PANAMA CANAL.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 416, 27 January 1909, Page 7

PANAMA CANAL.

SEA-LEVEL CHANNEL POSSIBLE.

fa* TBLBaBAPXI—PRESS ASSOCIATION— COPrEIfIHT;

. New "York, January 25. Mr. Taft, tho . President-elect,, on tho eve of .his departure for Panama, declared that ho ; would favour a; eea-levol canal if new conditions warrant the change. •

THE GATUN DAM RUMOURS.' so maay timee ifc hM teen announced that tho 'look type of canal" has been "finally doomed on/' and the present statement of the': .President-elect that. sl "sea-lovsl canal'' may. yet be built, if. "now conditions": warrant the change, will probably give a fresh start to the i rumours of mistakes and. accidents,'particularly concerning Gatun dam.' At Gatun it is.proposed to.form a vast artificial lakeiof some 220 square miles i but 6ever.il' engineers, including JI Philippe Bunau-Varilla, have declared that suoh a struoture mil laok stability.. Some of the newspaper reports about Gatun are seri6atiGual. One states that a great subterranean take has been struck beneath the proposed site ; This wm denied by Col. Gocthals, chairman.of tho Isthmian Canal Co., though he admitted the discovery of cavernous, limestone formations" twenty, miles from the dam. Mr. Tnft visited the canal works'last year returning on May 18. Col. Goethals was reported to have estimated that ships 'would be passing through the canal on January ! 1915 iw '"rSf ? ond # ion /:, hare altered all that. The length of the canal under the present, scheme-has been given. as'49 miles, 3a of which will be through hilly country. The tota expense to the United States has - been est !, mated at exolusive of interest. That estimate is, based, of course, on the presumption that the canal .will be of the lock type