experience of Mr. Hunter at Manchester was what, I think, had more influence upon the Board than any other one thing. Quellenec's observations about Suez all tended toward the elimination of the idea of the necessity for that tidal lock. But when Hunter, speaking for a place where they had just such a tidal oscillation and where they had a canal into which ships had to go and come, reached the conclusion that those currents might reach 5 miles an hour at extreme high water and low water-or at the time when the current was running at its extreme velocity, I should say the Board did not wish to go against such an opinion, and therefore they have included this provision and $6,000,000 for building a tide lock which enters into that estimate. If it is not necessary, so much the better, but there is $6,000,000 there for a tide lock.

I was speaking about "works of art" that were involved in the two plans and as affecting the time of completion of the canal.

The sea-level estimate carries $6,000,000 for the Gamboa dam and a part (say two-fifths) of the amount allowed for diversion dams, regulations of contributory streams, diversion channels, and embankments. This part of the $3,500,000 set aside for these objects is $1,400,000, making a total for sea-level dams, including Gamboa, of $7,400,000, while the minority allows $9,551,000 for fixed dams, embankments, etc.

If the Gamboa dam should be built wholly of concrete masonry, and if its cost should be added to the previous total for sea-level works of art, the aggregate for all such will reach $12,920,000, as against $35,209,000, or nearly three times more, and the figures for dams required for the two types will be as follows: For the sea-level canal, minus the Gamboa dam, $1,400,000; for the lock canal, $9,551,000-the latter sum nearly seven times as great as the former.

The total concrete required in the Gatun locks is said to be 1,300,000 cubic yards, a much larger quantity than has ever been placed in so limited an area; while the total mass of concrete masonry for all locks and regulating works may reach quite 3,500,000 cubic yards. The minority estimate the time required for the Gatun lock excavation at four years. There is about 4,000,000 yards to come out of that lock pit. They estimate the placement of the masonry at two and a quarter years and the installation of the gates at one and a quarter years, making a total of seven and a half years at most; while it is claimed that the Culebra excavation for the 85-foot level canal will take eight and a half years.

Considering the vast quantities of imported cement, lumber, iron, steel, and machinery required in lock construction; the fact that no sand suitable for concrete is known to exist on the Isthmus save on the sea beach at Panama-and it will take 1,500,000 yards of sand to be hauled for all those locks; that the Isthmus is from four to seven days' steaming distance from the nearest home port; that the rains will prevent outdoor work for about one-third of what we are accustomed to regard as working days; and, finally, that the Isthmus furnishes no skilled labor whatever, then the type of canal which will present fewest difficulties will be the one which calls for fewest mechanical constructions and least skilled artisans.

Eminent engineers have expressed the opinion that the feature of the lock canal that will take longest is the building of the locks, and

that the assignment of ten years to complete realization of the entire work is an irreducible minimum.

With the sea-level plan it is a matter of excavation and transportation than which there is no kind of construction work more simple; a kind of work for the doing of which improvements in tools, means and methods of transportation, and disposal may be more confidently expected than in carrying on the more advanced mechanical operations involved in building locks, lock gates, and movable

dams.

The greatest practicable speed of construction obtainable is decidedly in favor of the simple work or digging a ditch joining the oceans at one level over that of forming an elevated channel 85 feet above the oceans in six steps.

In the building of the Suez Canal, toward the close, they made an average output of 2,000,000 yards a month at Suez; and that, you know, was thirty-seven or thirty-eight years ago, with tools and machines that were antiquated-wonderfully antiquated compared with what we have now.

You have all read about the drainage of the City of Mexico, or the valley of Mexico; and you probably remember to have seen, if you went down the Mexican Central to the city, that you pass through a huge chasm that was excavated by the Spaniards hundreds of years ago. It is called the Nochistonga drainage channel. It was commenced the same year that the first white man landed at Jamestown-the very same year, 1607; and it was carried to completion. The work was done by Indians, carrying out the earth in baskets, on their heads and on their backs; and they took out 54,000,000 cubic yards of dirt out of that cut, 12 miles long and over 200 feet deep. That was finished 150 years ago. It was not adequate, and since then they have gone and bored a tunnel through the mountain, and now they have a better system.

The maximum output on the Manchester Canal during its construction, in yards, was about 10,000,000 a month. The plant was limited, and Mr. Hunter said that with a larger plant they could have gone up to 13,000,000 easily, so far as finding a place for them all to work was concerned.

