JX 
 1398. 8 
 
 M826i 
 
 MORISON 
 
 ISTHMIAN CANAL 
 
 3 
 1 
 
 4 
 6 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 The Isthmian Canal 
 
 A LKCTURK 
 
 BY 
 
 MR. GEORGE 5. M0RI50N 
 
 Member Isthmian Canal Commission 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 contemporary club bridgeport. conn. 
 
 May 2o, 1902
 
 JX 
 THE ISTHMIAN CANAL. 
 
 A Lecture by Mr. George S. Morison, 
 
 Member Isthmian Canal Commission, 
 Before the Contemporary Club, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
 May 20, 1902. 
 
 5 
 
 «^^ It is perhaps a very unsatisfactory, and a rather appalling 
 introduction to be brought before you as one who knows all about 
 
 ^^ so mooted a question as that of the Isthmian Canal. I will 
 ^ acknowledged that I think I do know something about it, but 
 t there are plenty of people who will tell you I do not. I shall 
 therefore start on the principle that I do know ; and I trust, with 
 
 ^ the respect which I have no dotibt you have for the opinion of 
 your president, that you will all agree with me in what I say. 
 
 This is the third time which I have recently spoken on this 
 particular subject. The first time was before a commercial club, 
 and I endeavored then to describe the different canal routes, 
 particularly Panama and Nicaragua, and to state as briefly and 
 as plainly as I could their physical characteristics and their 
 respective merits. The second time I spoke to a reform club, 
 and as reformers are not supposed to deal especially with com- 
 mercial considerations or engineering details, I spoke then of the 
 reasons why a canal should be built, and the effect which an 
 isthmian canal might be expected to have in furthering the 
 good ends which it is supposed reformers intend to accomplish. 
 I do not exactly understand what the special character of this 
 club is ; but in one respect it differs radically from either of the 
 others, as all the members of each of the other clubs wore black 
 clothes. I must therefore on this occasion take up the subject 
 in a rather more general way, and speak both as to what the canal 
 would be and as to why it should be.
 
 The isthmus has four hundred years stood in the way of 
 what men wanted to accompHsh. Cohunbus started to reach 
 ihe Orient ; he might have got there, but the isthmus was in the 
 way. After a lapse of more than four hundred years the 
 Oregon, a great battleship, tried to go from the Pacific, where 
 she was built, to the Gulf of Mexico, and the isthmus stood in 
 the way. Those four hundred years from the voyage of Colum- 
 bus to the voyage of the Oregon have witnessed very remarkable 
 changes in the operations which the isthmus impeded. 
 
 First, in the matter of commerce ; Columbus tried to reach 
 Asia ; it was the Asiatic commerce, the Asiatic trade which was 
 before him, and that was the one thing that he thought of. For 
 three hundred and fifty years the trade of the far East was the 
 principal trade which sought to cross the isthmus. Then came 
 an entirely different condition ; it was the development of our 
 Pacific coast; suddenly the trade of California arose, and that 
 was the important thing which had to cross the isthmus. Finally 
 the railroads across the continent are handling the California 
 business, and the question of the extreme East has come up 
 again ; it is the trade of the Orient combined with the other con- 
 ditions of the Pacific which now make the demand for the 
 Isthmian Canal. 
 
 During these periods enormous changes have taken place in 
 the class of ships which need to cross the isthmus. Columbus 
 came in his caravels ; and in the early days the same class of ship, 
 I presume, in which he crossed the ocean, used to sail from ports 
 in Spain across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean, up the San 
 Juan Rive-, across Lake Nicaragua, and landed their cargoes 
 at the City of Granada. In the next period, the period of Cali- 
 fornia activity, business was handled in side-wheel steamers; 
 steamers seldom more than two hundred and fifty feet long, none 
 of them drawing more than seventeen or eighteen feet, crowded 
 with passengers, carying practically no freight ; and these ships 
 were the ones on which the earlier isthmian canal projects 
 were based. And now we have come to ships compared to
 
 which these CaHfornia steamers are insignificant; ships not of 
 2,000, but of 20,000 tons ; ships seven hundred feet long, drawing 
 thirty-two feet, with seventy or seventy-five feet beam. Those 
 are the ships which any modern canal must be built to accom- 
 modate; ships that cannot go through the Suez Canal. The 
 largest ships now sailing from English ports to Australia neces- 
 sarily go around the Cape of Good Hope because the Suez Canal 
 is not big enough. 
 
