CHAPTER XVII
THE OPENING OF THE CANAL
WATER was first turned into the Gatun Locks on September 26, 1913. Several thousand canal employees lined the lock walls to watch the muddy fountains spurt up out of the round openings in the dusty concrete floors of the lock chambers. With the water came hundreds of big bull-frogs, sucked down through the sluices from the lake above, who swam round and round in comic bewilderment as the water-line rose higher and higher. When the water in the lowest lock was even with the surface of the sea-level canal outside, the gates were opened and the sea-going tug Gatun steamed in under her own power, for the electric towing-locomotives were not yet ready for service. General Goethals was not a passenger on the tug; but walked up and down the lock wall, receiving reports on how the valves and bull-wheels were working, and watching the Gatun as she was locked through to the lake
Two weeks later, on October 10, President Wilson pressed a button in the White House, and started an electric impulse which was relayed southward from cable-station to cable-station till it reached and exploded eight tons of dynamite, blowing up the Gamboa Dike and admitting the water of Gatun Lake into the Gaillard Cut. The Cut had already been partially flooded, that the in-
