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Senator MORGAN. Yes. I want to know, when you have got your steel sheet piling driven in there and fastened in the walls on either side, if there is not still an element of danger in the cracking of that material and the disarrangement of the vast mass of earth that is piled upon it?

General HAINS. No, sir; I do not consider that there will be any danger from it, even though such a thing should occur. That dam is a very big one.

Senator MORGAN. You proceed now with the dam from east to west? General HAINS. Say northeast to southwest. That is about the direction.

Senator MORGAN. Well, eastwardly and westwardly?

General HAINS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. You proceed with that dam, building it from the locks across these two gulches, and the next place you come to is that island?

General HAINS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. That mountain, or

General HAINS. You mean the hill in between?

Senator MORGAN. Yes, sir.

General HAINS. That is this place here [indicating on the map]? Senator MORGAN. Yes. You have got to provide for attaching your dam to that hill in some way?

General HAINS. No, sir. It is not necessary to make any provision for that. Your dam is of earth. The dam that is proposed there is of earth, and a slight cut into the hill will give you all the means of connection that will be necessary.

Senator MORGAN. That is attaching it, as I call it.

General HAINS. Yes; well, I thought you meant in some way

Senator MORGAN. I did not mean riveting it, which would be a pretty hard thing to do. (Laughter.) I am talking about making the connection a solid one.

General HAINS. There is no trouble about that.

Senator MORGAN. The hill there is composed of material that has been there for ages and ages, and of course it has all settled together perfectly compact.

General HAINS. Yes.

Senator MORGAN. Your dam, no matter how carefully you put it in, is not quite as compact as that hill is going to be?

General HAINS. No; not quite.

Senator MORGAN. And if there is any convulsion, or any unusual pressure of water, or any other accident, we will call it a convulsion or movement that affects this dam-would it not be most likely to invade the point of contact between the dam and the hill? Would not that be the weak point in the structure-the point of contact?

General HAINS. No, sir. If there should be any opening, the earth would fall into that opening and there would be some settlement of the dam. That is all that would occur.

Senator MORGAN. That is exactly what I am expecting, that there would be a settlement of the dam.

General HAINS. That would not do any harm.

Senator MORGAN. If it produced fissures, when you had 85 feet head of water on it, a small crack might produce absolute destruction?

General HAINS. Well, if it produced a large fissure and that fissure remained open and water got running through it, yes. But I do not see how such a thing as that could occur in there.

Senator MORGAN. If you will think a moment, General, of the way the crawfish serve the levees on the Mississippi River you will find it out. A crawfish will bore a hole through one of those levees in the night, and the next morning it is a crevasse.

General HAINS. Yes; but the distance through a levee is a very different thing from the distance through that dam.

Senator MORGAN. That dam would have a very long reach; but I suppose a crack or a fissure might occur in it that would reach, say, half a mile through it, or a mile, even a small one; and would not that endanger the whole structure? You have no rock core there to resist it, nothing to resist the fissure that might be attacked by the water at 85-feet level. Suppose that fissure occurred 10 feet under the water and was half a mile long, from the settling of the dam and the settling of the stuff that you put in there to continue the barricade made by the mountain, would not that be an element of danger in that dam?

General HAINS. I do not think there would be any more element of danger than if you had a core wall in there, because I think your core wall would break, too, if you had a convulsion of nature that would open a space wide enough for the water to run through there. The destructive effect would also break your core wall.

Senator MORGAN. Yes.

General HAINS. So that, under such circumstances as that, I do not see that you would be any better off with a core wall than without it. Senator MORGAN. That hill through the center of which you cut your spillway is a volcanic hill or elevation?

General HAINS. Well, I do not know.

Senator MORGAN. Does anybody know?

General HAINS. No; I do not think anybody does know.

Senator MORGAN. Have these gentlemen who have projected this dam there ever bored into that hill to examine what was in it? General HAINS. Where the spillway goes?

Senator MORGAN. Yes.

General HAINS. Oh, yes, sir. I understand that there were borings made in that. We have a record of them here.