 In anor.her respect there has been a tremendous and radical 
 change. All the early history of the isthmus was based on the 
 Spanish occupation; and the Spanish occupation, like all 
 mediaeval work, was an occupation which utterly disregarded 
 sanitation. In every Spanish city, I presume in Spain, and cer- 
 tainly in all Spanish-America, no attempt whatever has been 
 made either to provide good water or to provide a proper sew- 
 erage system. All the development has been one which tended 
 to preserve the diseases of centuries for the benefit of posterity. 
 The Panama railroad was built fifty years ago, in a country 
 already occupied on the Spanish principle, at a time when little 
 was known about sanitary rules, and at a time when the isthmus 
 was crowded by the same class of population in transit to Cali- 
 fornia, which, in later years made the towns on the plains such 
 that they were designated as "hell on wheels." This was the 
 kind of people that covered the isthmus when the Panama rail- 
 road was built, and it was under those conditions that the 
 isthmus obtained the name of being the most unhealthy place in 
 the world. Then followed the construction of the Panama Canal 
 by the French company; a company which started out with a 
 magnificent abandon which has hardly ever been equalled, which 
 started to spend money as if there were no end to it, and to im- 
 port into u tropical country the luxuries and dangers of the 
 French merropolis. It resulted, as was to be expected, in a dis- 
 aster, in every way you can think of ; financial, physical, moral, 
 sanitary ; and that perpetuated the bad name of the Isthmus of 
 Panama. The final sanitary development is one of which this
 
 country may well be proud ; and that is the work which the 
 American army has done in Cuba under the rule which termi- 
 nates to-day. Cuba is naturally a Healthy island, but its cities 
 have all the troubles of the Spanish occupation ; exactly the same 
 thing existed in Havana which exists in Panama; and it has 
 been thoroughly proved that the tropical diseases which have 
 made Cuba a terror, are diseases which can be absolutely con- 
 trolled ; this, I believe, will be the case in the City of Panama, 
 as much as it was in Santiago, when the same control and the 
 same management is placed there. 
 
 And now there is one other development, in thought at least, 
 which has come about within the last two weeks. The isthmus 
 has been considered throughout its length not only a seat of 
 tropical disease, but a seat of natural disturbance. It is all an 
 earthquake country. Nicaragua is an earthquake country, 
 Panama is an earthquake country, and the earthquakes extend 
 well over !nto Central America, Colombia and Venezuela. The 
 effect of earthquakes on a canal has been more or less spoken of. 
 The only conclusion that I have been able to reach is that an 
 earthquake will not injure a canal seriously. A canal is the 
 character of structure on which earthquakes would have least 
 effect. It is in the earth ; not raised above it. Its masonry is all 
 low, heavy, massive. There are no floors to be dropped out by, 
 spreading walls. And even though earthquakes were compara- 
 tively frequent, I do not believe the effect of those earthquakes 
 en canal structures would be sufficiently great to be taken into 
 consideration in selecting a canal route. I believe myself that 
 the danger of earthquakes is three times as much at Nicaragua 
 as at Panama ; but as three times nothing differs but little from 
 once nothing it does not bear any important part in this con- 
 nection. 
 
 On the other hand, there is another natural disturbance 
 which since I visited the Isthmus I have believed to be a real 
 danger and that is, the danger of the canal being filled up by 
 volcanic eruptions. This is a thing which we have heard so little
 
 of for nearly twenty centuries, that people have been accustomed 
 to set it aside as a matter of no importance ; but the recent dis- 
 turbance at Martinique has made volcanic eruptions, and especi- 
 ally deposits of lava and cinders, more prominent in everybody's 
 mind than they have been for 2,000 years ; and this I fully be- 
 lieve is a real danger. No country is fuller of volcanoes than 
 the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, exactly where the 
 Nicaragua Canal is located. I do not believe that in the whole 
 world there exists a location in which a repetition of the Mar- 
 tinique disaster is more probable than directly on Lake 
 Nicaragua. 
 
 Before entering into the features of the canals themselves, I 
 want to refer to the general character of the world. I presume 
 there is no one here who will dispute the fact that the earth is a 
 sphere. I doubt whether there are many here who have ever 
 thoroughly realized what this means, what the real character of 
 a sphere is. We think of the globe with its North pole up, its 
 South pole down, and we looking at the equator; and yet there 
 is no more reason for looking at a globe from this direction than 
 from any other. A globe appears very differently, so far as the 
 arrangement of land and seas is concerned, according to the 
 direction in which you look at it. The shortest line of travel 
 on the globe is a great circle curve ; and if you look at that 
 great circle curve from a point in the plane of that curve, what- 
 ever way that curve be drawn, it looks like a straight line. 
 
 There are many ideas which we get from maps which we 
 find to be absolutely wrong when we study the globe. We are 
 accustomed to think that if we travel west we take the shortest 
 line to go to a point which is directly west of us. This is true 
 only on the equator. We are accustomed to think that the 
 Sandwich Islands are somewhere near a line from San Francisco 
 to Japan ; and yet, if you want to find a midway station between 
 San Francisco and Japan, you must not go south to the Sand- 
 wich Islands, but away up north to the Aleutian Islands, and 
 there you will find it. We think that the nearest points in
 
 America to Australia and New Zealand, which are south of the 
 Equator, must be pretty well south, and yet San Francisco is 
 nearer to Australia than any point in North America until you 
 get almost to Patagonia. There are many of these things which 
 have given entirely false ideas because we have been brought up 
 on maps, and as an illustration of this I shall show you a few 
 views of the globe. 
 
