Durango semi-weekly herald., 1905-03-27

work can be handled much like tha
of the Chicago drainage canal. Far
ther still You come to the mountains
and YOU are in the Culebra pass
wnere lies the great problem of tn,
work, which forms the chief subjec
of my letter.
The Culebra pass is, in fact, one o
the lowest passes OF the Andes. thos,
mighty mountains which in Souti
| America rise more than four mile.
above the sea, and which drop dowr
as they cross the isthmus on theii
way north to Join hands with oul
Rockies. In this country these noun
iains are on the average only aboul
one-third of a mile high. and here al
Culebra their highest peaks are just
about 300 feet above The sea
This height the French have cur
down $50 feet. leaving us in round
numbers 150 feet more to cut before
we reach sea level and about 200 feet
before we get TO the bottom of Uncle
Sans ditch, which will have TO be dug
forty feet below sea level TO accom-.
modate the big ships of this day. In
tion of a ditch of that kind In our
this statement | assume that W. will
have sea level canal That is the
general opinion here at Panama. al
though no one is willing to make that
statement for publication
rhls cutting at Culebra Will be on
the average eight or ten miles long
rs i. goes down. and it will be twenty.
five miles long wnen it approaches
the level of the sea. 1t is composed
of rock and earth, which Will have to
be gouged out and carried away to
let the oceans flow through. In 9TH
er letters | shall describe the problems
of the Chagres, the construction OF the
harbors and the other engineering
works now planned. They are all
however. subordinate to the big part
of the job. which is the digging out
and carrying away of this great mass
in the center of which | sit
| wish | could make you see it as IL
rises about me, the rock and earth
extending in strata of various kinds
up the sides of the mountains, with
car tracks running along the levels
and the machinery and men working
away. Here the rock is hard, there
is looks like coal and further on II
seems as soft as clay Some of She
upper levels are clay, and now and
then landslide occurs, covering both
men and machinery. An enormous
amount has been done, and the chief
engineer tells me there are yet more
than l00,0OO,000 cubic yards to be got
ten out before the canal prism can be
made. This 100000 900 cubic yards is
from the Culebra cut alone.
One hundred million cubic yards,
The figures convey nothing to minds
below those of the chief engineer or
an Isaac Newton, and doubt II even
they could tell you wnat they mean
Let us figure the matter out for our
selves. A cubic yard OF earth is a
block of earth a yard wide a yard
long and yard thick. Take a hun
dred million such blocks and suppose
them to he the sections Of ditch a
yard wide, yard deep and 100 0OO,-
900 yards long. srd you begin TO see
what tne Culebra cut means
But stop. One hundred million
yards is 300 100000 feet. That is the
length of our ditch Now in round
numbers 5000 feet make mile. and
dividing the 300 900. 900 feet by that
we have &C, 900 miles as the length OF
our di a. In cher words, If the
earth were solid the Culebra cut ex
cavation which Uncle Sam has YET
to make would equal a ditch three
feet wide and three feet deep long
enough to go two times around this
25,0O0-mile glcbe. with 10000 miles OF
ditcn TO spare. The left over would
equal tunnel three feet square
through the center OF the earth and
one-fourth the way back A grizzly
bear or a 300-pound hog could crawl
through that tunnel
Take another comparison 1t is only
100000 miles from the earth TO the
moon. That ditch. II the space be
tween were solid ground, could be
dug one-fourth of the way there with
the same labor; and, as the moon is
only 2.lO0 miles around, such a ditch
could circle that great body twenty
five times and leave plenty over for
side tracks.
But there is another big element in
the Culebra problem which makes it
enormously greater than the construo-
tion of dithc OF that kind. In our
ditch the rock and earth could be
thrown on the banks. Here it must
be not only dug and blasted out, but
It must be carried an average dis.
tance of ten or twelve miles away. A
thousand elevators could not lift II
over the nils on each side of the cut.
It could not be stored on the slopes