necessity for our doing that, yet it was felt to be wise to be in perfect harmony.

Senator KITTREDGE. You were a member of the Board of Consulting Engineers?

General DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator KITTREDGE. And signed the majority report?

General DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator KITTREDGE. In favor of a sea-level canal?

General DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator KITTREDGE. Are you familiar with the report of the minority of the Consulting Engineers?

General DAVIS. I am; yes, sir.

Senator KITTREDGE. Also the report of the Isthmian Canal Commission the present Commission?

General DAVIS. I am; yes, sir.

Senator KITTREDGE. Have you read the testimony of the witnesses? General DAVIS. I have; all except that of General Hains.

Senator MORGAN. I would like to ask you whether at the close of the Spanish war you were made governor of Porto Rico? General DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. How long did you serve in that capacity?

General DAVIS. I arrived there in May, 1899, and turned over the government of the island to the civil governor on the 1st of May, 1900. I remained in Porto Rico until the following December, in command of the forces there, and with instructions to cooperate with the new governor and assist him in every way I could to get the civil government of Porto Rico started off.

Senator MORGAN. While there you had the task of organizing the civil government in Porto Rico under the Government of the United States?

General DAVIS. I did, sir, in way of preparation and assistance. Senator MORGAN. And virtually did the whole work?

General DAVIS. Well, I should scarcely want to claim credit for everything. I carried out the instructions of my superior, the Secretary of War, Mr. Root-I tried to.

Senator MORGAN. Did you, at any time during or after the Spanish war, have any power of government or command or control in the island of Cuba?

General DAVIS. Before that I had; yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. Before you went to Porto Rico?

General DAVIS. Yes, sir. I went to Cuba in the autumn of 1898, and landed the first regiment that landed in Habana, and then went and organized the military government of the province of Pinar del Rio, the western end of the island of Cuba, and remained there until the following February.

Senator MORGAN. You were in charge of the military government at Pinar del Rio?

General DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. You were not in charge of the Santiago government at any time?

General DAVIS. No; I never was in Santiago.

Senator MORGAN. Then afterwards you served in the Philippines? General DAVIS. I left Porto Rico in December, 1899, and in January I was in the Philippines.

Senator MORGAN. What were your duties and official functions out in the Philippines?

General DAVIS. I was appointed inspector-general of the troops in the Philippines upon my arrival, but only remained in that position about two or three weeks. I was then detailed by the commanding general in the Philippines as provost-marshal-general of the Philippine division, and was assigned to duty in command. of the troops stationed in the city of Manila, which made me practically the military governor of the city of Manila, with instructions to organize that government and get it ready for a civil government as soon as possible. I did so, and six months later I turned over the government of the city of Manila to the commissioners who had been designated by the Philippine Commission to govern the city; and I then went to the southern Philippines in command of one of the departments, and carried on some military operations in the southern Philippines.

Senator MORGAN. What civil functions did you perform during the remainder of your stay there?

General DAVIS. After about a year's stay in the southern Philippines, holding the position, practically, of military and civil governor (if the two functions can be considered to be merged, because the Philippine government had not at that time assumed civil government in southern Mindanao and the Jolo Archipelago), I went back to Manila in July or August, 1902, and commanded the military forces in the island of Luzon for about two months, and then relieved General Chaffee as commander of all the forces in the Philippine Islands. That was on the 1st of October, 1902, and in the following July, ten months later, I was retired from active service and came home.

Senator MORGAN. Did you come home under any new appointment? General DAVIS. No. I had been informed that I was likely to be appointed a member of the Interoceanic Canal Commission. I had received an intimation to that effect.

Senator MORGAN. How long was it after you returned before you were appointed?.

General DAVIS. I came home through the Suez route and arrived in November, and in the following March I was appointed.

Senator MORGAN. Having had an intimation of your appointment as one of the Commission, when you passed through the Suez route did you give particular attention to that route?

General DAVIS. It was the principal reason why I came home that way, so that I could see it and study it.

Senator MORGAN. You wanted to study it before you took your office as Commissioner?

General DAVIS. Yes.

Senator MORGAN. That is all I wanted to ask the General.

