Of engineering problems, proper, it is better to let the engineer speak with intelligence, but any layman can stand on Gold Hill and by vigorous use of the imagination see something of the tremendous work that has been done since the first shovelful of earth was turned on that New Year's Day in 1880. Whether the French engineers anticipated landslides at Culebra is not clear, but the American engineers knew from the start that the porous soil would cave in more or less at that point. What it actually did do surpassed the expectations of those who surveyed the work. When the banks began to cave north of Gold Hill the surrounding country got the idea and followed suit so fast that it looked as though the ten-mile strip would all be needed. [Illustration: GATUN SPILLWAY, KEY TO THE CANAL] I spent a day in the big cut in January, 1917, and noted the rapid crumble of the historic bank at this troubled point. The following night the channel filled up for a length of eight hundred feet and shipping was suspended. Then the dredgers went at it hammer and tongs, and in three days and nights they had cleared a channel through that enormous mass of material and on the fourth day ships were again passing in safety. It was a fine illustration of the way dirt was made to fly in the old days. Some otherwise intelligent people have utterly failed to comprehend the size of the task involved in the mere digging of the Canal. One high official advocated the cure of slides by digging back a mile on each side of the bank. Verily, he knew not what he said, and a member of Congress on visiting the Canal reported that he was still in favor of a sea-level route. Competent engineers assured him that to construct a sea-level canal from ocean to ocean would require at least fifty years of continuous labor. The wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt's ideas has been forever vindicated by experience. Some practical man has said that no man can know how great is the task of making the earth until he tries to move a little of it. The congressman needed a little pick-and-shovel experience.