Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/265

Rh from which a feeder about ten miles long, partly an open canal and partly in tunnels or pipe, would conduct the water from the reservoir thus formed to the summit level.

Although the plan, as described, was adopted, the 'Comité Technique' apparently favored a modification by which a much deeper excavation through Culebra Hill would be made, thus omitting the locks at both Obispo and Paraiso, and making the level of the artificial lake Bohio the summit level of the canal. In this modified plan the bottom of the summit level would be about 32 feet above the sea, and the minimum elevation of the summit level 61.5 feet above the sea. This modification of plan had the material advantage of eliminating both the Obispo and Paraiso locks. The total estimated cost of completing the canal under this plan was about $105,500,000. Although the Alhajuela feeder would be omitted, the Alhajuela reservoir would be retained as an agent for controlling the Chagres floods and to form a reserve water supply. The difference in costs of these two plans was comparatively small, but the additional time required to complete that with the lower summit level was probably one of the main considerations in its rejection by the committee having it under consideration.

This brings the project up to the time when the Isthmian Canal Commission was created in 1899 and when the forces of the new Panama Canal Company were employed either in taking care of the enormous amount of plant bequeathed to it by the old company or in the great excavation at Emperador and Culebra. The total excavation of all classes, made up to the time when that commission rendered its report, amounted to about 77,000,000 cu. yds.

The work of the commission consisted of a comprehensive and detailed examination of the entire project and all its accessories, as contemplated by the new Panama Canal Company, and any modifications of its plans either as to alignment, elevations or subsidiary works, which it might determine advisable to recommend. In the execution of this work it was necessary among other things to send engineering parties on the line of the Panama route for the purpose of making such surveys and examinations as might be necessary to confirm estimates of the new Panama Canal Company as to quantities, elevations or other physical features of the line selected, or required in modifications of alignment or plans. In order to accomplish this portion of its work the commission placed five working parties on the Panama route with twenty engineers and other assistants and forty-one laborers.

The commission adopted for the purposes of its plans and estimates the route selected by the new Panama Canal Company, which is essentially that of the old company. Starting from the six-fathom contour in the harbor of Colon the line follows the low marshy ground