Senator DRYDEN. Did you spend any time at Suez besides passing through the Suez Canal as a traveler?

General DAVIS. No; I was only there two and a half days, I suppose, in all. I should have liked to spend a week or two there, but the movements of the transport did not permit.

The CHAIRMAN. General, will you now proceed (if there are no other questions to ask at this point) and give the committee such information as you have prepared for it?

General DAVIS. Gentlemen, I have prepared some notes here which represent some ideas that I will express to you, with your permission, and will make them the basis of any subsequent remarks or answers to interrogations which you may wish to put to me. If you wish to interrupt me at any time, do not hesitate to do so, because I can take up the thread of my remarks easily.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will endeavor to let you go along and finish your statement as far as possible, after which we will probably want to ask you a number of questions.

General DAVIS. What I have to say begins with certain general considerations that relate to the canal question in a very large way and have nothing to do with the type or physical features.

There are some general phases of the isthmian canal question that do not seem to have received attention in the consideration of this committee, so far as may be judged from the printed reports of the hearings. I would like to be permitted to briefly discuss a phase of the question affecting type ultimately that has no concern at the moment with the subject of locks, sea levels, dams, curves, prisms, speed, capacity, and safety.

The aspect of the question that it seems to me has so far been overlooked requires for its elucidation a consideration of the geography of the earth and the size, situation, and relation of the continents and oceans to each other, together with the distribution of the world's population.

A glance at a map of the Eastern Hemisphere shows graphically certain facts respecting the physical conditions and relations of the densely and sparsely populated areas to what are and must always be the great commercial activities of trade, commerce, and travel.

In Europe and Asia are found nearly two-fifths of the habitable. land areas of the globe, and within them live more than four-fifths of the world's inhabitants. Africa contains nearly one-fourth of the globe's land area and contains about one-twelfth of its inhabitants.

The Arctic Ocean, lying in the north of Europe and Asia, does not supply a practicable marine route between the eastern and the western seas. The Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, with the Mediterranean and Red seas, border Europe and Asia on the west, south, and east; and the natural obstacle-104 miles wide-that was interposed to the mariner at the Isthmus of Suez, was removed by man many years since, so that now the ocean-borne coasting trade of this vast northern area and population encounters no obstacles to free movement save those that the winds and waves interpose everywhere on the ocean to the sailor. The population of the northern and northeastern shores of Africa also depends upon the Suez route in passing between the Atlantic and Mediterranean waters on the one side and those of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean on the other.

All the inhabitants of Europe and Asia and half of those of Africa that are in any way interested in water-borne interoceanic commerce of the eastern world are served by the Suez Canal, that joins the Atlantic and Mediterranean to the Indian and Pacific waters; or their vessels must double the Cape of Good Hope, which involves an increased distance of 2,700 miles as a minimum and 4,300 as a maxi

mum.

In the Western Hemisphere the geographical conditions are not dissimilar to those just referred to, although the areas are much

smaller, and the populations now waiting for better and shorter means of interoceanic transit are very many times smaller.

There is in the western as in the eastern world no navigable waterway through the Arctic, and no way for a vessel to pass directly between the Atlantic and the Pacific save by doubling the southern extremity of South America. But the obstacle that nature has interposed to a shorter route of travel and trade is fortunately not an insuperable one; for a canal half as long as that at Suez through the Isthmus of Panama will shorten voyages between North Atlantic and North Pacific American ports, via Cape Horn, by a distance of 9,600 miles, or considerably more than double the saving that the Suez Canal permits between England and India. Subjecting Panama to the same treatment that resulted in joining the Mediterranean and Red seas will result in separating the American continents and joining the oceans, just as the making of the Suez Canal did in the Old World.

The density of the population to the square mile in Europe is 107 and in Asia 57. When North and South America shall have been peopled as densely as is Asia now, the total American population will reach 760,000,000 souls.

When we consider that there is more waste land in Asia than in the two Americas; that the Indian population of nearly 300,000,000 is distributed at the rate of 164 to the mile; that the 28,000,000 inhabitants of Java, a little larger than Cuba, have a density of 568 to the square mile; that migration from the Old to the New World is proceeding at an enormous rate, and that it is an ever-increasing one, we may well believe that the New World may in one or two centuries have a thousand million inhabitants, and that it may attain to onethird of this figure by the time the Panama Canal shall have been in commission fifty years.