Senator MORGAN. Have you any statement anywhere in these papers, or do you know of any fact in regard to it, that will show what kind of rock they found in that hill?

General HAINS. I think so. There are in this hill here six borings right in the hill. Then these others are just beyond it. The spillway goes right through there [indicating on map].

Senator MORGAN. Have you any remembrance, or are you able to state, or has anybody stated, what the material is that they get in these borings-what kind of rock they found?

General HAINS. In these [indicating on map]?

Senator MORGAN. Yes.

General HAINS. There they are, right there. That is it, on the blueprint [indicating]

Senator MORGAN. The character of the material?

General HAINS. That is it, there. Take boring 35+14. There it is, right there; from there down to there, to rock [indicating on

profile]. That is that one. That hole there (on map), Senator, is represented vertically there (on profile). It has gone into the rock just that depth.

Senator MORGAN. What kind of rock is it? That is what I want to get at. Is it basalt or volcanic rock?

General HAINS. No, sir. That is what they call the indurated clay. Indurated clay is not the proper name for it. I think Mr. Harrod had better give a definition of that. He has investigated that matter, and he knows what is the scientific explanation of that word, which has been so used, and used with such misunderstanding, this word indurated clay.

Senator MORGAN. I have always misunderstood it. At least, I have never understood it, and therefore have always misunderstood it.

General HAINS. Well, I think if you will just forget the words "indurated clay" and say "rock" you get a better idea of that thing, because it is really rock. I would like Mr. Harrod to just explain that to you. He knows about that.

Senator MORGAN. We want to know what kind of rock it was, and whether it was volcanic or not.

General HAINS. He can tell you better. He has looked into that more than I have.

Senator MORGAN. Along the coastal plain of Panama, in the vicinity along both east and west of the Chagres River, there are these sugarloaf hills springing up.

General HAINS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. Not connected by ridges with each other at all.
General HAINS. I know.

Senator MORGAN. Just like potato hills by themselves.
General HAINS. Just like sugar loaves.

Senator MORGAN. I am very much interested to know how they got there, and I suppose that we have got men of science that ought to be able to say. My poor private judgment is that they have all been thrown up exactly in the same way that those mud craters were thrown up in 1882, when the earthquake passed across from Panama to Colon and up the coast toward Bocas del Toro, where these mud volcanoes, miniature volcanoes, were thrown up, and through them came hot water and other evidences of volcanic action.

I have supposed that those mounds were made in the same way, by convulsions of nature, and that they are all volcanic. If they are, then that probably accounts for this queer stuff which underlies that country that we call indurated clay. It may probably show that it is volcanic tufa or ashes that have been indurated there from the pressure of time or air or water or overlying strata, or what not, until it has been compacted together like a rock. It is not sand; it is not granite; it is not, as I understand, any stratified rock.

General HAINS. No, sir; but it is very hard; and it stands well in the weather. I have seen the dock that is used down there on the Isthmus, right close by this place, only a short distance below, where the walls have been cut right down vertically into it, and it stands like the wall of this building.

Senator MORGAN. When you get over into the Culebra cut and into the wells that the French dug down there, that same stuff does not stand at all?

General HAINS. That is not the same stuff.

Senator MORGAN. Does it not look exactly like it?

General HAINS. No, sir.

Senator MORGAN. What is the difference in appearance between the two?

General HAINS. Well, I do not know what the difference would be. I am not a geologist.

Senator MORGAN. I do not suppose any of us are.

General HAINS. And I do not know; but I do know that under the action of the air there is some material which is classed as indurated clay over there in the Culebra cut

Senator MORGAN. That goes to pieces?

General HAINS (continuing). And after it becomes dry you put it in water and it all melts. There is some of that. This is not that, as is evident from the fact that there is a dock that has been there for I do not know how many years; but I presume for twenty years, and vessels are taken in there and docked. I was looking at it only the last time I was down there.

Senator MORGAN. Right in this indurated clay?

