By Albert Edwards The Fourth of a Series of Articles on the Panama Canal O' F course the biggest job of allthe original planning of the Canal -was finished long ago. There remains, however, work to be done of a magnitude which might well stagger the faith of men who had not already made much progress at removing mountains. In the two years between my visits to the Isthmus great strides have been made in all directions. But the progress is especially noticeable in that to-day the Canal is beginning to take definite shape and the uninitiated can see what it is our men are doing. In 1909 they showed me the lock sites at Gatun. It was a great hole in the ground which they had scraped out with their steam-shovels, but not nearly so impressive as the excavations they had made in other places. It took more imagination than I could muster to visualize the locks as they will look when in operation. Of To-day-1911-sixty per cent of the concrete is in place. the three steps in the flight of locks, the upper one is so near completion that one has only to imagine it full of water to see it as it will look from the rail of a passing steamer. Sailing almost due south from the Caribbean Sea, the ships will come into the Atlantic entrance between the two breakwaters we are building from Toro Point and Colon. In 1502, when Columbus sailed into this harbor, he named it Navy Bay. It was his fourth voyage, his last at tempt to find the short cut to the Indies. Now, four centuries later, we are building the passage he sought in vain, although he found the narrowest part of the Isthmus. The From the harbor entrance there is a straightaway channeleight miles to the locks. first half of it is through the bay, the last four miles between low banks covered with swampy jungle. At Gatun an immense mass of concrete masonry, eighty-five feet in height, will rise before the steamer. As she enters the approach her power will be shut off and ropes run ashore to the electric mules which will tow her through. By a very clever mechanical device, which doubtless seems simple to Colonel Hodges and the other engineers of the locks, but which is beyond my comprehension, this towing system is so arranged that, while the ship will progress at a rate of five miles an hour, there will be no momentum-or at least so little that she can be stopped in a few inches. I have a very distinct recollection of something in sophomore physics about there being no movement without momentum. But, be that as it may, several lock gates in various canals in other parts of the world have been smashed by ships which, once started, refused to stop. It was blamed on momentum. So some of our engineers sat up late several nights and contrived this device, which makes momentum one with Cæsar and the snows of yester year. As soon as the ship has entered the lock and the gates are THE LIGHTHOUSE WHERE THE BREAKWATERS BEGIN closed behind her the water alongside will begin to bubble. It is the inflow from the great lake above. There are conduits running down through the solid concrete center and side wallsconduits as big as the Californian redwood trees which make a horse and wagon look so small in comparison. The water is distributed by a lot of smaller conduits running out under the lock chamber at right angles to the big ones and emptying upwards through the floor. When the first lock is full, the ship will be more than twenty-five feet above sealevel. The gates ahead will be opened, excavations had been made, I tried to get some idea of what 1,000 feet long, 110 feet wide, by 41 feet deep, meant. One of our engineers tried to help me out by saying that the Olympic-the largest liner yet laid down could grow 120 feet longer and still go through. But, not having seen this monster, I had no clear idea of how big she will look. Another told me to imagine a wide city street lined with eight-story buildings for three blocks. But there, on the edge of the jungle, with no building in sight more than two stories WORKING ON THE RELOCATION OF THE PANAMA RAILROAD those intelligent electric mules will tow her into the middle lock, the process will be repeated, and again in the upper lock. And when the last gate is opened, she will steam out into Gatun Lake, eighty-five feet up in the air. And while one ship is going up another in the opposite direction may be going down, for all the locks are in duplicate. It is impossible to give an adequate impression of the immense size of these locks to one who has not seen them. When I was here before, and only the high and no city street within hundreds of miles, this did not help much either. I got only a vague feeling that it was to be immense. Now you can stand on the edge of the almost completed upper lock, look down into the bottom at the busy midgets who are full-sized men, across the hundred-odd feet to the center wall, a Titanic monolith of concrete which separates the lock chamber you see from its twin, just as big, beyond, and then you can look northward towards the sea along three |