PANAMA CANAL.


bend. Small beacon lights are planned to be placed at the edge of
the water on each side of the canal exactly at the bend and at certain
ether points. (See Exhibit 2.) From the bend the canal makes a
straight run of a mile across low, flat ground to the Gatun Locks, a
broad, low, symmetrical mass of concrete and steelwork, the axis of
which coincides with that of the canal approaching it, and the length
of which is a little over a mile.
 All the concrete, except such as may be kept light in color by paint
or other surface applications, is rapidly discolored in the climate of
Panama to a mottled, blackish green, and the steelwork is to be
painted the dark battleship gray.
 The Gatun Locks, like those at Pedro Miguel and Miraflores, will
form a sort of promontory projecting from the flat irregular hills
and embankments which retain the water behind the locks. The total
width occupied by the two locks side by side, with the central pier
separating them and the side walls with their towing tracks, etc., is
about 360 feet. Outside of these on each side is to be a flat earth space
100 feet wide or more, sloping just enough to drain the surface water
away from the lock. This is intended for use as a wharf for the
handling of material to be loaded on or unloaded from vessels when
passing through the lock, and for other purposes. At the outer edge
of these flat spaces the ground is to descend in steep banks. Each
pair of locks, of which there are three at Gatun, will thus form a sort
of raised terrace nearly 600 feet across and about 1,000 feet from
front to rear, and the next higher pair of locks will rise from it with
a transverse terrace bank some 30 feet in height. The top of the lock
masonry itself does not step up architecturally from one pair of locks
to the next, but rises by an ogee slope so as to enable the towing
engines to climb from level to level.
 Beyond the Gatun Locks, for 23 miles through Gatun Lake, there
will be nothing that looks like a canal. So much of the shores (see
photograph, Exhibit No. 5) as are within close view of the channel
are generally steep and beautifully forested. There is a distressing
fringe of dead trees rising from the water everywhere along the
shores. In the opinion of the engineers most of these trees are likely
to rot off at about the water line in the course of two or three years;
but, as the water level will fluctuate several feet, it seems probable
that at least the stubs of numberless snags will continue to show above
the surface much of the time for a great many years. As very little
of the timber was marketable, the cost of clearing the forest before
flooding was felt to be too great to justify removing it except from
the navigable channel itself. This is much to be regretted.
 The high bold hills around the lake make many of the distant
views very beautiful. The only canal structures in the lake section
are the aids to navigation-lighthouses, small range lights, and tri-
pods-all made of reenforced concrete, and nearly all open to criti-
cism as to details of appearance. Most of them are completed, and
it is too late to modify the designs.
 Occasionally, toward the upper end, as the lake narrows down, the
edges of the channel show above the water surface as straight red
bluffs where projecting points have been cut through. Where the
channel departs from the flooded Chagres Valley the latter is barred
off by a railroad bridge, and the banks of the canal cut are at first