 The following views were then exhibited on the screen : 
 
 1. View of the globe taken from a point in space above 
 
 the North Pole, the meridian of Greenwich being 
 indicated by a full black line and the i8oth meridian 
 by a broken black line. An arrow points to the 
 Mississippi River, which is in longitude 90° west, 
 another arrow to the mouth of the Ganges River in 
 longitude 90° east, and exactly opposite the Missis- 
 sippi River, a third arrow points to the Panama Canal 
 and a fourth arrow to the Suez Canal. This view 
 shows that to go from European ports to India a 
 vessel must pass through three times as much longi- 
 tude if she takes the Panama route as if she takes the 
 Suez route, showing that the Panama Canal will be 
 for the Asiatic trade of America and not for that of 
 Europe. 
 
 2. View of the globe showing a curve of uniform dis- 
 
 tance, 5,830 miles from Wellington, N. Z., which 
 passes 90 miles from San Francisco and strikes the 
 west coast of South America in latitude 5 degrees 
 south. 
 
 3. View of the globe showing a curve of uniform dis- 
 
 tance, 6,500 miles from Sidney, N. S. W., which 
 passes close to San Francisco and strikes the west 
 coast of South America in latitude 25 degrees 30 
 minutes south. 
 
 4. View of the globe showing a great circle curve tangent 
 
 to Southern California and passing through Yoko- 
 hama, this indicating the shortest possible course 
 which any vessel passing through the Panama Canal 
 could take to reach Japan.
 
 5- View of the globe showing a great circle curve con- 
 necting San Francisco and Yokohama. 
 
 6. View of the globe showing a great circle curve con- 
 necting Panama and San Francisco, this curve pass- 
 ing through Yucatan, crossing the Gulf of Mexico 
 and the remainder of it being on land. 
 
 The American Isthmus properly extends from South 
 America through to Southern Mexico. It is about fifteen hun- 
 dred miles long. There are on this Isthmus but three general 
 locations at which a passage of the Isthmus is practicable. 
 
 The first of these, starting from the south, is in the curve 
 that surrounds Panama Bay. Around that bay the Isthmus is 
 exceptionally narrow, and three different routes have been V 
 
 selected there as lines for canals. 
 
 The second place where a passage is possible is at Lake 
 Nicaragua. 
 
 The third attractive point has been the Isthmus of Tehuante- 
 pec, west of Yucatan. 
 
 On the curve around Panama Bay three canal routes have 
 been proposed, and each of them is subject to several variants. 
 The most easterly of these is that commonly called the Darien 
 route, or the Caledonia Bay route, which starts from the point 
 where William Paterson two hundred years ago founded his 
 town of New Edinburgh, expecting to establish there a city, 
 which, controlling the transit of the Isthmus, would become the 
 metropolis of the Western world ; a city which lasted but a year. 
 It was deserted after the most extreme tribulations, and to-day 
 it has absolutely disappeared. There is not a white settlement 
 on the coast within seventy-five miles of it in either direction. 
 I have myself visited the site of New Edinburgh, and it was an 
 absolute wilderness, in which I thought I could trace the old 
 ditch or canal which was dug as a protection from Spanish and 
 Indian invasion, but which was hardly distinguishable from any 
 other lagoon. It is on a beautiful harbor; and seen from the
 
 8 
 
 sea there is a gap in the mountains which looks as if it was an 
 ideal passage ; but that gap is six hundred feet high ; and 
 although a tunnel route could be found there, nothing else is 
 practicable. The next line is what is known as the San Bias 
 route. That is undoubtedly the shortest passage between the two 
 oceans ; but the summit here is over a thousand feet high. The 
 harbors are good at both ends, and if it were not for the moun- 
 tain it would be the best route ; but it involves a tunnel four and 
 a half miles long ; and such a tunnel built to pass a modern ship 
 is a work which even a modern engineer would hesitate to under- 
 take. The third of the routes which terminate on Panama Bay, 
 is the well-known Panama route. This is the only possible 
 route of the three with a low summit; the summit on the line 
 of the Panama Railroad being only two hundred and eighty-five 
 feet above the sea. It is the lowest summit that exists any 
 where except at Nicaragua. 
 
 The second location is the Nicaragua location, and on the 
 Nicaragua location the lowest summit any where on the conti- 
 nent seems to be found. It is but one hundred and fifty feet 
 above the sea. 
 
 The third location, Tehuantepec, is impracticable for a 
 V canal. The summit is about seven hundred feet high ; it is too 
 broad a summit to tunnel. Although the best line for the ship 
 railroad which Captain Eads proposed to build, it is not suitable 
 for any other method of isthmian transit. Captain Eads was a 
 man of extraordinary ability; if he had lived indefinitely, I do 
 not feel at all sure but what he would have built his ship rail- 
 road. On the other hand, I feel that it is a very fortunate thing 
 that he did not build it ; if a railroad of that kind had been built, 
 even if constructionally successful, it would already be inadequate 
 to do the work it was intended to perform. 
 
