Evening star., 1915-02-19

It's usefulness is already fact.
What about the slides, then? The
slides are also a fact, and an I'M
portant one. Connecting Two oSeans ias
of impertinence on the part OF man
which nature stubbornly resents. Al
Panama she has shown her resent
ment by pouring her hills Into his
ditch almost as fast as he can dig it.
so that keeping the canal open IN ehe
great Culebra cut promises to be
task Of indefinite length. Neverine.
kept open. with the possible exception
Of short periods when the slides work
faster than the dredges. But no one
can tell how fast the slides will move.
That is why neither Gov. Goethals nor
any other man can say positively that
the canal will be free Of them on any
given date.
The battle with the slides has been
a long, discouraging one. It is this
feature that
Battle With Slides has sorely
Has Been Long One. per Of the
men who built the canal. First they
carefully calculated how many cubic
yards of earth would have to be re-
moved before Culebra cut was COM
apparently measurable. The engineers
agreed that when the sides of the
canal were excavated to a certain
angle they would cease to slide.
These movements were obviously
caused by the pressure Of the hills upon
their weakened bases, causing the earth
to slip In great pAciers down the SIDES
of the canal. Therefore. it seemed GER
&,J- $Lok 90 1A hQ QyIx
cut back, SO that the slope was not SO
steep and the pressure not so imminent,
a point must be reached in time at which
the slides would cease.
But in this one thing upon which they
all agreed 1t transpired that all Of them
were wrong. for the slides have kept on
moving at intervals no matter how much
the slope Of the banks is modified. All
their calculations have been upset.
1t is now believed that the slides will
be ultimately controlled only when the
hills have been cut away at the top to
such an extent that the pressure upon
the banks is removed. but how long this
process will take no man can safely
predict.
Meantime, however. the canal is being
kept open by constant dredging, ocean
going vessels are making daily use OF it,
and at worst only temporary stoppage
of traffic could take place. The slides
are of two sorts. One of these is mere
ly swift rush of earth. gravel and rock
down the side Of the canal, occasionally
wrecking a steam shovel, or burying a
railway track, but not of sufficient vol
ume to be serious handicap in such an
immense undertaking. The slides that
present the great problems are really
glaciers of earth. mud or clay, and sell
dom move more than three feet day.
But their volume Is tremendous, hundreds
of acres moving at one time, and their
advance is absolutely impossible to
check.
!, :.
In addition to these slides there are
what the engineers call 'breaks,' in
which strata of
Bottom of Canal soft rock are
Rises Mysteriously. the % pressure % Of
the hard layers above them and are made
TO move laterally. When such a movement
occurs below the level of excavation the
bottom of the canal is made to rise mys-
feet Men standing on the bottom of the
canal have been thus raised several yards
without being conscious of any movement
The slide which has given the greatest
amount of trouble is that known as the
Cucaracha slide. which started in the
time of French operations. Before the
canal was filled with water this slide was
over forty acres in extent. When it re-
sumed activity in 1907 its toe was
pushed across the bottom of the canal
at the rate Of fourteen feet a day, bury
ing and destroying everything in its path
and undoing the labor of months. The
keeping open of Culebra cut has, ever