Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1915-10-27

struggle Of the ages became an &C
complished. fact "A book might b
written and not the half be tol,
about these dykes and drainage fail
ures.s In this article&I shall briefl.
refer to but one, and to that one TO
the reason it may have some bear
ing upon our prop osed canal through
the mountain range down at the
Isthmus. $sJ HI 81 a. 5: 3 q
In 1887 it was. decided to cut a.
open ditch through the mountains
which encMcle the Valley OF Mexico
an undertaking at that time OF mucf
the same magnitude as the present
attempt to dig q canal across the
Isthmus Of Panama. With the excavat
ling tools and apparatus in use near
" 300 years ago, this canal was q
gigantic task, and for fifty years
the work was carried on with unabat
ea energy. It was nearly all done
by hand, and the materials remov.
ed were all carried up a series OF
slopes on the backs of vast num-
bers of men. The deep portion OF
the cut is about II miles in length,
and in places more than 20 rods wide
at the top and 200 feet in depth I
examined several miles of the deep
est part and found that the cut had
been made through almost solid
rock, yet, notwithstanding this,
the great ditch was a failure because
IT COULD NOT BE KEPT OPEN.
III talked with an intelligent me
chanic from Panama, who: said that
well informed men at the Isthmui;s
were Of the opinion that. a deep ca
nal could never be kept open in
that country on account OF the
Tropical rain storms. 5,55
$50 an engineer proposed to
drain all the lakes into canal which
woul1 find its exit through a tun-
mel under the mountains, and his
views were approved. The work
was completed about five years ago.
The canal is about 80 miles long
"
and together they solve the problem
OF the ages, now and for all time to
come. II :.5ss. j5 (,
Can a deep canal be kept open
at Panama, or will the great rains
tear down its banks and wash in
earth and stone faster than they can
be taken out? Would 1t be practica-
BILE to dig a tunnel. large enough for
ship canal through the Il highest
section OF the proposed canal route
across the Isthmus?" 95s;
And here is the editorial from the
Scientific American referred to
above:
In spite Of the noble achievements
of the civil engineer, he is, in the
last analysis, but a child toying with
the forces Of nature. So long as
he plays the game" obedient to
her laws, nature is complaisant; but
should he break them, delay and dis
couragement, if not dire disaster,
will surely follow One Of the finest
poems ever written came, If we re-
member rightly, from the pen Of an
engineer, who describes the San
Francisco earthquake as the result
of a momentary fretfulness of Moth
Ter Earth, who, irritated at the scrat-
ching of her skin by the excavating,
boring, tunneling, and building acti-
vities of man, shook herself and
flung down whole city in ruins.
Tho dramatic imagery of the poet
was not so very, far from the truth.
It was a very slight movement OF
Mother Earth in. the endeavor to find
a more comfortable position of re-
pose that brought about the San
Francisco disaster. I;
All of us, at one time or another,
have watched a little child, wooden
spade in hand, trying to dig a path
way through a pile of dry. sand. AS
each tiny spadeful disturbed the
quiet of the mass, the sand stream
ed in to fill the void. II the little
CHAP be patient and determined and
digs until the level Of the beach is
Preached, he must do so until the
loose sand ceases to slip down the
sides: Of his cutting" and the sides
thereof have found what. engineers
term "the natural angle Of repose.
AS in the less, so in the greater.
We, children of earth, have now for
over a decade been digging path
way for our shipping through the
unstable and heterogeneous mate
rial of the Isthmus of Panama. For
the greater part this material CON
sistsi Of the mud-like deposit which
was formed at the bottom of the
sea while the Isthmus was under wa
ter. When the strip OF land which
we call Panama was raised by vol
canic action above the surface of
+bo sea the underlying molten rock
broke through in places. throwing
this marine layer out Of its stratifi,
cd orderliness into a confused jun,
BILE of hills and valleys, through
which the igneous rock here and
there boiled up and finally solicited
in place. .. .,-,...
When the canal builder came with
his dynamite and steam shovels and
proceeded resolutely to open huge