There is a mine in Peru called Cerro de Pasco that was opened up by the Spaniards hundreds of years ago. It is a silver mine. The ore has been taken out entirely by the natives, without machinery, carried up ladders on their backs and on their heads. That pit at Cerro de Pasco is 600 feet deep, 3 miles long, and half a mile wide; and that has been done by human muscle entirely. Culebra is not a circumstance to it. Of course we do not think of any such processes at Culebra. We propose to make steam and water power do that work instead of the hands of men, but it is not such a colossal undertaking. There is 110,000,000 yards to come out. The lock people are going to take out 53,000,000, they say. A little more than half will remain.

Senator MORGAN. That amount of 53,000,000 is down to 85 feet? General DAVIS. In their 85-foot elevation they take out 53,000,000 yards at Culebra. We take out 110,000,000 yards at Culebra.

Senator TALIAFERRO. What did you say they took out at the lock foundations?

General DAVIS. Something less than 4,000,000 at the Gatun lock. [After examining papers.] It is 3,660,000 yards.

As to the Corinth Canal, which is only 2 miles or 2 miles longMr. Quellenec, the present chief engineer of the Suez Canal, who was a member of this Board, was the consulting engineer at the time the Corinth Canal was made. In that little, narrow, contracted space of only 2 miles they took out 2,500,000 cubic yards a year. And so these examples are found for the doing of something in reducing that Culebra Hill, which is now 165 feet high at the highest point. That is this elevation [indicating on map].

Senator MORGAN. You speak about taking out how many millions at the Gatun dam?

General DAVIS. It is 3,660,000 cubic yards in the lock pit. Oh, the Gatun dam?

Senator MORGAN. Yes.

General DAVIS. Not the dam. I mean the Gatun lock pit. If I said the dam, I did not mean it. No; I mean the lock pit at Gatun. Senator MORGAN. There is something to be taken out, though, on the site of the Gatun dam?

General DAVIS. Oh, yes; they have to strip the site of the dam, and then they have to cut out the place for the diversion channel and the sluiceway to go through that hill.

Senator MORGAN. I understand. Now, is there any estimate in the report of the minority for the amount of material that has to be taken out, not including that through the hill?

General DAVIS. I think it is not stated in yards, but I think it is stated in money. I think they estimate a certain sum of money for stripping the surface where the dam is to be placed.

Senator MORGAN. So there is an estimate?'

General DAVIS. In money; yes. I do not think it is stated in yards.

Senator MORGAN. That is all I wanted to know.

General DAVIS. I think it is all covered.

(The committee thereupon took a recess until 2.30 o'clock p. m.)

AFTERNOON SESSION.

The committee met, pursuant to the taking of recess, at 2.30 p. m.

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. GEORGE W. DAVIS, U. S. ARMY (RETIRED)-Continued.

General DAVIS. The next point brought out by the Secretary's letter is: The cost of operation and maintenance, disregarding capital invested, is in favor of the sea-level canal, but is against it if the interest on the larger investment is allowed for.

My comment upon that is this: The minority, by a French method of computation, estimate the cost of maintenance and operating their six locks and sluices, representing 170 feet of lockage, at $758,000, and the cost by the same method of computation of maintaining and operating the tide lock and sluice at about $159,000, the total lockage being less than 21 feet, or less than one-eighth that of the multilock system. Assuming that the figure assigned for the tide lock is fair and that the cost for lock operation and maintenance would be directly as the lock

age, then the cost of managing and maintaining the six locks should be $1,382,000, or if cost should be assumed to be in proportion to the number of locks, the figure for the six locks would be about $951,000.

The experience gained in the operation of the Suez Canal gives us some basis for inferring what may be the cost of some of the features of a sea-level canal at Panama. Suez is 104.8 miles long; Panama will be 49.35 miles long. The harbor at Port Said requires dredging well on toward a million cubic yards yearly. That is stated in their reports in many places. The harbor of Suez on the Red Sea requires no dredging to speak of. On the Mediterranean there is a littoral current that sweeps from the west to the east and that brings the sand along the shore, and so they built out a jetty, which is nearly 2 miles long. At first it stopped all the sand, but by and by the sand filled in between the jetty and the shore and they kept building out the jetty until they have it out now about as far as they think it prudent to go, and they have said that they can maintain the channel hereafter by dredging rather than extending the jetty farther. It takes about a million yards of dredging to keep that channel open.

Senator MORGAN. That much a year?

General DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. What do they do with the dredged material? General DAVIS. Take it out to sea and drown it. If the Board plan for Colon entrance (majority and minority) is carried out, there will be very little dredging required to maintain the same. If the proposed jetty between the mainland and islands and outer harbor of Panama is built there will be no littoral drift and very little dredging at the Pacific terminus. Therefore Panama should be spared much expense of dredging harbors.

The total annual dredging at Suez for the last three years has been 3,414,000 cubic yards in maintaining the channel, and almost 1,000,000 of this was from Port Said entrance. That is from their official reports. The remainder, say, two and a half million cubic yards, was almost all blown into the canal by the desert winds. This is illustrated by this map. This is Lake Menzaleh. That lake formerly extended quite a little distance along here [indicating on map]. There are little hills sticking up all through it. In biblical times, according to the theory of those who have studied historical matters, this country was densely populated, and along here was the site of the city of Pelusium.

Senator MORGAN. The land of Goshen?

General DAVIS. That is what it was; but now that is a salt lake, and when this canal was built that side was the same as this side [indicating on map]. But prevailing winds from the east have filled in until one side here [indicating on map] is dry land and the other side is a salt lake. When the canal was made they were the same. Panama will escape any such obstruction, but whatever silt comes into the channel must be removed. All Chagres water that comes to the canal from Lake Gamboa will be clean and limpid; no water from the Gatun, Trinidad, Cano Quebrado, Gigante, and Gigantito will ever reach the canal. Those waters will be diverted. Here are those streams on the map.

(General Davis pointed out upon the map the streams referred to.) Senator MORGAN. They are retained by dams that form lakes or General DAVIS. These three are retained by dams [indicating on

map]. The Trinidad does not come out into the canal at all; it discharges here [indicating]; it passes through the old Chagres Valley and goes through that diversion, which diversion is supposed to be crossed by the Gatun dam here [indicating], and so goes out to the sea here [indicating on map]. The Gatuncillo comes in here and takes the old French diversion channel, from which they excavated 2,500,000 cubic yards, and finds the sea here in Manzanilla Bay. That channel is open except in two short spaces; one is at Mindi and the other is opposite Monkey Hill. Those two obstructions remain, perhaps a half mile long in the aggregate, and have to be taken out. Then there will be a channel open from Gatun all the way to Manzanilla Bay 15 feet deep and 110 feet wide. Of course there is some dredging to be done.

Senator MORGAN. That channel is already dug?

General DAVIS. Except those two bulkheads.

Senator MORGAN. And paid for?

General DAVIS. And paid for. The remaining streams, some 22 in number, may possibly, a day or two at a time, at intervals of many years discharge over weirs from settling basins 29,000 second-feet of water. For three hundred days in the year those are mere brooks or are dry altogether and carry no considerable quantity of silt, for their beds are generally rocky and drain a densely vegetated terrane. It is impossible to conceive that the silt from all these little mountain brooks could exceed a half million yards annually. In other words, the annual expense for maintaining the channel depth as affected by silt from these little streams would not exceed $150,000 a year.

Bearing upon that point I would like to mention what is a fact— that the Manchester Ship Canal, which is 36 miles long and parallels the river Mersey throughout its whole extent and impinges upon the river near Manchester, receives directly into its own prism a river called the Weaver, which drains the county of Cheshire to the south of Liverpool and Birkenhead. That one stream alone, which is as muddy a stream as I ever saw, full of silt, discharges in flood into the Manchester Canal 36,000 second-feet; it does it, it is doing it every year, and that water is taken in, and of course spilled out again over a weir into the Mersey. The river Mersey carries 58,000 second-feet. Those are facts that engineers have had to deal with and have solved. They are as well known as any facts in engineering. That river Weaver alone is a very large stream in time of flood, and very muddy indeed. When I saw it it looked to me as I have often seen the upper Missouri or the Rio Grande in Texas; it looked very much the

same.

The entire expense of maintenance of the Suez, including the dredging referred to, reaches $682,000 a year for 104 miles of canal, which is at the rate of $6,560 per mile. Let it be assumed that an equal amount of work at Panama will cost $10,000 a mile, and we have for the Panama Canal, say, $500,000 per year for maintenance, independent of the tide locks, only partially used, and sluices. For this purpose $100,000 a year should suffice, or $600,000 a year for maintenance of channel depths and water-regulation lock and sluice. But it is not claimed that for a few years after the canal is opened to traffic the dredging will be so little as above stated, for the waves made by the steamers will at first to some extent scour and erode the banks and margins. This, however, will be a constantly reducing