PANAMA CANAL.


Commission, who expressed doubts as to the practicability of build-
ing anything of importance at the locations of beacon lights 1 and 2,
suggested this point as preferable. The bend in the canal would
throw any pair of monuments erected on the highest of these hills off
the axis in approaching from the sea. This is unfortunate, but it
could perhaps be obviated by erecting the structures on artificial
mounds exactly at the angle.

 4. GATUN LOCKS.

 (a) Lighthouse.-We advise the filling of the arches on the two
sides of the lower portion of the present lighthouse'on Gatun Locks.
(See photograph, Exhibit No. 11.) We feel this would improve the
design.
 (b) Grading.-The tentative plan for grading seems good. Sug-
gestions for minor modifications and for possible locations of avenues
of trees on either side of the locks were furnished the chairman of
the Isthmian Canal Commission.
 (c) Lighting fixtures.-At either side of all the locks at Gatun,
as well as at Miraflores and Pedro Miguel, are to be erected concrete
electric-light standards, already cast, with reflectors of a very peculiar
shape for lighting the locks. We recommended that the external
form of the fixtures should be changed to a more agreeable design.
It was the intention to make these fixtures of concrete, but we sug-
gested executing them in sheet copper, which would permit a less
heavy-looking design, and we believe would be decidedly preferable.
 (d) Control building.-The designs for the control building which
is to be erected on the central pier of the locks were not susceptible of
much change at the time they were submitted to our committee, since
all or most of the steel for this building was then being fabricated,
and in any case the design was closely controlled by operating re-
quirements and the location of tracks, manholes, and other structures
which were in place before the architect was consulted. One of the
requirements, however, laid down by the Canal Commission for this
building will be so generally insisted on elsewhere that the resulting
appearance is very important. We refer to the extremely broad
overhang of the roof demanded because of the climatic conditions.
We have urged upon the architect of the Canal Commission that
where such excessive projections are demanded the pitch of the over-
hanging part of the roof should be flattened by a curve beginning
nearly over the plane of the wall in order to lighten it and distin-
guish it from the roof proper covering the mass of the building.
 (e) The desirability of a change in the steel water tank at Gatun
has been referred to above. (See p. 6.)
 Most of the suggestions in regard to the Gatun Locks apply with
modifications to the other locks.

 5. ENTRANCE TO THE CANAL FROM THE PACIFIC.

 It seems at first to be desirable that the entrance to the canal from
the Pacific should be marked in a manner somewhat similar to that
proposed at the Atlantic end. Unfortunately the conditions near this
entrance, particularly on the east side, will not admit of this treat-