to this position have run up an incline to the next level and are ready to pull us up to the place of the next lift. Other gates ahead of us are now opened and we are towed into the second lock. Again the gates are closed behind us, the water is allowed to come in through the bottom of the lock and we slowly rise again a distance of twenty-eight and one-third feet. A third lift of twenty-eight and one-third feet is accomplished in the same manner, and we have reached the level of the lake, eighty-five feet higher than the sea-channel through which we entered. The gates

ahead of us are opened, we are towed out to the great center guide wall, the towing locomotives are turned loose, the locks are taken off the levers in our engine room, and we are told to proceed.

Directed by a pilot we take our course through the beautiful Gatun Lake. The lake is so spacious that the ships of the world might congregate there and ride in safety. It is the largest artificial lake in the world. As we sail through it, the barnacles that have adhered to our ship's bottom, carried out of their native salt water, begin to sicken in their new element and one by one to drop off. By the time we have completed our journey of thirty-odd miles through Gatun Lake and Culebra Cut, the bottom of our ship, however foul it may have become, is as clean as if it had just come from a dry dock.

Our journey through the lake continues for twenty-three miles. Near the latter stages, the lake narrows gradually until it takes on the semblance of a canal. The great Culebra Cut is before us. It is a huge gorge with towering banks, cut through the mountain by human hands. Nine miles in length, mighty in proportions, it demands a toll from every traveler, no matter how blasé a heart toll of admiration for the great digging army that created it. It is here, more than at any other place in the canal, that one can appreciate best the terrific battle waged by man against Nature. We can see signs of the struggle in the sloping sides of the gorge. We pass

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through this cañon and come to the second set of locks, Pedro Miguel.

At this point we take our first step downward toward the sea. As at the first lock at the entrance to the canal, a giant fender chain stretches across our path. Towing locomotives appear on the extended walls of the locks and are attached to the stem and the stern of our ship. An official of the canal appears also as before, boards the ship, locks every lever in our engine rooms and orders the towing operations to proceed. Meanwhile, the fender chain has been lowered and the upper gates thrown open. We are towed into the lock, the gates are closed behind us and the water begins to pass out through the floor of the lock. Down we go, but slowly, until we find ourselves at the level of the water below the lock, thirty feet lower than the level of Gatun Lake. The gates ahead are opened, and we are towed out into Miraflores Lake.

This body of water is something more than a square mile in area. Across this, a short sail, we come to the gates of the Miraflores locks. There are two locks here, and we are passed through them and find ourselves on the level of the Pacific. We are towed out into the sea-level channel and are ready to commence our eight mile journey to the Pacific Ocean.

We sail out through a low-lying, swampy country, the hills of Agua Dulce on our right, and come presently to a point off Ancon Hill, where the capital of the Canal Zone is located. At Ancon Hill is a modern office building, built of steel and concrete, in which are located the administrative offices of the waterway. Here is the new American town, where the white employees of the canal all live. A little farther along is Balboa, the Pacific terminal, with its great machine shops, its big coaling plant and its modern dry docks. Here are all the facilities for ship repairing that are to be found in any shipyard in the country. According to the scheme of organization at the canal, the Atlantic terminal will furnish the supplies for the shipping world

and the Pacific terminal will provide the facilities for repairs. Any ship that can pass through the canal can be dry docked and repaired at the Balboa terminal.

From this point, passing the cargo handling plant with its docks on our left, we steam out toward the ocean. We pass the 500 acre plot of land reclaimed from the Pacific Ocean and on which are the permanent quarters for the Pacific Coast Artillery. These quarters do not include, however, those of the companies stationed on Naos and her sister islands. Connecting Naos with the mainland is a great embankment that rises out of the sea and whose crest is wide enough for a railway and a roadway. This was built of material hauled down from Culebra Cut and dumped into the shallow bay.

The defenses on Naos and her sister islands are the last word in American armament. Even if there were no mines to encounter within the point, no hostile ship would venture within the blank range of these guns. Here is planted the great sixteen-inch gun built at Watervliet, N. Y., which carries a projectile weighing more than a ton, hurling it for a distance of twenty miles.

The embankment connecting the mainland with the fortified islands, which are themselves connected by stone causeways, serves the double purpose of giving the military forces dry-land connection between the islands and the mainland and of keeping the cross currents of Panama Bay from sweeping millions of cubic yards of silt into the canal.

Having passed through the big waterway, let us take a retrospective view of its construction history. To begin with, the canal that is now a completed waterway is not the canal that we started out to build. We never planned to build locks with a usable length of 1,000 feet and a width of II0 feet. What we did plan were locks with a usable length of 900 feet and a width of 96 feet. Then the Olympic and the Titanic were designed, and President Roosevelt concluded that the locks should

be made larger. Congress had authorized him to provide a canal with dimensions sufficient to take care of the largest ships then constructed and in prospect.