 Of the different routes, there are but three that it is worth 
 while to say anything about ; the San Bias, the Panama and the 
 Nicaragua. The San Bias route has lately been brought into 
 prominence because statements have been made public that the 
 
 /
 
 mountain was of solid granite ; that it could easily be tunneled, 
 and that the canal could be built on an absolutely straight line. 
 There is no reason to suppose that there is a particle of granite 
 any where on this route. The statements that the mountain is 
 of granite are derived from old note books, about fifty years old, 
 in which pencil notes designate the surface rock as granite. The 
 engineers employed by the Commission, who traveled over all 
 the country and traced the summit, were unable to find any 
 granite, and I know no one who has ever seen any granite any- 
 where on the Isthmus. Furthermore, there is no reason to sup- 
 pose that it would be possible to find anything approaching a 
 straight line. A tunnel four and a half miles long, when a 
 possible route exists one hundred miles away without a tunnel, 
 is fatal to the scheme. 
 
 The Panama route deserves more consideration. At Pan- 
 ama the distance from ocean to ocean on a straight line is only 
 >^^^about thirty-five miles. The distance from tide water to tide 
 water is a little over forty. The distance from the six-fathom 
 water in the Atlantic to the six-fathom water in the Pacific, 
 according to the location made by the French Canal Company, 
 which has been followed by the Isthmian Canal Commission on 
 its surveys, is about forty-nine miles, which can probably be 
 slightly shortened. Of this, two-thirds lie in the low country 
 back of Colon, and in the valley of Chagres. The other one- 
 third crosses the low Cordilleras and lies in the marshes back 
 of Panama. 
 
 The original French scheme contemplated a canal without 
 locks, involving a cut at the summit nearly four hundred feet 
 deep, as the canal with its easier curves cannot take advantage 
 of the extremely low point which the railroad followed, and the 
 cut would be from the highest level at one side to the bottom 
 of the canal. That such a canal is practicable, I have not the 
 slightest doubt ; but it is complicated not merely by the amount 
 of excavation necessary ; but by the control of the floods of the 
 Chagres River, which at times exceed one hundred thousand 
 
 U-^
 
 io 
 
 cubic feet per second, and by the fact that there is a twenty-foot 
 tide on the Pacific and a one-foot tide on the Atlantic. The 
 floods of the Chagres could be taken care of by making a canal 
 for two-thirds its length big enough to carry them off without 
 injury. I see no other way. I do not think any diversion 
 channel practicable; the canal itself is in the lowest part of the 
 valley; a diversion channel would have to be put on higher 
 ground. The tidal range on the Pacific means that a tide level 
 canal must have a lock, it would be a tide lock with gates opening 
 both ways, and that there would be times when both gates could 
 be left open ; but it is a limit to the capacity of a canal, much like 
 the limit produced by any other lock. The cost of such a canal 
 would be about one hundred million dollars more than a canal 
 with a summit level and with locks. If this were the whole 
 story, I believe that a tide level canal at Panama would be the 
 best possible solution of the isthmian transit question ; but prac- 
 tically all the work on the tide level canal would be excavation, 
 and concentrated excavation which it would take a maximum 
 time to remove. I believe it would take at least twenty-five years 
 to build a proper tide level canal, and this seems to me to be 
 absolutely fatal to the scheme. We cannot wait so long. We 
 can afford to pay the money, but we cannot afford to wait these 
 fifteen years without getting any returns. 
 
 Before the failure of the old company, which started work 
 in its reckless way at Panama, the tide level scheme had been 
 temporarily abandoned. They had begun the work of construct- 
 ing locks ; and it was probably a temporary abandonment which 
 would have been measured by centuries rather than by years. 
 Various plans have been made by different commissions for a 
 canal with locks. Different heights of summit levels have been 
 proposed. The plan adopted by the Isthmian Canal Commission 
 proposes to build a dam across the Chagres about fifteen miles 
 from Colon, about one-third of the distance across the isthmus, 
 and to convert the Chagres above the dam into a lake, while 
 below the dam the Chagres would be carried to sea by a route
 
 II 
 
 safely away from the canal. Leaving the lake, known as Lake 
 Bohio, the canal would cut through the range at Culebra cut, 
 and then descend by three locks to the Pacific. 
 
 To describe it briefly, a ship entering the canal would travel 
 fifteen miles in a tide level canal, then ascend by two locks of 
 great lift to the summit level of Lake Bohio, which would be 
 from eighty-five to ninety feet above tide water, the normal level 
 being eighty-five. It would travel through this artificial lake 
 for fifteen miles ; then leaving the lake, pass through the great 
 Culebra cut, a total distance of about seven miles, then by two 
 locks descend almost to the Pacific level, and a mile beyond by 
 one lock, or lift varying with the tide, pass down to the level of 
 ihe Pacific and so out to sea. 
 
