Is a Ship Canal Practicable? / Notes, Historical and Statistical, Upon the Projected Routes for an Interoceanic Ship Canal Between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in Which is Included a Short Account of the Character and Influence of the Canal of Suez, and the Probable Effects Upon the Commerce of the World of the Two Canals, Regarded Either as Rivals, or as Parts of One System of Interoceanic Navigation

by S. T. Abert

A healthy and productive country; two lakes affording an inexhaustible supply for a summit level; a divide easily overcome at an altitude represented as 174 feet, and the convenient channel of the San Juan, through which the waters of Lakes Managua and Nicaragua find their way from an amphitheater of hills to the Atlantic ocean, are advantages which engineers and capitalists are loath to abandon, and which the reader relinquishes with regret. We may expect, therefore, to find the question continually revived. But its advantages have been overestimated.

The San Juan river has cut an outlet for the canal through the ridge, separating Lake Nicaragua from the Atlantic; but to pierce the divide on the opposite side, which separates the lake from the Pacific, a tunnel of about six miles in length will be requisite. The altitude of the divide is six hundred feet above the level of the lake. The singular omission in Colonel Childs’ report may have led Admiral Davis to overlook so important an objection, or perhaps he may have thought it unnecessary to multiply objections to a route which appeared impracticable upon other grounds.

CHIRIQUI.

The so-called Isthmus of Chiriqui, lying between Panama and Nicaragua, was explored by the late Lieut. St. Clair Morton, who was killed in the siege of Petersburg. Lieut. Morton crossed the Isthmus twice, and pronounced the route practicable for a railroad. As no notes of this survey are extant, curiosity in regard to this route must remain unsatisfied. Lieut. Jeffers, U. S. N., speaks favorably of the harbors. Mr. Evans, the geologist, discovered an inferior kind of coal. Another reconnoissance may develop some important information.

COSTA RICA.

A railroad has been projected from Port Limon, near the tenth parallel of latitude on the Atlantic, to Caldera, in the Gulf of Nicoya. Rising to an altitude of 5,100 feet the route passes through a salubrious climate, and over a productive soil. A macadamized road, 134 miles long, with five stone bridges, has been completed along this line. As a route for a ship canal the altitude of the summit appears to exclude it from further consideration.

PANAMA.

As the passenger route and highway of the trade between the Atlantic and Pacific States of America, the mention of this line arrests attention. Information in regard to it is full and accurate. Here, alone, in all Central America, a railroad unites the two oceans. Confining his remarks to the project of M. Garella, Admiral Davis pronounces his condemnation of the route.

M. Garella’s route, starting from the Bay of Limon, on the Atlantic, following the valley of the Chagres, ascending with 17 locks to the summit, which it passes with a tunnel 17,500 feet in length, at an altitude of 135 feet above high water in the Pacific, and descending with 18 locks, terminates at the Bay of Vaca del Monte, on the Atlantic. The altitude of the ridge to be pierced is 459 feet. The commission of the “Ponts et chaussés” appointed to report upon Garella’s project, object to the expense of tunneling, and to the absence of evidence of the sufficiency of the mountain streams to feed the summit level.

But a tunnel is not a necessary plan of piercing the Isthmus at this point, nor is a summit level 135 feet above high water an unavoidable necessity. The Panama railroad passes the divide without a tunnel, at an altitude of 280 feet above tide. The fact that a route possessing such advantages should be found so near the line of M. Garella, encourages the belief that a more critical examination of other prescribed routes may be rewarded with the same good fortune.