General HAINS. Right in this indurated clay. It makes a splendid vertical wall, and as for a foundation for any kind of engineering structure, I would put the Washington Monument on it.

Senator MORGAN. And nevertheless here are two great gulches that you can not account for, that were washed right out of this indurated clay?

Senator HOPKINS. He did not say that they were washed out of that. Senator MORGAN. I think he did. He said he could not say how else it happened.

Senator KITTREDGE. That was this morning, Senator.

Senator HOPKINS. I know he balked at that this afternoon.
General HAINS. What is that? About how it was formed?
Senator HOPKINS. About its being washed out.

General HAINS. I do not know. I know that it is the opinion of geologists that it has been washed out by the water, and maybe it has. Senator HOPKINS. If that occurred, it was millions and millions of years ago, was it not, when this was all soft material?

General HAINS. It was a good many years ago; yes. According to geologists it was perhaps millions of years ago.

Senator MORGAN. It has only been twenty-four years since there was an earthquake that passed right along the line of this canal that shook cathedrals down, killed men in Colon, tore houses down, and formed mud volcanoes up as far as Bocas del Toro. That has only been twenty-four years ago.

General HAINS. It did not knock the cathedral down, Senator, because the cathedral is there yet.

Senator MORGAN. It knocked down the tower of it and other churches were torn down.

General HAINS. And it did not injure, and there has not been any injury in something like, well, as nearly as they can tell, it was about some two or three hundred years ago, a building was put up there with an arch much flatter than that [indicating], and wider.

Senator MORGAN. In the first report that you made, General, to the Government of the United States, you said that there were thirty-four earthquakes that had occurred there in Panama. I think it was either thirty-two or thirty-four.

General HAINS. You know there are earthquakes

Senator MORGAN. And earthquakes.

General HAINS. And there are earthquakes. There are some very little seismic disturbances that might be called earthquakes, and yet do no damage at all.

Senator MORGAN. But this disturbance, General, did actually destroy houses in Panama.

General HAINS. There was an earthquake. I do not remember just exactly the year.

Senator MORGAN. It was twenty-four years ago. That was when it was. And it crossed clear through the Isthmus, and it put the railroad bridges off of their bearings.

General HAINS. Yes.

Senator MORGAN. And inflicted very considerable damage upon the railroad itself, even to the twisting of the rails, and it passed into Colon and threw houses down, and killed men, and then it passed on up the coast to Bocas del Toro, leaving in its trail these pits of volcanic mud, through which steam came up. That is a pretty recent event. I am older than that, even young as I am.

Senator HOPKINS. That line of argument, Senator, would show that you can not build any kind of a canal across the Isthmus there.

Senator MORGAN. Well, it satisfied me a long time ago that you could not do it. I have always said that you could not. [Laughter.] The further we get into it the better I am satisfied that you can not, to make it stay there.

There are still facts and problems that we can not account for, and we can not tell whether they are to be a million years repeating themselves or twenty-four years. We do not know about it. But when a fact like the earthquake of 1881 occurred there, it is the part of good common sense to expect it to come again, is it not?

General HAINS. Yes; and I do not believe such an earthquake as we had then would do this dam any damage whatever, Senator.

Senator MORGAN. You would not like to take the risk of it, would you?

General HAINS. Yes; I would be willing to take the risk of it. Senator MORGAN. If you were operating on somebody else's money; but suppose you had all of your own money up on it?

General HAINS. If anybody will give me money enough to do it, I will take the risk.

Senator MORGAN. If anybody will give it to you, yes; but if you had to work for it and earn it, and pay taxes on it, and accumulate it, it would be quite a different story. We are trying to take care of the people here at least, I am. That is all I will ask you about that part of this business.

General, you have been connected with this canal and the project which we are trying now to work out, after two years and a half of effort you have been connected with it as an engineer since when? When were you first connected with it?

General HAINS. You mean the whole question of the canal across the Isthmus?

Senator MORGAN. When were you first connected with this project officially?

General HAINS. This particular project?

Senator MORGAN. No; making the canal at Panama?

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