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MARINE REVIEW 23 the old company, with some new machines that it was de- sirable to test with a view to future work. The execution has been carried on by day labor, which has accurately made known to the company the actual cost, and has thus fur- nished the basis on which to establish the unit prices of fu- ture work after giving due weight, of course, to any variation in the conditions. In addition to the work above indicated, which relates to the construction of the canal proper, the new company con- structed, at the cost of the Panama railroad, an important wharf at La Boca, which is situated at the point where the canal enters the bay of Panama. This wharf, connected to the line of rails, and supplemented by the dredging of a deep basin, permits to approach the road and unload directly into the cars or vice versa. This was not possible heretofore, be- cause lack of deep water compzlled ships to anchor several miles from the old terminus of the railroad, and lighter their cargoes. INVESTIGATIONS AND PLANS. After long and laborious investigations, which during many years have required on the Isthmus every kind of survey and measurement to determine its topographical features and geological structure at every spot or emplacement where works could be anticipated, the new company definitely set- tled upon the plans for a canal with locks, including several variants. This plan, which has received the approval of the committee of consulting engineers, may be summed up as follows: The total length of the canal from the point where it leaves the bay of Limon to the point where it enters the ba-r of Panama, is 43.5 miles. About 3.1 mile should be added for its extension through the bay of Panama to reach deep water, which makes its total length 46.6 miles. The summit level has its bottom level at a height above mean tide of 48 ft., and its highest water level at 102.5 ft. above mean tide. The descent of the ocean on each slope is effected by four locks, disposed on the Atlantic side in two flights of two locks, and on the Pacific side in one flight of two locks and two single locks. The locks are all double, with two paral- lel chambers each 82 ft. wide and having a serviceable length of 738 ft. Their greatest lift is 29.5 ft. The Atlantic level, whose tides in the bay of Limon are insignificant, extend to Boko where is encountered a flight of two locks. The second level consists of a great lake, into which the Chagres dis- charges, and through which the canal forms a submerged chan- nel extending to Obispo, ending in a flight of two locks. The normal level of the lake is 55.8 ft. above mean tide; but it may fall to 52.5 ft. in seasons of extreme low water, or rise, rarely, at the moment of an exceptional flood of the Chagres to 65.6 ft. The next level, that of the summit already de- scribed, extends to the single lock of Paraiso. Its water may vary between 97.5 and 102.5 ft. above tide. The fourth level terminates at the flight of two locks at Pedro-Miguel having a water height which may vary between 73 and 76 ft. above tide. The fifth level ends at the single lock of Miraflores. Its water plane may osciliate between 17 and 20 ft. above tide. Beyond the lock the Pacific level is reached. Here allowance is made for a tidal range of 9.8 ft. above and 3 below mean level. The summit level will be supplied with water by a feeder conveying water drawn from the Chagres at Alhajuela, about 9.5 miles from the canal. The needful reserve will be stored by a masonry dam established on rock in a gorge of the val- ley. This dam will form a great reservoir, intended in part to store the reserves needed in the season of low water, and in part to co-operate with the lake of Bohio in holding back a portion of the volume in great floods and thus controlling _ them. The normal width at the bottom of the canal will vary in the different levels. For that of the Atlantic it is 985 ft., with two great passing stations where it is 197 ft. In the channel through lake Bohio it is 164 ft.; in the summit level, 118 ft.; in the next two levels, and in the land part of the Pacific level, 98.5 ft.; and in the chanenl through the bay of Panama, 164 ft. The minimum draught of water throughout the canal is 29.5 ft., increased to 32.8 ft. at the middle line of the lock chambers, and to 31 ft. at their side walls. In the *plan thus succinctly stated, the bottom of the sum- mit level is fixed at 68 ft. above mean tide; the depth which it was believed could be reached in the time which would be required to complete the rest of the work. In consequence, this was the plan which appeared to the new company to pre- sent the advantage of equalizing the delays of the work of excavation on the one hand, and of those of the permanent construction on the other. But experience itself acquired by the company at the central cut, and the important verifications it has furnished as to the nature of the soil, as to its geological consistency and its stability, combine to induce the belief that the central cut could in all security be carried to a greater depth if it were possible to accomplish it within the time de- manded by the concession to complete the rest of the canal. The new company thought it might chance that circumstances in the future might permit the excavation of this cut. In that case it would be advantageous to suppress the entire level above the plane of water represented by lake Bohio, and adopt this lake itself as the summit level. The company prepared a plan, a variant of the preceding, which fulfils these conditions ; and in which, consequently, the special feeder becomes un- necessary. The general features of this second plan were so adjusted to those of the first, from which it was derived, that it would be possible to pass from one to the other without loss of work already executed if in the progress of construction experience should show this to be desirable. The line of the canal as projected by the new company ex- actly followed that adopted by the old company, and thus utilized the extensive excavations made by the latter. The essential and capital difference between the two plans lay in this: The old company sought to achieve a canal at the ocean level; but near the end of its existence, it decided to avail itself provisionally of a plan with locks, which subsequently was to be transformed to a canal at the original ocean level. To reach such a solution, the old company had to overcome two considerable difficulties,the excavation of the great cen- tral cut to a depth of 29.5 ft. below the sea level, and the creation of a new bed for the Chagres outside the canal, which for a long distance occupied the natural bed. The new company was organized with a stock capital of 65,000,000 francs; this was only a temporary provision, which would permit the work to continue until, the preliminary inves- tigations having been thoroughly and carefully completed, it should be possible, with a full knowledge of the conditions, to reach a definitive plan for completing the canal, if this should then be deemed expedient. These investigations were com- pleted in 1897, and since 1898 it would have been possible to come to a decision, and take the measures necessary for resuming work on a large scale. But an outside event of great importance intervened to indirectly complicate the situa- tion, and introduce new elements of a nature to powerfully in- fluence the decisions and arrangements to be made. This event was the Spanish-American war, and the popular opin- ion it created in the United States in favor of the construction of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua. It was clear that the menace of beginning the construction of a river canal, with the intervention and assistance of the American gov- ernment, constituted for the new company a formidable ob- stacle to raising the ways and means for the construction of its own canal. The popular favor in the United States toward the idea of a canal in Nicaragua was largely due to opinions suggested by the failure of the old company. Nicaragua also had powerful and disinterested champions, notably Senator Morgan of Alabama, who had given his whole