks), at the same time retaining a certain mass of earth close to the locks; and without changing for moment the lev |el of the upper reach in order to be al ways able to pass ever the sill Of the upper gate, which ssa vital organ Of the canal that must not be touched dur ing the transformation.
 This first operation, which; would in yolve dredging as much as twenty-two metres deepssa thing that is absolutely abnormal, would have to. be followed by another which would cal for the inter ruptioH of snaviga ation; namely. the re moval 1.-the lock gates and of the mass of earth left in contact with the Iretaining walls of each lock Ga wall un- der the upper lock gate retaining the earth of the botton of the reach).
 It will be seen then that. with the usual construction, very great difficult ties in execution are met with, and the lsuspension Of traffic cannot be avoided.
 The solution founded for this pro blem in 1887 consists merely in suppress | ing the lift wall and in terminating the. mass of the earth at the bottom of the summit level lake by slope pure and simple, the foot of which stops about Itwo;hundred metres from the upper lock gate. As the lift wall is suppressed. the lupper gate is made exactly as high as the lower gate It will be perceived that this simple arrangement permits a
 gradual and continuous deepening. | Let up suppose that the intention is to lower the level of the upper reach by means of four operations. Assuming
 the difference of level between the up per and the two lateral QoWer) reaches to be twelve metres. each operation will consist in lowering the level by three metres,
 | If three metres are dredged from the
 bottom, of the upper reach, it will be seen readily that the whole dredging can be performed without touching any vital organ of the canal. At the end of the; operation nothing will have been changed except that the draught of lwater will have been raised from ten to thirteen metres.
 At that moment a3sectionsof a water three metres thick will be allowed to flow out, the draught of the canal will
 become normal again, ten metres, and 1 the elevations of the summit level lake of the canal above sea level will be three metres lower than before the ops eration.s
 As dredging is the only operation that ! is called for within the canal itself and
 as the ranal will be wide enough to all
 low of two vessels passing each other, l the corcusion may be drawn that the presence of a .dredger will no more be in the way of a vessel in transit than will
 be the meeting with. any cruising vessel ] whatever.
 l When the operation has been per-
 formed over again four times, the upper
 reach will have been lowered success
 sively four times three metres; it will ihave disappeared then and have merged iin3the lateral Qower) reaches, The new
 summit level lake thus formed will be treated like the former one and thus lower elevations will be obtained until the leteral reaches are level with the loceans.
 Il The presence of the masonry of the locks after the elision of the first sum init level lake offers no difficulties. This artificial rock will be treated like the natural rock met in excavation; ltoSfhe system which invented and ap lplied for the first time to Kilometre 3 of the canal in 1885, and which permit ted me to render the rock perfectly dredgeable, as I described in the book published in 1892, or by crushing. ma.k- ling use of the Lobnitz ram Ca heavy lmass of steel weighing ten tons), as has lheen done generally with success.
 Must the United States pass through | the intermediates stage of a lock canal? !? lTo this question, which arises naturally,
 answer categorically, Yes.
 To be sure, the questions of time and iof the cost of conStruction, which are
 vital for a society that exists only on
 credit, are of much less weight with a powerful state.
 Nevertheless, if 1t takes fourteen iyears instead of seven to open the ca
 nal, if five hundred million francs moro lare spent immediately, these are not things ito be passed over. Humanity Iwould be deprived of an essential organ
 of commerce and of progress for con
 siderable period of time, and sum lwould be expended at the very start,
 (which might not have to be spent be-
 fore twenty-five or thirty years.
 But there are other consideration be- Isides, which, In my opinion, are much
 more important. fns the first place,
 there are the risks connected with the great trench of the Culebra, risks which lit is preferable to incur only when
 guided by the progressive experience of the excavation rather than to assume them on the vain a priori assertion of
 presurnptuous ignorance; in the second place. the sea level canal still involves unsolved problems, such that cannot be
 soved off hand without running the risk
 ofainfiicting incurable faults on the ca .f15 a..