The low-water flood of the Chagres river, just below the site of the proposed Gamboa Dam, is 209 feet wide by 7 feet 6 inches deep, the bed being triangular in cross section. In November 1885, a flood occurred here, under the influence of which the river was swollen to a width of 1560 feet, with a maximum depth of 28 feet, so that it was twelve times as wide as the canal and almost as deep at its deepest point. It is stated that the last four feet of the rise took place in four hours, and in thirty-six hours the water had risen about 20 feet. The general consensus of opinion among engineers appears to be that this immense flood has to be provided for in some way. M. de Lesseps originally proposed to meet the difficulty by constructing a dam, or embankment, two-thirds of a mile long, 1300 feet wide at the base, and 164 feet in height. This dam was to be designed so as to retain the floods which descend the Chagres river, storing the water and allowing it to escape gradually. The only alternative was to provide the flood waters with such a rapid means of escape to the ocean that they could not flood the canal. From considerations of economy, it was recently determined to abandon the lock gates at the port of Panama. It was intended in the original scheme to provide these gates in order to control the rise and fall of the tide at this end of the canal. This movement of the tide varies from 20 to 27 feet, being at least twelve times as much as at the other end of the canal. Obviously, therefore, the canal would be seriously affected by a tidal movement of so considerable a character, and leading engineers have not hesitated to say that without the lock gates at Panama the canal is an impossibility. AMERICAN VIEWS OF THE ENTERPRISE. “American engineers,” we are told, “have never had but one opinion of the canal. As a general thing they have never believed that it could be built on the lines, within the time, nor for the money specified by M. de Lesseps.” The same writer adds that “M. de Lesseps, having won fame by scooping out some sand hills and connecting some lakes and streams at Suez, thought it was a simple matter to make a canal anywhere. He has persistently refused to see any difficulties, or to squarely look the undertaking in the face, and to estimate the chances for and against its completion, and the collapse of all this will simply be a question of time.”[196] Another American writer adopts much the same view, in even more emphatic language, when he says[197] that, “of the final cost of M. de Lesseps’s sea-level canal at Panama, if there could be anything about it save utter failure, nothing can be known, except that it will be a fabulous amount.... The great difficulties and expense of excavation are still before them, and the knotty, perhaps impossible, problem of the Chagres river is still unsolved.”