landing, while the remains of an ancient fishing village are in evidence.

The intention of the canal engineers is to cover the banks of the canal through Culebra Cut with vegetation in order to prevent those small slides that come down through erosion. As soon as the angle of repose is reached this work of tropical forestation will begin, and when the ships of the future use the canal they will sail between banks of tropic green except at those places where the living rock defies the efforts of the forester.

I can find no more striking way to convey to my readers the meaning of the slides at Panama than by asking them to remember that at one place where the consulting engineers said the slope should be such as to give a top width 670 feet that width is now 1,800 feet; the vastness of the difficulties created by this difference can thus be somewhat appreciated.

It is a most striking thing to look back to the days of the consulting engineers, in the light of what the completion of the canal has shown, and to see how well they appreciated conditions in Culebra Cut. especially those who advocated a sea-level canal. These men were so sure that they knew what was beneath the soil of Culebra Mountain that they did not hesitate to proclaim with confidence that Culebra Cut dug to 40 feet below the sea was no problem except that of removing material.

A member of the Isthmian Canal Commission of 1899-1901 testified that it was thoroughly known exactly what materials would be encountered in the cut, and the consulting engineers, taking their cue from this, reported that the whole proposition was an easy one. Henry Hunter, chief engineer of the Manchester Ship Canal, was so sure that a sea-level Culebra Cut would present no difficulties that he announced it as his belief that such a cut could be completed long before the locks of a lock canal could be built.

The entire majority declared that it was as clearly demonstrable as anything of such a nature could be that it would be possible to use a hundred steam shovels in the cut alone, and that a sealevel cut could be finished in II years at the outside.

One engineer laughed at the idea of en

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countering any trouble from Cucaracha slide. "Why, I have tramped over it every day for months, and with my experience with such slides I know that it is only a question of proper drainage."

Never did any set of men miss a proper statement of conditions that would be encountered more widely than the majority of the board of consulting engineers. They said the banks would stand up; that there would be no slides; that a hundred steam shovels could be used in Culebra Cut; that the cut could be built to sea-level in less time than it would require to construct locks; that a sea-level cut would require the excavation of only 110 million cubic yards of earth.

The facts are that the banks failed to stand up, to the tune of 30 million cubic yards; that there have been over 250 acres of slides; that no more than 40 steam shovels ever could be worked in Culebra Cut; that locks a fourth larger than those the majority members of the board of consulting engineers had in mind were built in less time than even a lock-level cut was dug, and that a locklevel cut has required the excavation of almost as much material as they said a sea-level cut would require.

A FORTUNATE CHANGE OF PLAN

The American people may thank their stars that at such a juncture as we were facing at the time the consulting engineers made their report, there was a man in the White House and a man at the head of the War Department who dared ignore the recommendations of the majority of that board.

Had the change to a lock canal not been made we would have worked up to about the present time on a sea-level canal, digging a tremendous ditch all through that broad country from Gatun to Gamboa, 20-odd miles, building a sixmillion-dollar set of tidal locks at Sosa Hill, building a six-million-dollar masonry dam at Gamboa, and doing divers other things unnecessary to a lock canal, at a total cost of some $50.000.000, only to find, after all, just as the French discovered, that a sea-level canal could not be built within the limit of money and patience set by the people behind the project.

roughly, how much more material would have to be removed from the cut to bring it to sea-level. Not one of them would risk a prediction, but all agreed that it would be more than cross-section measurements plus the slide experience of the fiscal year 1913 would indicate.

Such a cross-section measurement would involve about 50 million cubic yards. Even if the slides were no worse than they were in 1913, the extra excavation which would be required to convert the present cut into a sea-level cut would amount to approximately 75 million cubic yards.

The probabilities, therefore, are, in the light of experience, that it would require the removal of as much more material as has been taken out to make a sea-level cut; in other words, that from the vantage point at which we stand today we might fairly conclude that a sea-level Culebra Cut would have required the excavation of 210 million cubic yards of