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Show THE PANAMA CANAL By Frederic J. Haskin -- J 1 . V. THE GATUN DAM. Tho isthmian cnnnl pro.iect naturally divides itself into two parts. At the two ends they aro simply (liCC"K P'K ditches forty-five feet drop and ;00 foot wide, which will have tho, samo surface level ns the ocean ilsoll. U tho Atlantic side this bit litch starts at deep water in Limou bay and extends ex-tends inland seven miles to Gatun. un tho Pacific side it starts at deep water and extends to Miraf lores, 11 distanco ol five miles. Prom this it wil bo seen that approximately one-fourth or tho wholo canal will be a biR soa-Jcvcl ditch. For tho remaining thirty-eiclit miles of the canal it is necessary to havo tho surface of tho water citfhty-fivo citfhty-fivo foot higher than that of tho sen-level sen-level ends of the canal in order .to get. ships 6Hfc.lv across the bic continental dii'ido at Culebra. To get this tho engineers en-gineers havo planned a great dam at Gatun, on tho Atlantic side, and two relatively smaller ones at tho racific sido. ono at Pedro Miguel, palled b.v tho Americans "Poter McGill." and ,i . .t.-. ..i "r: 'Plincn ilnillM me ouicr ai aiiiunui. - will mako a vast lake, shapeo something some-thing like a gourd, with the littlo end at Pedro Miguel, tho handle being tho Culebra cut. a Tho topography of the isthmus lends itself admirably to the plans ot the engineers. Tho Chagres river Hows more than half-way across the isthmus, along tho general lino ot tho, canal, crossing the line of the big ditch twonty-three times on its way to the aou, without the canal ever going out of its wav to meet the river. All ot these crossings will, of course, bo eliminated elimi-nated when tho dnm is completed, and with all of its windings tho Chagrps will not bo ablo to wind out of the Dig Gntun lake. . Tho Chagres flows down through d valley which gradually widens as it nears tho sea. At Gatun this valley is about a milo wide. It terminates entirely en-tirely here, the hills which torm it losing los-ing themselves in a coastal idun. it is across the valley at this point that they are building the Gatun dnm and its 'accompanying locks. This dam will be a veritable mountain of mud, moro than a mile long and a half-milo wide at tho baso. It will bo 13d feot high, ready lo disputo the passage , ot the grim old Chagres, taking from its murky mur-ky waters such toll as I'nclo Sam and the commerce of tho world may exact This toll will bo Dig cnoug 1 w mi mu largest artificial lake in the world a lako whoso water surfaoo area will bo about 165 square niilcs. Alter the Uia-gres Uia-gres and its smaller neighbors hayc filled the lako to the required height tho dam will allow the rest of the water to pass through its spillway, and on to the sea. without further interruption, inter-ruption, the only demand being that jt shall no approach tho line of the canal again. In other words, its vagrant waters will bo sentenced to the canal workhouse, and when that is filled to overflowing, they will bo invited to "lenvo town" at once by the spillway route. After we have the lake, the problem is to get ships up into it and down out of it. They cannot go over tho dam spillway like a piece of driftwood, neither can they get up into it as a fish wiggles himself up over a mill dam. Here is whero the locks come 111. They are nothing moro complex than a sort of Brobugandian marino stairway stair-way for ships to climb.. At, Gatun there are three of these gigantic steps. 1000 feet wide in tho clear. And as ships do not like to pass on a single stairwav thev have put a partition in tho middle of tho big staircase, so that they do not need to run into one another. This partition is no small boarded up affair, cither. It is of con- crcie, aim if aih.. ....w. baso and tapers up to twenty feet. Even with this big partition in tho middle of tho staircase they will not have to rub against tho wall, since they have 110 feet in tho clear. "When a ship comes in from tho Atlantic At-lantic and wants to got into tho Gatun lake, in order to make her way across tho isthmus, she will steam into the lower dock. The big water gates, will be closed behind her and water will be admitted into the lock from the. dam above through innumerable holes in the floor. When she has been' lifted to tho level of the next lock, she goes into that one and tho operation is repeated, until sho finds that she has climbed up eightv-five feet in throe steps. A ship desiring to go down has the topmost lock's gates opened and she goes into it. Thc.11 the water is allowed to flow into the next one until they have a common water level. Then the gate ahead is opened and the ship goes into this lock, where the performance is repeated until sho finds herself at sea-level sea-level again. If any one has anv doubts about tho success of the Gatun dam pro.iect, let him come down here and see what 13 being dono and how they are don g it-Doubting it-Doubting Thomas would havo behoved on less ovidoi.ee than one sees here. With that thoroughness and ntln0 to detail which has