PANAMA CANAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 629, 20 December 1913, Page 3

PANAMA CANAL.

THE OPENING DELAYED. New York, Wednesday. Colonel Goethals. constructor of the Panama Canal, does not expect to declare the canal open for traffic before May. The slide is giving considerable trouble. Amundsen's Arctic exploration ship, the Fram, which was to have been the first vessel to traverse the canal, is unable to wait until the opening, and will proceed to San Francisco via the Hern. A ship entering at the northern end of the canal will nass through tidewater channel 500 feet wide to Gatun. Here is placed a huge dam, the ascent of which is to be effected by iceans of two flights of iocks. Tn each flight there will be three locks, each 100 feet long and 110 feet wide. These will give access at a height of

85 feet above sea level to a lake formed fay the impounded Water of the Charges river, and through this lake will run a broad channel 23 miles long to the entrance of the Culebra cut. Here the channel is narrowed to 300 feet for eight miles to Miguel, where the ship wili have to make a descent of 30 feet to a dam with two locks. A little further on, the dam at Miraflore3, there are twin flights of locks, two locks of each flight, and when these have been passed the ship is once again at sea level. From here a wide channel p.ight miles long leads to the Pacific. One of the engineering marvels of the canal construction is the Gatun dam, which "en lists the hostile Charges river as an ally, and causes it to make 23 out of 25 miles of the canal's length." It was necessary to keep the Changes in bounds because it is subiect to floods. This the French proposed to effect by erecting their dam high up in 'the hills where the river is narrow and torrential; the Americans, on the other hand, by placing it close to the sea, where its waters are broad and the current sluggish, are not only exposing their embankments to less dangerous pressure, but are turning mosquito-breed-ing swamps into a healthy and beautiful lake. But whatever may be the structural importance of the Gatundam, it is the Culebra cut which appeals most to the popular imaginal tion. The highest point excavated on the actual line of the eight-mile channels is 312 feet above sea level, and only 85 feet less above the surface of the canal.