This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 Excerpt: ...about 1.000,000 cubic yards of material moving toward the cut at about three yards a day This slide has filled the Cut from side to side. A partial Cut has been dug through its center and the shovels are seen working on either side. The tracks are moved nightly as the material is removed. slippery material like clay on which it rests. The nature of the phenomenon is clearly shown by the diagram printed on the next page in which the slide marked C is of the type just described. On the west bank of the Canal occurred a slide of the second type caused by the crushing and squeezing out of underlying layers of soft material by the prodigious pressure of the high banks left untouched by the steam shovels. This slide is usually accompanied by the uprising of the bed of the Canal sometimes to a height of thirty feet. Col. Gaillard tells of standing on the bed of the Canal, observing the working of a steam shovel, when it gradually dawned upon him that he was no longer on the level of the shovel. At first he thought that the shovel must have been placed upon a bit of boggy land and was slowly sinking, but on investigation he discovered that the point on which he was standing had been slowly rising until within five minutes he had been lifted six feet without jar and with no sensation of motion. A perfectly simple illustration of the way in which this elevation of the bed of the Canal THE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SLIDE 205 is caused may be obtained by pressing the hand upon a pan of dough. The dough will of course rise at the side of the hand. On the "big job" the towering hills furnished the pressure, the bed of the Canal rose like the dough. In the diagram already referred to, the slide to the right marked "B" is of the type here describe...