PANAMA LOCK CANAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 591, 6 August 1913, Page 3

PANAMA LOCK CANAL.

GOCD FOR ONLY 20 YEARS. A bulky volume of nearly 600 pages has been published by Ivl. Phillippe Bunau-Varilla, the French engineer who, as plenipotentiary for the Republic of Panama, signed in 190.*? the famous treaty with the United States. M. Bunau-Va-illa traverses the whoie history of canal making in the isthmus, and his book is mainly devoted to showing that the [new canal is a triumph for French genius. He claims that French engineering opinion conquered by locating the canal at Panama instead of Nicaragua, and by the admission that the locks must ultimately be replaced by a sealevel canal, the "Straits of l J anama." A most interesting portion of the book is that in which the author limits the usefulness of a lock canal to the short period of twenty year?, and insists that the conversion to a sea level canal should begin immediately. M. Bunau-Varilla assume* that the rim of the lake formed by the Gatum Dam will be water tight, though he doub's this as a fact. He assumes that all the dry-year flow of the River Chagres will be brought to the Jake, though he etnphasies the possibility of water being lost in the fissures of the hills. He further supposes lhat the maximum permissable los 3of water by the opening of the locks will be such as will reduce the level in the Gatum Lake (in a dry year) from 87ft to 80ft above sealevel. Thence he tieduces that the maximum traffic which the lock canal can carry will be 48 passages per day. The tonnage represented by 4S vessels of the average size passing through Suez daily is° 60,000 : 000 tons a \ ear. The tonnage of the same number of ships passing from Lake Superior to Lake Huron would be •io.OOO.unti. He assumes that the ships in the Panama Canal will be intermedia!.? between the tonnage at S'.uz and lhat in the inland American cana!, and thus will make a total of :io,oo<i,oo(i tons. A special American commission haa estimated t ; .at the tonnage through ths canal in IVlo will be 10,500,000. In 10'?."> it will be without reckoning the traffic created by the canal itself. This created tiailic Id. [Junau-Yarilla puts ai 0,000,000 ton?, bringing the total to 22,000,000. Thus the traffic will be doubled in ten years after 1015. In the ten succeeding years the author asi-eiia the tiailic should again be doubled. Thus in ,103f>, it would be .14,000,000 tons, or very close to the carryinc r&r.acity of the canal. On these calculations and estimates the canal will have reached its limit of usefulness after tweniy years, and will have to be brought to sea level.

As an alteration would take 15 .wars at east, M. Bunau-Varia advist'9 that it be planned at once.