Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1912-12-25
z=-====-=a%S@7 ---=5
LONTR GKTIN LOCK CI~ NEARING COMPLETION

it was that the French and Americana
engineers struggled against appalling
odds for years. Yea, cannot realized
that out of this single stretch of thel
canal 90,000,00O cubic yards of earthl
have been dug and that another 10-
100000 will be taken out before the
canal is pronounced complete. Butt
begin your day with climb down the
long flank of an earth slide" to the|
bottom of the cut. and then try tol
scramble out again. If you succeed
in either of these ventures, you will
have found at least one way of CON-
ing to an appreciation of its stipend
GUS proportion, and what the digging
Of Culebra cut meant to the men who
have almost finished digging it.
Down in Culebra cut, where giraffe
like drills are boring into the bed
rock of the isthmus, and long dirt
trains are Gathering away with what
remains of the foundations of Mount
Culebra and Gold Hill, one is literally
overwhelmed by the magnitude Of
this, the canal-diggers' greatest aC-
complishment. At the bottom Of the
cut you gaze toward the crest of Gold
HILL towering into the sky, thou
sand feet above. UP there, where
Balboa is said to have climbed to see
both the oceans, the tall palm trees
are bending to the breeze, but here
the workers are sweltering in the dead
heat of the midday sun, far down in
the foundations of the earth
At the Bottom Of the Cut.
If you go down to the Panama canal
this winter, go down into Culebra cut.
Try there to make yourself heard
against the din of the steam hammers
and drills; against the incessant dull
thunder of the dynamite blasts;
against the crunch and bite of the
steam shovel; against the scream Of
the locomotives and the crazy CHATTER
of the dirt cars. Dodge about the
labyrinth Of tracks to escape the ten
mile-an-hour onslaught Of the buster
ing engines, as they make their way
toward the sea, hauling their strings
of laden cars; get close beneath one
of those long-armed steam shoyels
which swings its tons of rock and dirt
in every direction with such seeming
reckIessness. At last lose yourself
among the swarms of human ants who
are shoveling away the soft dirt that
has come down the long slope Of
Mount Culebra in one of the slides
that one so often reads about.
After all this, if you are not fairly
staggered at the immensely of the
accomplishment of our engineers, then
you are of stuff less impressionable
than the isthmian rocks. For Culeora
cut is the masterpiece of the $4OO,OOO,'
600 canal job; its completion will rep
resent the ultimate fulf1lment OF th6
work. The locks and gates at Gatun'
Mirafores, and Pedro Miguel are Won
derful, In that they represent the
largest of their, kind in the world
So also is the Gatun dam, which mas
made possible the impounding OF the
dirty Chagres riXer water in the Gatuh
lake. and which has made out OF an
entire countryside an inland sea. But
Culebra cut .transcends- them all Here
is not merely the largest thing OF us
kind. Here the Continental DIVIDE
the rocky backbone OF the Americas
has been carved through, after de1y-
ing all the efforts of the French for
twenty years. A mountain has been
hewn away.