 Lake Bohio, an enlargement of the Chagres, would be of 
 such dimensions that no flood ever known of the Chagres would 
 create a disturbing current. This lake would discharge over a 
 spillway two miles away from the canal; and the spillway, 
 which would be founded on rock, would be of such dimensions 
 that the regulation of the lake would be absolutely automatic. 
 As the summit level is placed eighty-five feet higher than that 
 of the tide level canal, the depth of the great cut is eighty-five 
 feet less, and the quantity of excavation on this line is reduced to 
 Ebout three-eighths of what it is on the tide level canal. 
 
 For nine months of the year the Chagres River alone supplies 
 ample water for all the demands of the canal ; for three months 
 the suppl}- may be inadequate ; but the lake formed by damming 
 the Chagres supplies a reservoir which meets these conditions; 
 and in the worst year of which we have any record the level of 
 that lake would be lowerd by all the demands of the canal, less 
 than three feet. 
 
 The pr.ncipal works on the canal are the locks, the spillway, 
 the dam at Bohio, and the excavation. The one work which con- 
 trols the time of execution is the Culebra cut. 
 
 The time required to pass through this canal would probably 
 be about twelve hours. In other words, a ship entering it in the
 
 12 
 
 morning could go out into the other ocean in the evening. No 
 night transit would be necessary. 
 
 The situation at Nicaragua is very different. Lake Nica- 
 ragua drams in the Caribbean Sea; and Lake Nicaragua at the 
 nearest point is only twelve miles from the Pacific. In early 
 days, as I have already said, ships sailed from ports in Spain, 
 went up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua, crossed Lake 
 Nicaragua to the city of Granada, discharged their cargoes, and 
 came home. Although it is reported that the last ship that ever 
 made that voyage never came home, that an earthquake, or some- 
 thing or other, disturbed the rocks somewhere in the San Juan 
 River, and she could not get out; there is no doubt that those 
 voyages were made. 
 
 In the early fifties a route to California was opened by way 
 of Nicaragua. The Transit Company ran steamers from New 
 York to Greytown, and from San Juan del Sur to San Francisco, 
 and made quicker time than the steamers that went by way of 
 Panama. A steamer sailing from New York entered an excel- 
 lent harbor at Greytown; the passengers there were transferred 
 lo a river boat which went up the San Juan River about seventy- 
 five miles to Castillo, where there was a rapid ; they had to walk 
 about a half a mile around the Castillo rapids, where they took 
 another boat, which could take them up the other twenty-five 
 miles of the San Juan to Lake Nicaragua and the seventy miles 
 across Lake Nicaragua to the west side of the lake. There a 
 good stage road fifteen miles long, which they could go over in 
 three hours, took them to San Juan del Sur, where a steamer 
 was waiting to take them to San Francisco. 
 
 To the layman it seemed as if it required little work to make 
 a canal transit line ; it was only necessary to improve the San 
 Juan River so that ocean vessels could go up it, and to construct 
 fifteen miles of canal between the lake and the Pacific. I think 
 it was this feeling, the crude impressions which made Lake 
 Nicaragua seem like an extension of the Atlantic Ocean, that 
 made the Nicaragua route as popular as it has been. But there
 
 13 
 
 are two things which the layman did not see. The first is that the 
 San Juan River is about one hundred miles long and one hun- 
 dred feet higher at one end than the other; no river can fall a 
 foot to the mile for one hundred miles without obstruction, the 
 removal of which will let the whole river run away. The next 
 feature is that half way between Lake Nicaragua and the sea the 
 San Carlos River, of about equal size, enters the San Juan River 
 and brings down immense quantities of sand ; it has no settling 
 basin like Lake Nicaragua ; and while on the upper half of the 
 San Juan River the great fall is maintained by rocky reefs, on 
 the lower half it is maintained by sand bars. One effect of 
 those sand bars has been verv marked, the fine harbor of fiftv 
 years ago at Greytown has absolutely disappeared, and in the 
 place where the Transit Line steamers formerly anchored reed<^ 
 are now growing in water three feet deep. 
 
 A curious feature of the Nicaragua route is that the difficulties 
 all come not in passing across the continental divide, but in 
 passing from Lake Nicaragua to the ocean into which Lake 
 Nicaragua drains. The San Juan River, which is the natural 
 route for boats now, is the obstacle in the way of building a 
 canal. The passage from the canal to the Pacific is remarkable. 
 The summit is only about fifty feet above the canal. Barring 
 danger from volcanoes no better line could be asked for a canal 
 than that between the lake and the Pacific, across the continental 
 divide. The whole difficulty comes in the swamp country be- 
 tween the sea and the San Juan River, where the river below the 
 San Carlos is obstructed by sand bars which cannot be re- 
 moved. 
 
 Three different general plans have been proposed for a canal 
 at Nicaragua. So far as the west end is concerned they might 
 all be called practically identical, though one of them involved 
 a dam founded on sand, which was not necessary, and which 
 would be impracticable. 
 
