THE PANAMA CANAL.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5539, 20 September 1916, Page 7

THE PANAMA CANAL.

Interesting opinions, bearing on tin* recent great slide in the Panama Canal were expressed by an officer of a ship which recently arrived in Auckland, The vessel to which he had belonged had passed through the Carnal a short time before the most recent slip occurred. Rleferlring to the comparatively narrow cutting where the slides occur, lie said the proper name for it was the Gaillard Cut, and not, as is commonly called, the Culebra Cut. It was near the vilage of Culebra, on one of the banks of the Gaillard cutting, that the greatest difficulty occurred. At that part the Canal passed: between two hills, each about 200 feet higher than the water level of the Canal itself. They were composed of hard material, difficult to excavate, hut tlu; earth hafl the peculiar property that after a new fall had been exposed to the at- j mosphere for about a week, it be- j came crumbling, and slides resulted. I Always there was difficulty with sail slides. The Canal wlas a great engineering work, and the passage through it impressed every voyager who experienced it, yet despite the magnitude of the work, it was felt that there was a great task still unfinished in regard to the removal of

the hill opposite Culebra. It did not, however, present itself as an insuperable diffioultty. The danger zone was about a mile long. A new idea that had been adopted to obviate slides into the Canal had been to take away earth front the side of the hill opposite the Canal. By that

means it had been hoped to cause the slides to fall the other way in the same way that a tree would fall according to the cutting. Op* of tht' most staggering features, said the officer, was the Gatun Ltak e of lb t ' acres. Once it was a valley, but

to-day it was a great body of water, dottd with islands which usd to be the peeks which rose above the valley.