Evening star., 1911-05-25
THE PANAMA CANAL.
digging The Ditch.
By Frederic J. Haskin.

Announcement will soon be made that
the Panama ca..al is three-fourths COM
pleted More than three-fourths of all
the dirt to be moved is already out of
the ditch. and other parts Of the work
are progressing apace AS this modern
labor of Hercules. which is literally to di-
vide the continents and unite the world.
nears the final stages of completion it is
apparent that the 5000 men who COM
pose the great canal-digging army are
determined to keep up with their records
made in the past, and to finish the work
with the colors of victory flying over the
greatest physical obstacles man has ever
set out to overcome.
Think of single landslide. with a
superficial area of forty-seven acres,
slipping foot by foot, into the canal,
Yet the canal diggers simply redouble
their determination and declare that they
will not let such a thing delay the open
ing of the canal one single hour! Think
of increasing by third the bottom
width of the canal through the great
Culebra cut without adding a single dol
lar to the previous estimate of the cost
of the work. Think of increasing the to-
tai excavations by 100000 cubic yards
equal to a ditch six feet deep and twelve
wide and nearly 700 miles long-without
That is what the Americans are doing
at Panama.
Two years ago the world was marveling
at the health conditions obtaining on the
isthmus. They compared we'll with the
healthiest spots on the map. But the
death rate has been lowered from eighteen
then to eleven now. Two years ago 1t was
costing 1l12 cents a yard to load dirt in Gu
Zebra cut; today it costs 40 cents. 4 hun
dred like instances may be cited to show
what wonderful progress there has been
at Panama
The problems of the canal naturally di-
vide themselves into two general classes
those of digging the
Problems of Canal ditch and those of
in Two Glasses. araa+ ,as 80 up ans 'n
dams. The big ditch is rapidly assuming
it's ultimate shape. and by the time Gu
Zebra cut is down to the requisite depth
there will be nothing left to do in the re-
mainder Of the channel. Already about
half Of the length of the canal Is COM
pleted and awaits only the water supply.
The interior twenty three miles Of the big
waterway, extending from the Gatun
dam to the point where the Chagres river
comes into the canal, is completed but
for a finishing touch or two during the
next dry season. Add to this the COM
pleted sections in the shoal water of Iie
Atlantic and the Pacific, and it will make
more than half of the canal finished.
Nearly a third of the ditch already is
open to navigation. The material fleet
carrying stone and sand and cement to
the Gatun locks. for many months has
been plying up and down the five-mie
section from deep water in the Atlantic
to the lower end of the Gatun lake. On
arj iny
up the canal three miles to Balboa, and
light craft five miles farther to Miraf1ores.
necessarily, night and day. dredges
keep up the work of deepening the chan
mel in from the Atlantic to Gatun and in
from the Pacific to Miraflores. AS one
sits on the Balboa steamer pier and
watches the big seagong dredges. the
large self-propelling barges and the great
tug-draWn scows passing up the channel
and out to sea again, with their night
lights of red. green and white all aglow,
he begins to realize how unreenting is
the warfare against the barriers which
The month of March witnessed high
water mark in the attack of the canal
army on the backbone of the ditch work,
which Is known as the central division,
material was taken out. There will re-
main. June 1. about 2oOOO.OOO yards
of material in the Culebra cut, out
of a total of s4.OCo0OO yards. If the
average of last year could be maintained
to the end. the cut would be completed
by November 1. 1912 But allowing an
average OF less than half as much per
month. Culebra ought to yield up it's last
shovelful Of earth in January, 1914.
\ X
When the work began the canal dig
gers faced the problem of removing 1S2-
100000 cubic
Faced Big Problem yards of dirt
When Work Began. canal 1" tbrouph ,o9
level land from Washington to New
York, big enough for the Lusitania
to be towed through, or forty feet
deep and a hundred feet wide June
they will have excavated enough
material to equal such canal from
New York to Baltimore. The canal dig |