Panama Canal came in. Think of it, Joe! Nine miles long, with an
average depth of 120 feet, and at some places the sides go up 500
feet above the bed of the channel. Why the Suez Canal is a farm
ditch alongside of it!"

"Whew!" whistled Joe. "You're there with the facts already,
Blake."

"They're so interesting I couldn't help but remember them," said
Blake with a smile. "This book has a lot in it about the big
landslides. At first they were terribly discouraging to the
workers. They practically put the French engineers, who started
the Canal, out of the running, and even when the United States
engineers started figuring they didn't allow enough leeway for the
Culebra slides.

"At first they decided that a ditch about eight hundred feet wide
would be enough to keep the top soil from slipping down. But they
finally had to make it nearly three times that width, or eighteen
hundred feet at the top, so as to make the sides slope gently
enough."

"And yet slides occur even now," remarked Joe, dubiously.

"Yes, because the work isn't quite finished."

"And we're going to get one of those slides on our films?"

"If we go, yes; and I don't see but what we'd better go."