Items of interest October 8, 1904 Issue

Items of Interest

An American engineer, with a party of young college graduates, has made discoveries about the Panama Canal which make it possible to solve the baffling problem of the Chagres River freshets by diverting the stream to the Pacific coast. The party spent four months in tracing the course and the source of this river, whose spring freshets, sometimes forty feet high, so far have proved an insuperable obstacle to a sea level canal project. By the use of the data colected it is found possible to divert the Chagres from the Caribbean slope to the Pacific side of the isthmus. This could be done at ar approximate cost of $16,000,000, releasing $20,000,000 of the $36,000,000 destined for the construction of locks.

When the American engineers made their survey it was planned to control the river by a dam and a series of locks. This dam would have produced an artificial lake some 14,000 acres in area. The Chagres, according to the plans, would bring to this dam the surface flow from nearly 500 square miles of high ground that the river drains. During the rainy season the Chagres rises with almost incredible rapidity. To control these risings it was intended to form the artificial lake, a gigantic easeway in the connecting dam, a smaller easeway around the locks at Pedro Miguel, and still another spillway on the western side of the artificial lake, which was to named Lake Bohio. This spillway was to be a mile in length, and when the flow of the Chagres overtaxed the capacity of the water would run over the top of the spillway down into the Pena Blanca swamp, and, flowing over the surface of the swamp would discharge into the Caribbean Sea. This, up to the present survey, was regarded as the best practical solution of this difficult problem.

The American Minister to Panama has sailed for New York to discuss with the President, it is said, the settlement of the question of sovereignty over the Canal Zone In connection with the opening of ports, the collection of duties, and the establishment of postoffices in the zone, the questions of exercising the good offices of the United States in adjudicating the Costa—Rican—Panama boundary dispute, the resumption of relations with Colombia, the exclusion of the Panama Lottery from the Zone, the condemnation of property within the Zone belonging to Panama, the conflict between the concessions Panama has granted to wireless telegraph companies, and the regular payment or dismissal of the Colon claims. It is the wish of Panama to negotiate a new treaty covering points that were not settled by the Canal Convention.

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