The Gatun dam is being constructed by hydraulic process through the
instrumentality of suction pumps, which suck up the slime and the
debris from the course of the Chagres river and the swamps and morass
through which the canal is being constructed. This debris and this
water are sucked up and allowed to run along the center of the dam, the
water running off and the solid matter congealing there, and by this
hydraulic process that great structure will be formed.
The traveler upon the Isthmus today, if standing upon an eminence
overlooking the cut through Culebra hill, would imagine himself on a
height overlooking an industrial city like Pittsburg. There are scenes
of such immense activity on every side that he forgets he is in a
remote part of the world far from his home, and that he is actually
standing upon an eminence in the tropics.
The development of labor-saving machinery has been so marked since the
construction of the canal was actually commenced that each month’s
work has marked an increase in the amount of debris excavated from
the canal prism. When the Government began operations in 1906, the
engineers had before them the task of excavating 110,000,000 cubic
yards. Their first month’s operations were very successful, and they
reported at the end of the month an excavation of about 250,000 cubic
yards. They estimated that if they could keep up this amount of work
through each month they could finish the canal at a certain time; but
the carping yellow newspapers and magazines of the United States and
Europe were extremely skeptical of the ability of the Canal Commission
to continue to turn out 250,000 cubic yards per month. The critics
foretold that when the rainy season came more debris would be carried
into the canal prism by floods than could be taken out by machinery
in the dry season. At times this criticism grew very irksome and
disagreeable to the commissioners. However, they kept their temper, and
continued improving their machinery, and month by month the output grew
greatly. It grew to such an enormous extent that the estimated time has
been shortened to the extent that I have formerly indicated.
[Illustration: CANAL ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, PANAMA.]