REPORT OF BOARD OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.


finished with its gate to prevent the water from entering the lock, and if the lower head is protected by a cofferdam.
 Now, I have shown that the excavation can be made within four years without even reaching the yearly output obtained by the old company, which, in its last year (1888) it must be remembered, had also two or three thousand men occupied for the locks outside of those devoted to excavation proper. I have shown that the locks and dams can be completed within the same period of four years without any exceptional effort, and without admitting but very reasonable figures, very inferior to what I have personally obtained in works consisting in the preparation of large masses of concrete.
 However, if certain events should obstruct the regular evolution of what is based on figures so perfectly reasonable and so perfectly moderate; if the lack of labor, for example, should partly paralyze the works-though labor necessary, in my plans, is not greater than what the old company had gathered from the West Indies-it would be still possible to obtain the passage for the largest ships actually afloat within four years by reducing one-third the width of the cuts, which would remain about equal to that of the great canals of the world, and by limiting the effort to the construction of locks to one lock and of the vital parts of the second one of each twin lock.
 The entire completion of the high-level canal with its normal dimensions would then remain a question of one year, or two at most, afterwards, and at the same time the strategical position would be conquered which guarantees the construction in twenty years, without any perturbation for the traffic, of the Straits of Panama, the only complete solution of the problem for the economic and military necessities the highway has to meet; the great waterway free from any tidal lock, 500 feet wide at the bottom level, 45 feet deep at the lowest tides, when the sea-level canal will be hampered with tidal locks and the channel restricted to 150 feet at the bottom and to a depth of 35 feet.
 P. BUNAU-VARILLA.
 WASHINGTON, D. C., November 6, 1905.


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