The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1916. THE PANAMA CANAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 44, 27 January 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1916. THE PANAMA CANAL.

1 lie latest blocking of the Panama Canal by serious subsidences came at a most unfortunate time, because with the great demand for cargo-carriers the saving of time which the use of the Canal would have made, is a big item. When the Canal will be re-opened for traffic the authorities seem quite unable to say. At the end of last year, in a special report to the United States Government, General Goethals, the engineer in charge, said small renewals of activities and new breaks of a minor nature occurring from time to time made anything like an accurate forecast as to the re-opening of navigation, impossible. He pointed out that the Government’s geological experts had “fallen down badly” in selecting locations for the canal. “The places they picked out as safe,” he said, “have turned out to lie the places where the worst slides have occurred.” Tile disheartening difficulties, however, which Goethals and the men associated with him are now experiencing are not by any means new or unexpected. Even in the far-back days when that line-spirited French engineer, de Lesseps, fought and was beaten again and again, similar difficulties acre con-' stantly met with and slide after slide has continued at intervals from then until the present great block. A recent report on the situation conveys the very grave fact that the movement has not been confined to the superficial clays, but has extended to the underlying volcanic rocks. The bedding of the rocks in the critical length of the cut is nearly horizontal, an i the opinion was expressed by some European

iis well as American engineers ami geologists that the sides would stand. Keen when at times durug the Intel stages of construction exoerience tended to show that this conclusion was incorrect, it was hoped that the pressure of the water in the completed canal would reduce the risk of dangerous slides. I his view found dissentients. It was pointed out by Mr \ uugher Cornish, among others, that the effect of the water might he twolold ; it would weigh down the bottom and tend to prevent upheavals, and, on the other hand, it would tend to increase the disintegration of weak seams. It

was therefore hold to ho impossible to ptcdut with any certainty whether tlie effect of letting the water in would bo beneficial or otherwise. Leading engineers are now convinced that the seriousness of the trouble docs not lie merely with slides from the cuttings made through the mountains but occurs through the pressure exercised on the canal bed hy the weight of land some distance from the actual scone of the slide. The obstruction is said to he not so much a slide as a silting up of the channel. It seems, therefore, as if a new problem lias to lie met. ft is not so much how to keep the mountains from sliding into the cut, lint to keep the earth from rising up in it. “One who has not been in the region,” says IVofessor Miller, a geological expert, “can scarcely appreciate the extent to which the slides extend, hi the Culebra Cut cracks have lorufetl more than 1300 ft. hack from the canal, ami all the ground intervening is

gradually moving towards the cut. Macadamised roads, constructed where the earth was supposed to lie stable, have been destroyed hy the movement and scores of houses have had to he moved to save them.” Engineering science must, of course eventuallv

conquer, in the sense that such an enormous expenditure has already been incurred that at any cost the work of clearing earth slides must go on, hut the intervening dislocation of trade is a serious drawback, and even when

this present great block is cleared away there is no tolling how soon another may follow.