During the nineteenth century the Darien general route was no less earnestly advocated than in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the mythical low level had many believers. Frederick M. Kelley, the New York banker, who gave fortune and a life’s ambition to the project of an interoceanic waterway, also based his hopes on the Darien route. It required the explorations of Commander Selfridge and subsequent American expeditions, as well as the investigations of Reclus and Wyse for the French company, to dissipate the unfounded hopes regarding Darien.

The San Blas route, being the shortest, should have had more advocates, for it is only thirty-one miles across from ocean to ocean, but the solid mountain wall of the Cordillera discouraged most of the early explorers. Its merits and demerits were made familiar to the public through the discussions in Congress.

It was of the upper Chagres route that the intrepid Frenchman, Champlain, whose voyage to the West Indies and the Isthmus in 1602 seems to be historically established, wrote: “At Panama is a little river which rises in the mountains and descends to Porte Bello, which river is four leagues from Panama ... and being embarked on the said river there are but eighteen leagues to Porte Bello. One may judge that if the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to this river were cut through, one might pass from the South Sea to the ocean on the other side and thus shorten the route by more than 1,500 leagues; and from Panama to the Straits of Magellan would be an island, and from Panama to the Newfoundlands would be another island, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.”

The Raspadura channel, by which the Jesuit Fathers were said to have made the passage from ocean to ocean in canoes with a very short portage, lacks historical verification.

The Chagres route was included in the broad vision of the future which Lopez de Guevara had in the middle of the sixteenth century. The realization of his dreams may be for the twenty-fifth century. He proposed the union of the two oceans by three canals opening in three points,—the Chagres in Panama, Nicaragua, and Tehuantepec.

Before following the jungle-screened railway line or tracing the course of the Canal with its luxurious border of tropical vegetation, it is desirable to clear away geographical confusion. The Isthmus of Panama extends almost directly east and west. It is the contour of the two continents as formed by a neck not simply awry but completely twisted,—in popular language, a gooseneck. The entire West Coast of South America, except a slight bulge near the Equator, lies east of the longitude of Cleveland, Ohio. Panama City is about on the north and south line with Pittsburg. It is southeast of Colon, and the general direction of the Canal from the Atlantic entrance, therefore, will be southeast.

GENERAL PLAN OF THE PANAMA CANAL
From the plans of the Panama Canal Company

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The route selected by the French engineers, and which with some variation will be continued by the United States, does not need detailed description. The course of the Canal can be observed in the railroad journey to Gatun, where the first view is had of the defiant Chagres fed by its twenty-one tributaries. I have seen the Chagres a tame, sleeping brook, losing itself in the tropical jungle or the narrow gorges, and again have looked on it when it was a wild, resistless torrent. The engineering problems never can be fully appreciated until one has seen the Chagres sweeping on in its conquering career.