Old French Machinery
One of the most interesting things the traveler upon the Isthmus will see is the mass of discarded French machinery piled all along the line of operations. No doubt the French used the best machinery that could be obtained at that time, but that was thirty years ago, and the progress of the world, particularly in the use of labor-saving machinery, is nowhere more thoroughly demonstrated than on the Isthmus of Panama by a comparison of the old French machinery with that assembled by the American engineers. There are piles of French locomotives that today are absolutely worthless, not because the machinery itself is defective, but because of their feeble power. At the town of Empire there are forty-five French engines piled in one heap that cannot be used by the Canal Commission. In fact, they are of such little power that they would hardly be used by a street contractor on a city job in the United States.
Upper Picture—Gatun Lower Locks.
Lower Picture—Huge Traveling Crane Used in Construction Work.
In direct contrast to these are the splendid engines sent to the Isthmus by the commission—200 locomotives, not of the largest, but about of the medium size one sees on the American railways; 2000 splendidly constructed steel dump cars for the hauling of rock and debris; 300 air-compressed drills for boring into the rocks in blasting operations; 125 steam shovels of 75, 90 and 125 tons capacity; apparatus and machinery for the moving of railroad tracks, so effective that a railroad track can be slung 10 or 12 feet to one side or the other, laid down and spiked almost as fast as a man can walk; great steel plows that are pulled across strings of gravel cars, plowing the gravel or debris off the cars on one side so rapidly that a long train of 25 or 30 cars can be unloaded in a few minutes. The stationary machinery is of the best quality that genius and money can construct, and so effective have been these means of labor saving that the work has been accelerated from time to time until it is now a realized fact that the canal will be actually constructed a year and a half ahead of time.
When the Canal Commission first began their work after the completion and the adoption of their plans, it was estimated that 110,000,000 cubic yards of debris must be excavated from the canal prism. This debris must be taken and deposited at some place so remote that it could never wash back into the canal by the rains and floods. The debris taken from the cuts on the high lands could not be used in the structure of the Gatun dam, as it would be too liable to percolation.