FOREIGN INDEBTEDNESS.
The following statement exhibits the financial condition of the republic at the end of 1882, as represented by the secretary of the treasury. It will be well to state here that until 1871 Costa Rica was free from foreign debt, her proportion of the old federal indebtedness in London having been paid off at an early day of her independent life.[XXXIII-64] The government owed, on the 30th of April, 1871, $92,878; adding thereto the disbursements of eleven years—1871-82—$30,251,284, and $2,110,905 paid the railway, in bills of exchange on the national agent in London, and not included in the aforesaid outlay, we have an aggregate of $32,455,067; and deducting therefrom the revenue of the same eleven years, a deficit results of $6,524,516, which is made up of $1,454,086, excess of expenditure over receipts at the end of 1882, and $5,070,430, the equivalent in Costa Rican money of £895,221 3s. 11d., net proceeds of loans negotiated in London at 6 and 7 per cent.[XXXIII-65] However, the council of bondholders formed in 1883 the following statement of Costa Rica's foreign debt, namely: outstanding of six per cent loan of 1871, £941,200; overdue interest, £564,720, making £1,505,920. Outstanding of seven per cent loan of 1872, £1,460,200; overdue interest, £1,073,175 10s., making £2,553,273 10s. Grand total, £4,039,193 10s. The home debt was set down in 1885 at $519,000.[XXXIII-66]
In Panamá the receipts of the treasury from all sources in 1812, a few years previous to the separation from Spain, this nation being then at war with her American colonies, were $746,241.[XXXIII-67] In 1827, six years after the independence, the receipts were $241,683,[XXXIII-68] and the expenditures $238,929. Under the law suppressing custom-houses in the ports of the Isthmus, the revenue of the province in 1847 became reduced $77,880. The amount appropriated by the provincial legislature in October 1849, for expenses of the fiscal year 1840-59, was $51,220.[XXXIII-69]
After the organization of the Isthmus as a state of the Colombian confederation, there being no receipts from customs, the chief portion of the expenses has been met with a tax assessed on merchants and shop-keepers, estimated on the amount of business done by each, the legislative assembly fixing annually the sum required for the next year's expenditures, and the proportion of it to be covered by the commercial tax. The state received $50,000 out of the annual subvention of $250,000 paid by the railway company to the Colombian government. Other sources of revenue have been the taxes levied on steamship agencies, consumption, slaughter of cattle, ice, distilleries, and several others which in the aggregate are not insignificant.
DEBT OF PANAMÁ
The republic of Colombia being on the point of changing her organization, Panamá, consequent upon recent political events, was at the end of 1885 under a military government, the chief of which, exercising his extraordinary powers, ordered the continuance after January 1, 1886, of the appropriations that had been decreed for 1885, with a few modifications.[XXXIII-70] The financial condition of the state on the 30th of June, 1878, was an indebtedness of $214,317.[XXXIII-71]
CHAPTER XXXIV.
INTEROCEANIC COMMUNICATION.
1801-1887.
Ancient Ideas on the North-west Passage—From Peru to La Plata—Cape Horn Discovered—Arctic Regions—McClure's Successful Voyage—Crozier's Discovery—Franklin's Attempts—Finding by Nordenskiöld of the North-east Passage—Projects to Unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across the Isthmuses—Plans about Tehuantepec—Explorations for a Ship-canal Route in Nicaragua, Panamá, and Darien—The Nicaragua Accessory Transit Company—Construction of the Panamá Railway, and its Great Benefits—Further Efforts for a Canal—Organization of a French Company—A Ship-canal under Construction across the Isthmus of Panamá—Difficulties and Expectations—Central American Railroads and Telegraphs—Submarine Cables.
No sooner had lands been discovered to the westward of Europe than the minds of cosmographers became fixed in the idea of short routes to India in that direction;[XXXIV-1] nor would they abandon it until long after both shores of the western continent had been explored from the Arctic sea to Cape Horn.[XXXIV-2]
EARLY EXPLORATIONS.