 The first careful surveys were made by Colonel Childs in the 
 early fifties. He made his estimates for the class of side-wheel
 
 14 
 
 steamers which then were in the California trade. He proposed 
 what was virtually a system of slack water navigation, with a 
 number of dams and locks of low lift until he got down into the 
 plain, and then he left the San Juan River and came across to 
 Grey town. 
 
 The next plan was that of the Maritime Canal Company, 
 prepared by Mr. Menocal ; and this plan was really the first con- 
 fession of the impracticability of the San Juan River route, the 
 first confession that what appeared to be a favoritism of nature 
 was really the greatest obstruction. He proposed to dam the 
 San Juan River below the mouth of the San Carlos, building a 
 dam of such height that the level of Lake Nicaragua would be 
 extended to it ; in other words, that Lake Nicaragua would be 
 lengthened fifty miles. He also planned to extend the level of 
 the lake out between two ranges of hills until he carried it 
 within eight miles of the Caribbean Sea, from which he was 
 going to lock down to the sea. It was a very beautiful scheme, 
 but there were two or three serious defects. His dam was below 
 the San Carlos, so that he would not escape the sand of the San 
 Carlos, and no foundation was found for the dam. Further sur- 
 veys showed that only one of the two ranges of hills between which 
 the lake was to be extended towards the Atlantic, existed. One 
 supposed range was only a series of isolated hills, and the lake 
 would have to be sustamed by a series of embankments about 
 twelve miK^s long in all, and some of which had a height of 
 nearly ninety feet. It was a scheme which I think no conserva- 
 tive engineer would ever dare to attempt. 
 
 The final plan adopted by the Isthmian Commission con- 
 templates a dam some little distance above the mouth of the San 
 Carlos, founded entirely on rock, to be built of masonry, and 
 the construction of a canal from Greytown harbor to connect 
 with the San Juan River above this dam. This would be a canal 
 for its entire length, using no portion of the San Juan River, 
 and it would be of about the same length as the whole Panama 
 Canal. It would have four locks, and be constructed for prac-
 
 15 
 
 tically its entire length through a swamp, and through the 
 wildest swamp I ever saw. It is a tropical swamp in a country 
 with an average rainfall of from two hundred to two hundred 
 and forty inches a year. It is this feature which has been 
 spoken of, admired, and criticized. It is said to be in a healthy 
 countr}-, but it is a country in which nobody lives. They say 
 there that it is perfectly healthy to be wet; that it is very un- 
 healthy to be occasionally wet and then dry ; and that there is no 
 occasion for ever getting dry there. It is a country which has 
 no roads ; you can only go about in boats ; and it remains to be 
 seen what its sanitary condition would be when a large force of 
 laborers was placed there, and the earth excavated and exposed 
 to the sun, where it would have the opportunity of having the 
 sun shine on it and then be rained on perhaps six times a day; 
 perhaps it would not breed the malaria which people would 
 generally expect ; but the soil of a tropical swamp is not a thing 
 to be handled generally with impunity. 
 
 With this canal completed, artificial harbors must be made 
 at both ends. There is no harbor at either end of the Nicaragua 
 Canal now. A ship entering the canal at Greytown would take 
 about twelve hours to go through the section of canal between 
 Greytown and the San Juan River. The San Juan River is a 
 stream apparently as big as the Mississippi at Dubuque ; it is a 
 crooked river, in some places so crooked that cutoffs are pro- 
 posed in the form of canals. A ship entering the canal at Grey- 
 town in the morning would reach the San Juan River in the 
 evening. If she was a small steamer she would probably go 
 right through by night ; if she was a large one she would proba- 
 bly wait till daylight, and then follow up the fifty miles of river 
 into Lake Nicaragua. The course of navigation follows for 
 seventy miles through Nicaragua ; the western third of which is 
 a dredged < luinncl, the remainder deep water; and from there a 
 passage of seventeen miles with four locks would take the ship 
 down to the Pacific. It is estimated that it would take from 
 thirty-three to thirty-six hours for a steamer to pass from Grey-
 
 i6 
 
 town to the Pacific, running all the time. This means, if she 
 travels night and day, two days and a night ; twenty-four hours 
 longer than at Panama ; if she travels only by day, it means three 
 days and two nights ; forty-eight hours longer than at Panama. 
 The Suez Canal is operated regularly night and day without 
 delay. The Nicaragua Canal might possibly also be operated 
 n this way ; but the Suez Canal is in a rainless country with an 
 exceedingly clear atmosphere; the Nicaragua Canal is in a 
 country of excessive rainfall, with a good deal of wind and more 
 or less fog. My own judgment is that small ships would go 
 through it day and night ; that big ships would run only by day. 
 The following views were then exhibited on the screen : 
 
 7. View of a portion of the globe v/hich includes the 
 
 United States and the northern portion of South 
 America exhibiting the volcanic regions around the 
 Caribbean Sea. 
 
 8. View of the Isthmus from near the mouth of the 
 
 Atrate to Lake Nicaragua, showing the Caledonia, 
 San Bias, Panama and Nicaragua routes. 
 
