PANAMA CANAL DELAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15407, 16 September 1913, Page 7

PANAMA CANAL DELAY.

WATERWAY BLOCKED.

BY FALLS OF EARTH.

HEAVY DREDGING NEEDED.

Times-Sydney Sun Special Cable. (Received September 15, 6.55 p.m.) New York, September 14. Advices from Panama report a new slide on the east bank of the Culebra Cut.

This indicates the beginning of a movement which may delay the opening of the canal now blocked in two places.

Several million cubic yards will require, to be dredged before the waterway is again clear.

PROPHECY BY COLONEL GOETHALS.

"By January 1, 1915, anything that floats can pass through the Panama Canal between tho Atlantic and Pacific Oceans," declared Colonel Goethals, during a recent visit to New York. " I shall send a vessel through the canal just as soon as wo get water into it," continued the chief engineer. "I promised that the Fram, used by Amundsen in discovering the South Pole, should go first, but the initial passage probably will be made by a smaller craft. In Washington several weeks ago it was understood that sometime about the end of the present American summer, or in the autumn— exact date being specified —a vessel would pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific across what is now the Isthmus of Panama. The vessel would not be the battleship Oregon, or any other famous ship, but one of the many small craft in daily use by the canal builders, and probably the only passengers would bo Colonel Goethals and the staff of American engineers, who, for the last nine years, have been carrying on the greatest engineering work the world has ever seen. It would be later than anywhere from six months to a year, perhapsbefore the formal opening of the waterway would take place, and a naval fleet, headed by the famous old Oregon, would pass through into the western ocean, and the canal fairly regarded as being open to trade.