The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-24

Copyright 1912 by Frank c. Carpenter.) Tivoli Hotel, Ancon, Canal Zone, Panama. 1HAVE come to Panama to write some
 plain, simple letters about the canal. I ! want to show you how things herc look to the man on the street, or how they would look to you if you came down to the isthmus. I am not an engineer, and Isshan turn the figures into concrete ex- anples. The amounts here are so vast that they cannot be realized in figures And, besides, figures mean nothing but dizziness to any one but the professed and scientist.
 You remember the story of the scientist who sneered at the poet who wrote:
 Every moment dies a man,
 Every moment one is born
 The scientist said: Why, that man is absolutely wrong. Every one who has looked into the latest statistics of the ,, human race knows that it is in every r one and one-third minute that man is born, and that it is in the same time thai one dies.p I am not sure as to the fractions in this statement.
 We'll in treating of the canal I shall deal only in round numbers. A cubic yard of earth is roughly ton, and a yard or eaflN anu TUCK IS DIE TWO horse wagon load. l shall reduce the amounts of rock and dirt we have taken out to ditehes, a yard wide and yard deep: and the linear length Of the ditches to miles, using 5000 feet to the mile, for /easy figures. The actual mile is 52so feet, 's but the figures of the canal are so vast that little thing like that does not matter
 What the Excavation Means
 For example, 100000 cubic yards of ex- cavation would equal ditch a yard wide yard deep, and 100000 yards or 3Oo,Ooo feet long, Now dividing by 5000 feet to the mile, our ditch would be sixty miles long, or better a ditch three feet Wide and three feet deep to any locality Just i. sixty miles from your home. A million cubic yards would be 10 times the length of 100000. It would equal such ditch 500 miles long, and l0o,000.000 would equal one 600o miles long, or twice as long as from New York to San Francisco
 But this canal deals not in millions and tens of millions only. It's figures run into the hundreds of millions The total amount of our excavation, when com pleted, will have been 195,0O0,000 cubic i. yards or, say, 200,00o,000 for easy figuring. That would equal ditch yard wide and a yard deep and 12),00o miles long, It would equal ditch big that the fat test hog ever killed at Chicago could walk through it with it's back level with the top and the ditch would be long enough to reach four times around the earth at the equator, and still leave 20,000 miles to spare It would require enough excava- tion to make 15 tunnels through the center of the earth from one side to the other and each tunnel would be big |. enough for that fat hog to crawl through. More it would equal a great column 3 feet square reaching from nere on the earth just half way to the moon. If the tunnel through the earth was increased to 10 or 1s feet square it would not hold the total excavation. and that tunnel would be large enough to drive through the biggest wagon load of hay ever haul ed by four horses.
 The above estimates will give you some Idea of the work Uncle Sam has done and is doing in lifting earth here at Panama
 At the Top of the Cansl The canal as every one now knows, IS |r 10 be a lock canal. Two ships will be dragsed up and let down by the Charges river. which is being harnessed by the