It seems to me, then, that we should have these considerations constantly in mind when discussing the capacity, dimensions, and type of this great waterway, that can never have a rival save the other continental interoceanic canal at Suez. Should it not be at least as capacious, free, and unobstructed as the best of the excavated channels that man has made, or that he will ever be called upon to make? What the situation demands is well known, and the American Government has declared to the world that the obstacle at Panama shall be removed. Will it be removed if we leave a hill over which the world's commerce and navies are to be hoisted? Will the world consider that we have adequately solved the problem, and will the American people be satisfied with the result if we offer them anything inferior as respects capacity, or convenience, or adaptability for enlargement, or type, to what private capital did for the Old World-a canal which now serves as a model, and will continue to until we acquit ourselves of the responsibility voluntarily and eagerly assumed?

Two object lessons: There is in the United States no really maritime canal; and, fortunately, the physical characteristics of the land do not require that any be made. Cape Cod may be segregated from the rest of Massachusetts; the Delaware and Chesapeake bays may be joined, and the Florida Peninsula may be traversed by a waterway; but these are all subsidiary-merely possible conveniences. But the Panama Canal is not in this category.

Only one of our many internal waterways has ever been considerably enlarged and adapted to use by vessels of considerable size. I refer to the one between Lakes Superior and Huron, which really is not a canal at all, but instead a lock proposition with a few thousand feet of channel approaches and jetties at each end. Its locks are more analogous to some of those great tidal harbor basins of Europe, to which access for the loading and discharging of vessels is afforded by locks or gates, than to an interoceanic canal.

The Soo Canal, so called, is a mile and six-tenths long. The six locks in the minority's plan of the Panama Canal are 2 miles long. These locks alone of the proposed lock plan at Panama are nearly a mile longer than the whole Soo Canal with its lock.

Had Nature given to Lakes Superior and Huron a common level, as she has to the oceans, the supposed obstacle at the Soo to free communication would have long since been removed by the construction of a channel clear of all obstructions, and this regardless of any cost that was within our capacity and resources. But, unfortunately, Nature made such simple treatment impossible, for Lake Huron is twenty-odd feet lower than Lake Superior. It was useless to wish for an ideal treatment of the obstacle, for it was an impossibility; and American and Canadian engineers have provided the best solution possible.

At first locks 350 feet long sufficed. Then one 515 feet long was added. Next the first were demolished and replaced with a lock with chamber 800 feet long. Then the Canadians made another in their territory 900 feet long; and we are about to demolish our second lock to put in one 1,400 feet long. So now there are three parallel locks at the Soo, with a combined length of 2,215 feet, soon to be increased, not in number, but in length, to 3,100 feet.

Senator KITTREDGE. May I interrupt you there? I did not quite understand the statement regarding the 1,400-foot lock.

General DAVIS. Congress, as I understand, has authorized the construction of a 1,400-foot lock at the Soo, and they propose to tear out the Weitzel lock and put the new 1,400-foot lock in its place. I am told that by the engineer in charge.

Senator KITTREDGE. Does that mean a lock with usable dimensions of 1,400 feet?

General DAVIS. With usable dimensions of 1,400 feet, less the swing of the gates; yes.

Senator DRYDEN. Is the object of lengthening that lock to permit more of the medium-length vessels to get in at one time?

General DAVIS. That is it; that is it. They put in two, three, four, five, six of those boats and barges, you know. The whaleback barge is a common method of transportation there.

Senator MORGAN. In what act was provision made for that 1,400foot lock?

General DAVIS. I could not tell you offhand, Senator. My information comes from the engineer who is in charge of the Soo locks. He says that they are just now making their plans to tear out the Weitzel lock and put in a 1,400-foot lock.

Senator MORGAN. It is one of those things that slipped into an appropriation bill, I suppose.

General DAVIS. I can hunt it up.

Senator MORGAN. We will get it. I was just inquiring.