 9. Map of the Panama Canal, being a reproduction of 
 
 that prepared by the Isthmian Canal Commission. 
 
 10. Map of the Nicaragua location, being a reproduction 
 
 of that prepared by the Nicaragua Canal Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 11. Comparative profiles of the Panama, San Bias and 
 
 Nicaragua routes. 
 
 12. Profile of the Panama Canal, being a reproduction of 
 
 that prepared by the Isthmian Canal Commission. 
 
 13. Cross-section of the tunnel proposed for San Bias. 
 
 14. View of the relief map prepared by the New French 
 
 Panama Canal Company.
 
 17 
 
 15. Photographic view of the Bohio Dam site. 
 
 16. Photographic view of the excavation for the Bohio 
 
 locks. 
 
 17. Second photographic view of the excavation for the 
 
 Bohio locks. 
 
 18. Map of Lake Bohio. 
 
 19. Cross sections of different dams proposed for the 
 
 Bohio site. 
 
 To make a comparison between the different canals it hardly 
 seems necessary to take into consideration anything but Panama 
 and Nicaragua. And first looking at it in the matter of con- 
 struction. At Panama there are passable harbors at both ends ; 
 an excellent one at Panama, although it is technically nothing 
 but a protected roadstead; a harbor good for three hundred 
 and sixty-three days of the year on an average at Colon ; but it 
 requires a deepening of about five feet for the largest class of 
 vessels, to correspond to the thirty-five- foot depth of canal which 
 the Commission has proposed. There is an excellent railroad 
 across the Isthmus. The facilities are there to begin with. 
 
 At Nicaragua there is no harbor at either end, although art 
 ocean pier could probably be built on the Pacific end. There is 
 no railroad on the line. There are no means of communication. 
 There is practically no population. Everything must be made 
 ready. 
 
 The cost of building the Nicaragua Canal was estfmated by 
 the Commission at about forty-five million dollars more than the 
 cost of finishing the Panama. My own judgment is that this 
 does not represent the real relative cost of the two ; but that in 
 the endeavor to give each side an absolutely fair show, uniform 
 prices and uniform percentages were applied to both, and not 
 sufficient allowance made for the better understood conditions 
 at Panama, and that in reality the difference in cost would be
 
 i8 
 
 likely to be twice as great as these estimates indicate. How- 
 ever that may be, that is the cost not of building the Panama 
 Canal, but of finishing it ; of taking it where it is and com- 
 pleting it. 
 
 In the matter of time, my own judgment is that the Nicar- 
 agua Canal will take two years longer to build, perhaps four, 
 than it will to finish the Panama Canal. On that there is 
 difference of opinion. 
 
 In the matter of sanitary conditions, I would myself rather 
 attempt to handle the diseases and the relics of Spanish occupa- 
 tion which exist at Panama, to handle them in the light of our 
 experience at Cuba, than to handle the swamps of Nicaragua. 
 It is, perhaps, infection against malaria. Our experience in 
 Cuba has been with infection. We have not yet learned how to 
 handle swamps. In either case there would undoubtedly be a 
 great deal of sickness, unless extraordinary methods are taken to 
 prevent it, but I do not believe that in either route would the 
 necessity of sickness be as great as in some of our swamp 
 countries on both sides of the Mississippi River. 
 
 With the canal completed, the two may be compared for pur- 
 poses of operation. The Panama Canal is less than fifty miles 
 long; the Nicaragua about one hundred and ninety including, 
 in round numbers, seventy miles of canal, fifty miles of improved 
 river navigation, and seventy miles of lake. The measure of the 
 canals though is the time required to pass through. The 
 Panama Canal requires twelve hours; the Nicaragua nearly 
 thirty-six. This, however, does not represent the whole thing, 
 as for all trade going to points on the North Pacific coast of 
 North America, the west end of the Nicaragua Canal is five 
 hundred miles nearer than Panama is. Five hundred miles 
 represents two days at sea for an ordinary freight steamer; it 
 lepresents one for a fast passenger steamer. If the steamer ran 
 night and day through Nicaragua Canal it could probably go 
 from New York to San Francisco in a day less time than by way 
 of Panama ; if it laid up at night, there would be no saving in
 
 19 
 
 time ; but any sea captain would certainly feel more comfortable 
 if his ship spent one day land-locked in the canal than if he 
 spent two or three. 
 
