urn in, as well as to furnish a site for the concentration of
industries. The Foundation Company had in the meantime decided to
establish a shipyard on this basin; its engineers were on the ground,
and its material was rolling.

One dredge was sent around Lake Pontchartrain to commence boring in
from that end. This could not be done on the river end. The Mississippi
is too mighty a giant to risk such liberties. The 2,000-foot cut
between the river and the lock would have to be done last of all, when
the rest of the canal and the lock were finished, and the new levees
that would protect the city against its overflow, were solidly set. But
a few hundred feet from the turning basin, was Bayou Bienvenu, which
runs into Lake Borgne, part of Lake Pontchartrain, and one of the
refuges of Lafitte in the brave days when smuggling was more a sport of
the plain people than it is now with European travel restricted to the
wealthy. So through Bayou Bienvenu a small excavator was sent to cut a
passage into the turning basin, to allow the mighty 22-inch dredges to
get in and work outwards towards the lake and the lock site.

The problem was further complicated by the Florida Walk drainage
system, which emptied into Bayou Bienvenu, and by the railway lines
that crossed the site of the Canal.

These railways were the Southern Railway, at the lake end, the
Louisville & Nashville, at the middle, and the Southern and Public Belt
near the turning basin on Florida Walk. For them, the Dock Board had to
build "run-around" tracks, to be used while their lines were cut to
enable the dredging to be made and the bridges to be constructed.

For the drainage, the plans called for the construction of an inverted
siphon passing under the Canal, a river under a river, so to speak. In
the meantime, however, the drainage canal had to be blocked off with
two cofferdams, to cut off the water from the city and the bayou, and
enable the construction of the siphon between.

Additional railroad tracks, too, had to be built to handle the immense
volume of material needed for the work; roads had to be built for
getting supplies on the job by truck; the trolley line had to be
extended for the transportation of labor.

Week by week the labor gangs grew, as the men were able to find places
in the attacking line of the industrial battle. Great excavators
stalked over the land, pulling themselves along by their dippers which
bit out chunks of earth as big as a