A STEAMSHIP ON A PLATFORM CAR.
What interested Frank and Fred more than anything else at this point was the suggestion that huge ships might yet be transported across the isthmus, not by canal but on a railway. Their new-found friend told them about the project of Capt. James B. Eads, an enterprising American engineer, and referred them for further information to an article in Harper's Magazine for November, 1881. With their usual good-fortune they found a copy of the magazine in the hands of the purser of the steamer. Aided by it and the points given them by the engineer, together with some from Doctor Bronson, they wrote the following while the steamer was continuing her voyage from Minatitlan.
"Any one who thinks the idea of a ship-railway here is a new one is grievously mistaken. It originated with no less a personage than the conqueror Cortez, who visited the isthmus, examined the river Coatzacoalcos, made soundings, and walked across from ocean to ocean, with a view to establishing a portage by which ships could be carried overland for the commerce between Spain and the far east of Asia.
PLANE AND ELEVATION OF TERMINUS.
"Cortez reported favorably upon the enterprise, and suggested a broad road carefully graded by which ships could be transported on rollers or wheels from one ocean to the other. It must be remembered that the ships of his day were much smaller than those of the present time, and their transportation a hundred miles overland would not have been a very difficult matter.
