The Gatun Dam
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.
CANAL ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, PANAMA.