[3] Appendix i.
[4] "The Panama Canal and its Makers," pp. 42, 43.
CHAPTER VI.
THE UNITED STATES AND COLOMBIA.
Those citizens of the United States who thought that with the disappearance of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty all the difficulties in the way of obtaining a canal of their own had also disappeared were doomed to a severe disappointment. They had not reckoned with a South American republic on the verge of bankruptcy and suddenly presented with a glorious opportunity to fill its empty treasury. Two preliminaries were necessary before the United States could settle down at the isthmus of Panama to the work of canal construction. They had to purchase the concession, the unfinished works and the other assets of the New Panama Company, at as reasonable a price as they could obtain; and, secondly, it was necessary to conclude a treaty with Colombia, securing to the United States on satisfactory terms the perpetual control of a strip of territory on the isthmus from sea to sea within which the canal could be constructed.
The first of these undertakings presented, as it turned out, no great difficulty. The New Panama Company had begun to despair of its own ability to get a canal finished across the isthmus, and to realize that their best course was to transfer the whole business to the United States. This disposition had been greatly strengthened by the Report of the Third Canal Commission, issued in December 1900. Probably the members of the commission were convinced of the advantages of the Panama route and the desirability of continuing the work of the French engineers. But they were shrewd people. They dwelt in their report on the improbability that the New Panama Company would sell its property to the United States, and on the difficulty of getting the Colombian concession transferred. They decided, therefore, that "the most practicable and feasible route for an isthmian canal to be under the control, management, and ownership of the United States is that known as the Nicaraguan route."
The commission probably foresaw the effect such a decision was likely to have on the directors and shareholders of the New Panama Company. If an American canal were constructed at Nicaragua, all the property and work of the company at Panama would be thrown on the scrap-heap. The company estimated the value of its property at $109,141,500, a price which the commission, representing the American government, declined to look at. The commission thought $40,000,000 quite enough for the property, and so completely were the Americans master of the situation that that price was agreed upon in January 1902. The commission thereupon issued a supplementary report, which reversed the former decision and recommended the Panama route and the purchase of the French property.
Then arose in the Congress of the United States a tremendous conflict between the Nicaraguans and the Panamanians, the champions of the two routes which had so long been in rivalry. The former party insisted that Panama was farther from the United States than Nicaragua, and therefore the journey from the eastern to the western seaboard of the States would be longer. They argued that Panama was unfavourable to sailing vessels on account of the prevailing calms on that coast; that it would be easier to deal with Costa Rica and Nicaragua than with Colombia; and that Nicaragua was "the traditional American route" as compared with the Frenchified Panama. The claims of the old Darien route were also advanced. This was probably done by American railway people who were against any canal, for the Darien route would have involved a rock tunnel five miles long and three hundred feet broad, the attempt to achieve which would probably have ended all canal adventures at the isthmus.