Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-12-28

excavation alone than eighty million dollars
for hundred million cubic yards OF digging
required. Much of this excavation through solid
rock railroad would have tunneled through it but
the canal had to have open cut nearly miles
long, through mountain range
The spectacle OF SIX thousand men in Culebra Cut
operating ory-our steam shoves time and send
ing hundred and seventy-five tranloads Of de-
brs single day, attracted engineering experts from
Europe and from Japan. Without exception, this
great organization of Gaillards was the perfect
ever seen where much machinery and many
involved
The cut is three hundred feet wide the bottom and
averages one hundred and twenty feet in depth. The
task of excavation vastly increased when the sides
began in To the average reader OF newspaper
cabegrans these slides merely loose dirt slipping
down the embankment but the figures Of two out OF
twenty-five slides will give accurate conception
In slide the western bank seventy-hve acres OF
earth gded off into the canal prism, and on the eastern
bank fifty did the thing Before these two
slides occurred Culebra Cut eight hundred and
forty feet wide the top, this point; after the Sides
1T was, two thousand feet wide.
1t is the eternal glory Of the army engineering
corps that it the emergency and dug out all
these unexpected with swlftness that enabled 1t
to finish the canal ahead of the specified time. The
final work of clearing the channel Of Culebra Cut was
done with dredges instead of shoves the famous
being first flooded Up to October 10 OF 1913 the
Of the Chagres had been kept of the cut BY
a huge embankment known the Ganboa dixie. On
that date, with President Wilson giving the signal by
the touch OF button four thousand miles away blast
of twenty tons OF dynamite section OF this dixie
high into the and the water rushed INTO the cut 1t
virtually completed the Big Ditch, all subsequent work
being mere matter Of detail Culebra Cut had been
conquered, and the Chagres at last tapping
against the big gates OF Pedro Miguel!
Gatun to Mirafores. 1t is impossible for for
get that made possible only by another triumph
that of Colonel Gorgas the chief sanitary officer and
his Woodworking staff Of doctors. The French canal
had been doomed by. yellow fever and Chagres fever,
by engineering difficulties and the American ditch
might also have been abandoned had it not been for the
medical science that had 50 recently proved that
two mosquitoes the greatest enemies OF all engl
neering tasks within the tropics. Providence in
mysterious way, and it not irreverent to suggest
that our war with Spain a providentia prelude
the building Of waterway that should connect the two
greatest
Had it not been for the Spanish War, the United
States army would not have been in Havana in 1900.
Because Of its presence there the doom Of yellow fever
was pronounced BY its medical corps. after Of the
dramatic experiments in the history Of scientific
medicine. The brave story of Drs. Reed, Carroll,
Lazear, and Agramonte, together with the thirteen
brave American soldiers who risked their lives sen
the blame of yellow fever the stegomyia mosquito
has been many times told Suffice it say that
when the criminal had been Enthusiastically identified it
was up American officer by the name OF Gorgas
to drive him out Of Havana And Gorgas did it with
such horoughness that yellow fever disappeared from
Havana for the first time in the memory Of man-and
it disappeared permanently.
1t was his record there that led to the selection Of
Colonel Gorgas bv President Roosevelt the very
set to be chief Of all medical work in the Canal Zone
When he arrived the isthlnus he started out to
terminate the mosquito-the anopheles which causes
malaria, well the stegomvia which brings yellow
fever-in the same erciless that he had employed
in Havana And he did it SO far as humanity pos
sibe in region that is bounded by other where
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