REPORT OF BOARD OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.


 "1. What are the quantities of materials in the main component parts of your projects which formed the basis of your estimate?
 "2. What are the unit prices to be applied to such quantities to make the lump sum estimates contained in your pamphlet?"
 Hoping to receive an early reply and return of the inclosed papers, I remain,
 Very respectfully, yours, JOHN C. OAKES,

 Captain, General Staf, Secretary.
 Mr. LINDON W. BATES,
 111 Broadway, New York, N Y.


 Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, at the very outset of this hearing your indulgence for a personal reference is invoked to remove a somewhat natural inference that the speaker has of his own volition proffered suggestions or advice where it was not his concern so to do. On his return from Europe last winter his opinions were sought. One among others was formulated in the following words:
 SEA OR SUMMIT LEVEL.
 Determine level of central section and disposition of Chagres waters.
 This is the momentous and fundamental problem. Its solution should be confided to the best proved engineering talent in the United States, and this judgment should be confirmed by a small board of experts drawn from the best engineering and contracting minds in the world. Their final report should give due weight to the financial question.
 The President should retain the veto and remanding power in this decision.
 The cost and success of the enterprise is supremely concerned with the determination of the central level. The French Comit6 Technique, with its international advisers, and the various American commissions have evolved four schemes of treatment known as the 90-foot-level project, the 60-foot-level project, the 30-foot-level project, and the sea-level project.
 The studies and observations of the writer have led him to a new solution which appears sufficiently superior, technically and financially, to merit presentation.
 The speaker in his ten years in other continents had learned that science was international and that no land or people had a monopoly of experience or common sense or the engineering brain.
 This board is constituted; a proponent is before you.
 It has come to pass that of 'many called you are chosen, and just as truly he accepted an imposed duty as a simple citizen to make the short exposition which was submitted in March last, with the especial and accepted reserve that in a due time a more complete presentation would be prepared than had been practicable under the pressure of those first few weeks.
 What you have before you-this text, these plates and studies, reliefs and perspectives-are what have been wrought in a clear purpose to do honor to my inspirer, and aid all possible the rightness and perfection of your decision.
 This presentation was meant to be and is practically complete.
 You have been informed that it was novel and interesting, but lacked detail and data. New and interesting-yes; so once was the railroad, the telegraph, the sewing machine, and the steamship. These the world has already accepted.
 This is neither the country where nor the age when new ideas, if they be true, are passed lightly over or crushed permanently to earth. Lacking study, detail, and data-no. To a practical analysis nothing pertinent to a decision is wanting, and challenging its disproof the speaker would like a bill of particulars.
 But that the record may be complete the situation is summarized, that from the hour the first submission was made, March 5 last, not one step has been taken by those charged with isthmian details, despite the President's formal injunction when this Board was constituted and chartered, to make an official examination of certain localities where certain data would surely be interesting although not vital to the deliberations of this Board upon mine or other plans.


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