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90 tons, that was not there the night before. About a mile north of Cucar- acha, on the west bank, is the slide of Empire, a matter of 1,250,000 cu. yds. This slide made necessary the removal of a number of buildings oc- cupied as a construction camp, and there are some buildings remaining on the crest of the hill that seem _to occupy a precarious position, though as they are on a foundation of rock they are probably secure for the time being. Fortunately the slides are so deliberate that tio one has as 'yet been injured by them, though in one instance 400,000 tons of rock slipped THE MARINE REVIEW About 150 train loads of dirt. are hauled out of the cut each day, which means that 300 trains are shooting in and out of the cut every eight. hours. It is like looking at the toil of Titan to watch the work on the various levels, scores of steam shovels at different elevations loading a car in six trips of the bucket, pouring out clouds of steam meanwhile; empties rushing, in on new-laid track at what appears to be breakneck speed; loaded trains puffing away to the which may be anywhere from 2 to 20 miles away; drills maintaining a cease- less grind, when suddenly a shrill dumps,, March, 1913 deep, may have to be removed before the slides cease... It is an almost per. pendicular precipice of loose earth without lateral support. The recent slide at Cucaracha has upset all calculations. Trouble at this point began to manifest itself as early as 1907 and up to the first of the pres. ent year about 3,500,000 cu. yds. had been removed. For over a year and qa half, however, no slides had occurred at this point, and it was the settled opinion that the Cucaracha slide was caused by saturation due to rainfall-- in other words, an exclusively wet season slide. Now it has broken out tHe LATEST CUCARACHA SLIDE IN THE CULEBRA CUT into the canal at Empire in 15 minutes. In this instance it was impossible to remove the equipment and tracks, cars and steam shovels were buried beneath it. The problem of the slides has vast- ly complicated the work. In the 9 miles of the Culebra cut over 200 miles of track have been destroyed by slides, and during the past two years trains have had to be operated on a surface which changed its eleva- tion anywhere from 1 to 2 in. to sev- eral feet per day, keeping the track gangs busy to provide for the unin- terrupted operation of the trains. whistle sounds above the din and workmen scamper like ants in all di- rections and a mighty explosion of dynamite shakes the ground and fills the air with an incredible clamor; and then one's eyes wander heaven- ward and he sees what until now has escaped his sight--steam shovels pa- tiently working at an elevation of 300 ft. or,more in the bank to relieve the top weight and thus reduce the num- ber of slides caused by mere pressure. It may develop that the greater part of Gold Hill, the highest position in the Culebra cut, where the excavation to the canal bottom is now 494 ft. in greater proportions than ever if the dry season and to its present pet- formance is due the rush order to the Bucyrus Co., of Milwaukee, for two dipper dredges with buckets of 15 yds. capacity each, to be delivered, one if November and the other in January next. The plan now is to turn the water from Gatun lake into this sec tion and let the dredges handle the slide. It is astonishing with what hopefulness nearly everyone on the Isthmus speaks of these dredges and how much, apparently, they expect from them. They seem to think the dredgés will make short work of Ct