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fe A OR 41 ON CE R Bev I EO aw the Panama canal will undoubtedly attract world-wide atten- tion in this respect. Not only will American engineers and contractors do the work, but American made and designed machinery will be employed almost exclusively. How great an advancement has been made in the development of tools and machines will be apparent when the giant plant is once established there. As the Culebra cut is the only part of the canal that will actually require drilling and blasting through rock, this feature of the work will not be conspicuous. Compressed air and electric drills will probably compete with each other under the tropical sun, and their respec- tive merits demonstrated in a part of the world where they have rarely been in operation before. The American channel- ing machines will cut through the soft rock on the Culebra cut with ease, and the work should progress rapidly. The advantages' of the channeling machines used in connection with air or steam drills for blasting were pretty well dem- onstrated in cutting through the Chicago drainage canal. The' 'former' gives'. 'such- 2 smooth finish to the perpen- dicular side of the rock cut through that they should prove of particular value in Panama. A clean cut must be made across the mountains at Cule- bra, and the removal of the rock must be accomplished with the least amount of fric- tion and outlay of energy. An army of drilling machines, fol- lowed by blasters to blow away cross-sections, should prepare the way for the channeling machines so that a clean cut can be made quickly and ef- fectually. Steam dredges of enormous capacity must be purchased in this country and shipped to the Isthmus, for the sea-level work on either end of the Panama-~-canal is not. 4a. simple problem. The loose' silt and'. fine mud "flows back into the channel so rapidly that dredging operations by the French proved extremely expensive and difficult. The sea washing into the canal quickly destroyed the work accomplished by the dredges, and without modern methods of preventing such a recurrence progress would be slow. Amer- ican steam dredges with six-yard dippers should clean the harbor channels of silt and sand, while the "sand-suckers" or hydraulic dredges will be needed for such parts of the sea- level work where the silt is fine and annoying. Scores almost of such dredges on either end of the canal will be needed to keep the harbor clean, and to finish the work up quickly and in time. The shipment of these enormous steam dredges to the Isthmus will begin almost with the opening of next spring or summer, and by another winter they should be in full operation. At present the purchasing of machinery and tools for Pan- ama is limited chiefly to those necessary for improving the sanitary condition of the canal zone. Complete and perfect sanitation and disinfection of the camps, laborers' quarters, and shops will precede everything else, for the terrible mor- tality which marked the progress of the French company is to be avoided if possible. It is realized by the American MR. CARI, EWALD GRUNSKY. engineers that the soil is full of fever germs, and that as soon as the surface is disturbed they will be released and general sickness may prevail. By careful sanitary and disinfecting processes in advance this danger can be minimized if not almost entirely eliminated. The equipment of the Panama plant for dredging will be of the most complete character, for time is money in the con- struction of it, and every penny saved in handling a cubic yard of material may mean a profit of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the contractors. The shipment of only the most up-to-date machinery, therefore, will pay, and the plans of the company so far as they are formulated include only types of machinery that are of the most efficient character. Cable- ways will be used extensively, and it is estimated that hun- dreds of miles of 2- and 3-in steel cables will be required for connecting the steel towers for operating the scoops and skips. Steel towers 70 to 93 ft. high were used in digging the Chicago drainage canal, with an extreme width between them of 7oo ft., but it is likely that some of the spans used at Panama will exceed 1,000 ft., with steel towers for the sup- port of the steel cableways reaching a height of at least a hundred or more feet. The complete equipment of these veritable steel cableway suspension bridges, with all their paraphernalia for carting rock and dirt back from the canal, will be rather costly, but each plant should save thou- sandso: dollars' to the con- tractors. One of the problems offered for solution in digging the canal across the Isthmus is to carry the excavated material a long distance back from the ditch at the least possible out- lay of time and labor. The r French company used small Belgian locomotives and trains of dump cars for this pur- pose, but while such trains will be required and used by the American contractors the overhead cableways will be more largely utilized. They have proved to be the most effective 'machines for carrying away to a distance rocks and soil dug from a large canal. A good deal of money is saved by this method owing to the less number of operators required. A single man standing on his platform can operate the whole mechanism, controlling the skip as easily as if he stood at the bottom of the ditch to watch every movement of the men. By electrical signals the operator knows exactly when to hoist, lower or to dump. The operation of these huge steel towers on platforms mounted on movable trucks increases their effectiveness nearly 50 per cent. They move along the sides of the canal as the work progresses, and there is little delay occasioned through shifting the machinery. Only common, unskilled laborers, who are hardened to the climatic conditions of the Isthmus, would be needed to load the huge steel box at the bottom of the canal. The modern skips are immense steel boxes capable of carrying away 80 to go cu. ft. of material. Where electric motors are employed they move back and forth across the steel suspension bridge at the rate of 1,000 ft. per minute, working with great regularity and accuracy.