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Updated: June 5, 2025
Yet there is sometimes method in their madness. Did not "Joe" who slept in the next room to me at Gatun "hit Duque for two pieces" which is to say he had $3,000 to sprinkle along with his police salary? Yet personally the only really appealing "system" was that of Cristobal.
Of course there must be heavy gates to prevent the higher level waters from rushing into those of the lower level. Some parts of the Panama Canal are eighty-five feet higher than other parts. In other words, a vessel entering the Canal at Colon, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, must rise eighty-five feet to get to the level of Gatun Lake, which forms a large part of the Canal.
While it is only about forty miles across the isthmus yet the canal is fifty miles long. The fact is they had to dredge out to deep water which is about five miles at each end. Entering the channel at the north it is about seven miles to the Gatun locks. There are three pairs of these locks and they lift the vessel to Gatun Lake, which is eighty-five feet above sea level.
The lake, much higher now than in my former Gatun days, was licking at the 27-foot level that morning. Under the brilliant blue sky it looked like some vast unruffled mirror which is no figure of speech, but plain fact. "Through a Forest in a Motor-boat" we might have dubbed the trip. We had soon crossed the unbroken expanse of the lake and were moving through a submerged forest.
It was some distance to Gatun, where Ned hoped to secure a railroad motor for the Culebra trip, so the boys moved along at a swift pace. However, the party was not destined to reach Gatun as speedily as was anticipated.
"The Gatun dam will block the water and make a lake 85 feet above sea level, covering one hundred and sixty-four square miles of earth." "So the most of the canal will be lake?" asked the boy. "Quite a lot of it," was the reply. "And if any one should blow up the dam, after it gets on its job, the ships would have to climb a ladder if they got over to Panama," he exclaimed.
"I've heard something about that," Jimmie said. "Go on and tell us more about it." The stranger smiled pleasantly, but there was a sudden quickening of the flame in his brilliant eyes which the boys did not notice. "The upland portion of the Isthmus, the plateau, as it would be called in Mexico, is fairly level from Gatun to the Culebra hills.
The boatmen sang, the tropic forests came down to the banks with their lilies, shrubs, mangoes, cocos, sycamores, palms; their crimson, purple, and yellow blossoms; their bananas with torn leaves; their butterflies and paroquets; their streamers and vines and scarlet flowers. It was like a vision of fairyland. Gatun was a collection of bamboo huts, inhabited mainly by fleas.
His business there was not only to protect the Gatun dam but also to get to the core of the conspiracy and bring the plotters to punishment. The men who were plotting on the Isthmus were also plotting in New York.
The engineers found this river in the habit of getting up in the night and tearing their work in pieces." "Why didn't they cut a straight channel for it?" asked Jimmie. "That was tried, but finally the engineers decided to stop trying to make the river behave itself, as a river, and turned their attention to squelching it. They are going to turn it into a lake the Lake of Gatun."
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