made the y cn gineors tho poors of any lot of e K'9 on earth. Colonel Goethals and Manor Sibert have indeed eliminated .HI u 0 elements of chance by "nl(;m1 proofs. For instance, thoy havo built k cross section of Gatun dam on a scalp of ono inch to the foot, using "lenUcal-ly "lenUcal-ly tho same materials that aro going into tho big dam and in the samo wa. They have put tho proportionate .itei pressure against it, and aro noting tho results. Through all this cross r.ccliou only an occasional drop ot wator conies out into tho basin thoy havo .arranged to catch it. And when a drop does come out, it is as clear as ""y wau:r that ovor passed through a nitration bed. If tho wator of tho Gatun lake is to honoycomb and oat away ,tho heart of tho Gatun dam, as critics havo prophesied, it will havo to reverse every ev-ery law of experimental engineering to do so. , rtnh nvcti lhi? n-noriinent a thorough enough one for any commercial linn in the world to accept the deductions rroin it as established facts docs not satisly tho army engineers. They havo .ir-rangod .ir-rangod a largo number of auxilia' experiments. ex-periments. In one of these thoy havo an iron cylinder, some four foot high and sorno eight inches in diameter. Jii;, to this they have put three feet ot tho earth of which thoy propose to build tho big dam. Thoy havo sub-icctod sub-icctod this to all degrees ot water pressure pres-sure up to fifty pounds to tho square iuch. Yet even with this tremendous weight of wator against it tho amount , that soons through is only an occasional drop. Of course, it naturally follows, so plainly that even the lnj-man cannot fail to 300 it, that if only an occasional occasion-al drop scops through throe foot ot tho material with a pressuro oquivalont to a head of 115 feet of water, there can bo no danger of scenago through 2000 foot of tho material under the pressuro pres-suro of a head of only eightj'-fivo feet of wator. Tho imperviousncss of tho material which is lo be used in tho dam has been proven in so many ways that no man who has seen theso proofs can doubt it. Tho critics of the dam, most of whom, by tho way, havo never boon over the ground, assert that tho earth which is to constitute the foundation of tho dam is filled with innumerable underground springs, and that it bears ao much water wa-ter as to mako it unfit for a dam sito of such proportions. Here again facts aro made to answer opinions. The sito has been delved into by dozons and dozens doz-ens of deep wells dug by the enginocrs. Thcso wells have been so located that if there were underground wells, streams and springs they would have been discovered. dis-covered. But they have never come to light. The waler which the engineers find is a negligible quantity. A hun-drod hun-drod dams have been built in the United States where there are five times as much underground water and no ono thought of aiiestioning tho sites. If tho Culebra cut is the backbone of tho canal, the Gatun dam is its most vital organ. Without that dam the canal would be out of commission for three-fourths of its length, and for the most part it would bo high and dr3 So they aro taking every possible precaution pre-caution to mako every detail of tho work perfect. Not content with digging dig-ging dozons of wells several hundred foot to ascertain just what there is below, be-low, they arc now beginning to dig a test pit. This pit is twenty feet square and Colonel Goothals has planned to send it down to solid rock some 210 feot below the surface, in order that he and his assistants may get right down into it and see for themselves just what is down there. i The Gatun dam will cover 2S8 acres at its baso and will be 135 feet high, or fifty feet higher than the surface of the wator it will bo called upon to hold in check. It will contain some 20.000.000 cubic yards of mntorial, or enough to make a mound of earth ono yard high and one j'ard across and nearly 12.000 miles long. The concrete which will bo required to build tho concrete work , of the canal would bo enough to build as many houses as would givo shelter to the entire population popula-tion of a city the size of Minneapolis. It would be largo enough to build a solid string of houses from New York, to Richmond, Ya., hy way of Washington. Washing-ton. Tho spill-wav of the Gatun dam will havo an aggregate weight of nearly 1S.000 tons. The ones at the head of the upper lock will be a sort of steel bridgo on wheels, the track for it being be-ing of twenty-six foot gunge. Each pound of water pressuro on the dam would havo to push aside sixty-three pounds of earth before it could escape. The dam will make the Gatun lake nfford deep water enough io furnish a safe riding placo for half the shipping of the world. All the sea-fighiers of tho oceans might gather there, as perhaps per-haps hundreds of them will at that eventful time, some eight or ten years hence, when, with Undo Sam as master mas-ter of ceremonies, tho Atlantic and tho Pacific shall have their wedding daj-. (Copyright, 190S. by Frederic .1. Has- Tomorrow The Panama Canal. VI Labor Situation. |
