32
THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
the members than any of our former critics. Miss Dora Lecrone con
ducted our society last year and we can say that we never had a tetter
year of society work before. We sincerely regret her absence this
term, but we all extend our best wishes to her and sincerely hope that
she will succeed in her new field at Unga, Alaska.—W illiam R eady ,
Reporter.
FACTS ABOUT TH E PA N A M A C A NAL
Col. George W. Goethals is Chief Engineer and chairman of the Ca
nal Commission. He has seven assistants. Col. Goethals, however, is
in complete charge of the construction. The canal connects the Carri-
bean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and is dug through the Isthmus of Pan
ama. The Canal will have an average summit elevation of 85 feet
above the sea level. It is about fifty miles in length from deep water
in the Caribbean Sea to deep water in the Pacific Ocean; the length of
the Canal from shore line to shore line is approximately forty-one miles.
The channel ranges in width from three hundred feet to one thousand
feet; the average bottom width is three hundred feet. The canal will
have a minimum depth of forty-one feet. The estimated time for a
ship of medium size to pass through the canal is ten hours, and for
large vessels eleven hours.
The Gatun dam along the crest is 8,000 feet long and 21,000 feet
wide at its greatest width. The crest of the dam is one hundred and
fifteen feet above sea level, or thirty feet above normal level. Approx
imately two hundred and forty-five million cubic yards of dirt were re
moved in the construction of the canal. The average rate of excava
tion per month was two million five hundred thousand cubic yards of
dirt, or a million cubic yards a day.
The canal will cost when completed three hundred and seventy-five
million dollars; fifty million dollars were paid to the French Panama
Canal Company and to the Republic of Panama for their rights and
property; twenty million dollars were paid to put the Canal Zone in a
healthy condition, $7,250,000 were paid for governing the zone and the
balance was spent in construction.
January 1, 1915, was originally set for the official opening of the
canal; the event will be celebrated in San Francisco, California, during
the summer of 1915, by a World’s Exposition.
The waters of the Atlantic and Pacific were mingled Oct. 10, 1913, at
eleven o’clock a. m., Pacific time.
During April, 1912, there were forty-five thousand men at work on