Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/339

Rh of the completion of the work have improved. Yet it is not to be assumed that De Lesseps and the present company will be able to complete it. Only recently they failed to get the authorization of the French Government to raise 600,000,000 francs by means of a loan late report to our Government one or two extracts are to be taken, speaks doubtfully upon this point, but seems to think it likely that the excavation will reach 135,000,000, or perhaps more. He observes that the slopes adopted by the company are two to three in soft earth (two of vertical dimension to three of horizontal) and two to one in rock; these he thinks not sufficiently gradual, and hence his larger estimate. With regard to the amount excavated, January 1, 1887, 30,000,000 cubic metres, it may be added that, according to two authorities favorable to the enterprise, Hon. John Bigelow and M. de Molinari, who inspected the works last year with De Lesseps, a somewhat lower figure may be assigned. They give as the amount excavated at the time of their inspection in February, 1886, 14,000,000 cubic metres instead of 19,000,000, the figure of the company. De Molinari, however, remarks that these 14,000,000 cubic metres do not include the whole excavation. This he puts at 17,000,000, only 2,000,000 below the company's reckoning. He explains that the 3,000,000 excluded refer to accessories—the excavation of roads over which to carry the extracted material, etc. Such parts of the excavation, he seems to have thought not comprised in the estimate of 120,000,000 cubic metres. His carefully-prepared letters, published in the "Débats," and which relate both to the Panama enterprise and to the economic condition of several of the West Indies, have recently appeared in book-form. The author, well known as a writer upon political economy, dedicates his work to De Lesseps. Finally, it may be remarked that the entire excavation for 1886 reached 11,727,000 cubic metres, an average of almost 1,000,000 per month. The excavation for the first three months of the present year is as follows:

The decrease in the excavation for March is for the most part only apparent; for, as the work is reckoned from the 25th of each month to the 25th of the next, March thus gets twenty-eight days while February gets thirty-one. It is safe to conclude that the excavation for 1887 will equal, and probably exceed, that for 1886. At the lowest estimate the amount removed up to July 1st may be set down at 36,000,000 to 37,000,000 cubic metres; an amount which may be the more readily assumed since the work usually progresses more rapidly during the first six months of the year, the dry season, than during the wet season which succeeds. The excavation for February, 1,286,000, is seventeen per cent higher than that for any other month since the work began. The following table, taken with the exception of the figure for 1886 from De Lesseps's last annual report, gives the average monthly excavation each year:

Possibly 1887 is to show a considerable increase over 1886, as 1886 did over 1885. We should remember that, owing chiefly to the improvements effected in the machinery used at Suez, more excavation was effected during the last three years than during the previous seven. If we could allow ourselves to make such a calculation for Panama, the work might be finished in 1890. Mr. Bigelow is of opinion that upon this contingency, the progress of invention, De Lesseps counts at the present day; and, in fact, the work at Panama has already been accelerated in this manner.