The Culebra Cut, also, is different from what was intended. It is 300 feet wide at the bottom, while the original plans called for a cut 200 feet wide at that point. Here again, it was the word of Roosevelt that made the change. He was moved to order it enlarged from the same considerations that led to an increase in the size of the locks. These orders applied only to the increase in the bottom width of Culebra Cut; the vast increase in the top width was not ordered by any one. Nature spoke the word that changed this. At places where the original cut was planned to have a top width of 670 feet, it now has a width of more than a third of a mile. All this meant doubling the task of digging the cut. The great army employed in this work never flinched, however. It showed the world that it could dig two Culebra Cuts in less time and with half as many steam shovels as was thought would be required. Even with such a wonderful showing as this to inspire them, however, the canal diggers were heartily glad they were not asked to sink Culebra Cut to sea level.

At Pedro Miguel, another change was made. It was early decided that ships going through Culebra Cut from the Atlantic to the Pacific might need to wait for lockage at Pedro Miguel; so a basin was constructed at the upper end of Pedro Miguel for this purpose.

Below Pedro Miguel, it was planned originally to build the other Pacific locks at Sosa Hill. It was intended to throw dams across the saddles between the several hills at the Pacific end of the canal and thus make a miniature duplicate of Gatun Lake at the Pacific end. Two conditions changed these plans. Upon more mature examination, it was found that Sosa Hill was a very poor site for a duplicate flight of locks and an equally poor one for a dam. The dam site formed the habit of swallowing up the dam as fast as it was put into

place, and the site was abandoned. From an engineering standpoint, also, the lock site was not satisfactory.

But if Sosa Hill was unsatisfactory as a dam site and as a lock site from the engineering standpoint, it was much more unsatisfactory from a military standpoint. The place stood out close to the open sea, and consequently exposed to bombardment. When this phase of the situation was discussed, all the strategists of the Army and the Navy were unanimous in favor of moving the locks and dams farther inland. Fortunately Miraflores offered a fine position for both the locks and the dam, so that to-day, instead of a large Pacific-side lake, extending from Pedro Miguel to Sosa Hill, there is a sea-level channel from Miraflores to the sea with a small lake between Pedro Miguel and Miraflores.

No other great engineering undertaking ever witnessed so many concessions to safety as the Panama Canal. That it was built for the Government and therefore that he must avoid every chance of failure was kept constantly in mind by the Chief Engineer. No plan for any part of it ever was approved by the chief official until the engineers under him could demonstrate to him that there was no such word as fail in the lexicon of engineering in connection with it. Gatun Dam may have been built much more strongly than was needed to make it safe, but it was considered better to put in five million cubic yards of material too much than ten cubic yards too little. The gates of the locks may have been constructed in a far more substantial manner than seemed to be necessary, but it was preferable to go far beyond the safety point than to come just below it. The facilities for controlling the Chagres River might be great enough to control two rivers instead of one, but it was advisable to provide for the discharge of a hundred million cubic feet a second more than was needed rather than to leave any element of doubt.

The completed canal is a waterway that is as safe as human hands can make any

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thing, and its successful operation as sure as anything in the future may be. The American people may have had fears in the past, but if they had known anything of the determination of the Chief Engineer to eliminate the millionth chance, they would have resigned their fears years ago. It was being constructed for a hundred million people and for generations yet unborn, and "safety" was the pole-star by which the builders shaped their course. The result is that the completed Panama Canal stands to-day as the world's most carefully constructed piece of engineering. There is a margin of safety everywhere that is surprisingly large, but it permits the American people to feel that they have a canal that partakes of the permanence of Nature itself.

Not only is the Panama Canal a stupendous work viewed from an engineering standpoint, but it is unique in the methods of its execution. Never in the history of man was there a greater combination of paternalism and despotism than at Panama. There was paternalism, because the United States did everything for the people; from giving them free rent, free light, free medicine and free amusements, to providing them with government without taxation. There was despotism, because the power of the Chief Engineer, Colonel Goethals, was all sufficient and autocratic. In some respects the Czar of Russia had no more power than this man. The Chairman and Chief Engineer might not have had the power of life or death over his force, but he did have the power of deportation, and he knew how and when to use it. His word was law and there was neither appeal nor repeal.

In building the Panama Canal, the United States wrote a chapter in the art of preventive medicine. It transformed a pest-hole into a healthy community; and while it never went as far as did Great Britain, which completely exterminated the malarial mosquitoes at Ismailia, it did prove that with proper sanitation and proper medical attention, the tropics may