 The next matter is one of risk. The longer a canal the 
 greater the risk, both of accident and of delays. The risk to ships 
 passing through the long canal would probably be more than 
 double that of the ships passing through the shorter Panama 
 Canal ; there being little risk, however, in Lake Nicaragua, ex- 
 cept from volcanoes. The risk of delay would be considerably 
 greater, probably four times as great at Nicaragua as at Panama. 
 The other form of risk is that of natural disturbances ; that is, 
 a risk of winds, of earthquakes, of volcanoes. There is much 
 more wind at Nicaragua than at Panama. This is claimed to be 
 an advantage in giving superior sanitary conditions. It cer- 
 tainly is a risk in navigating large vessels through narrow chan- 
 nels ; and there is much more curvature on the San Juan River 
 than on any portion of the Panama Canal. The second element 
 of risk is earthquakes ; both canals are in an earthquake country, 
 and of this I have already spoken. The third is that of vol- 
 canoes, and in that there is no comparison between the two ; as 
 I have already said, I do not believe there is any place in the 
 world where there is more danger of volcanic eruptions than 
 the country around Lake Nicaragua. 
 
 In the matter of maintenance, it was estimated by the Com- 
 mission, the estimate being made in detail by calculating the 
 forces required, that it would cost about $1,200,000 more per year 
 to maintain and police the Nicaragua Canal than the Panama. 
 
 This a brief comparison between the two. In my own judg- 
 ment there is no doubt as to which line should be selected. At 
 the present day, in the light of what has occurred in the West 
 Indies, to build the Nicaragua would seem like a blasphemous 
 contempt of the most terrible warning which nature has ever 
 given to a nation. 
 
 There is another reason. Much work has been done at 
 Panama. If we can secure what has been done, we remove the
 
 20 
 
 temptation for some one else to linish it. Furthermore, at 
 Panama the French company have offered an absolute sale of 
 all their rights there of every kind. Such a sale would give no 
 concession under which our government could build a canal. 
 The French concession is very burdensome and for a limited 
 time; but a purchase of all these rights would be in the nature 
 of a quit i laim deed, estopping every vested right which now 
 exists there, and especially all present interests from ever claim- 
 ing any damages if rights are given to another. Our govern- 
 ment would be perfectly free and unhampered by anything else, 
 to make a treaty with Colombia. At Nicaragua this is hardly 
 the case. The Nicaragua government has declared all franchises 
 forfeited ; the parties holding those franchises do not accept the 
 declaration, and trouble must be expected from them, and de- 
 mands for heavy payments. These payments would be to our 
 own citizens, and undoubtedly would be contended for and ulti- 
 mately made. 
 
 There is a political consideration which is important. The 
 route across the Isthmus of Panama is very short ; it is in a sec- 
 tion of Colombia far away from the main portion of that country, 
 and the occupation of a strip of land here would be very much 
 like the operation of the Straits of Magellan, or any boundary 
 strait ; the Panama Canal would become the recognized boundary 
 between North and South America, and could be used and oper- 
 ated without any occasion for influencing or mixing up with the 
 adjoining republics. 
 
 The line through Nicaragua, practically on the boundary be- 
 tween Nicaragua and Costa Rica, between two countries which 
 are frequently at war, nearly two hundred miles through a 
 foreign country, does not meet those conditions. We cannot 
 build and occupy and maintain a canal there wihout exercising 
 influences over and entering into complications with both Costa 
 Rica and Nicaragua of a character which I hope we shall be 
 able to avoid. 
 
 I have taken much more time than I intended, and I am
 
 21 
 
 afraid I have already made you tired. There are one or two 
 
 little remarks with which I will close. 
 
 There are three demands for the canal. The first is the 
 
 matter of trade. We need this canal to enable our Pacific 
 coast to reach our Atlantic coast and the ports of the Atlantic 
 Ocean readily and cheaply. We need it to reach the west coast 
 of South America, a country, or a series of countries, which 
 furnish what we want and take what we make ; a district whose 
 trade has been in European hands, but which the canal will 
 make much nearer to the United States than to any place 
 across the Atlantic. And we need it for our trade with the 
 East ; to put us on the same basis in the East through the 
 Panama Canal that the European nations are by using the 
 Suez Canal. I look for no trade from Europe to the far East 
 going through the American Canal. I look for great develop- 
 ment in American trade. 
 
 But apart from trade, we need it for two other reasons. We 
 need it as a military nation. Not that it would be valuable for 
 vise in time of war, for its use could be stopped by whatever 
 nation had the strongest fleet ; but military work is done in 
 time of peace more than in time of war; and while the canal 
 may be of little use in time of war, it would be of very great use 
 in preventing war. The possibility of our bringing our fleet 
 before a declaration of hostilities from one ocean to the other, 
 would be worth ten times as much as the ability to transfer it 
 during a period of hostilities. 
 
 And then we need it for one other reason, which is much 
 more important than both of these, the one reason which really 
 justifies its construction. We need it to unify our whole 
 country. In any republic, in any nation in which the people 
 rule, that rule and government can be successful only as the 
 interests of all people become the same. The construction of 
 this canal, which will make our Atlantic ships available on the 
 Pacific, which will make our coast line practically continuous 
 from Eastport, Maine, to the most westerly point of Alaska, which
 
 22 
 
 will enable ports on both sides of the continent to trade with 
 those on the other side of the continent, will do more than any- 
 thing else to unify the interests of our country. This is, really, 
 the strongest argument why our Government should build the 
 Panama Canal. 
 
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