RIVER SAN JUAN AT TORO RAPIDS.
"In 1849 an Irish adventurer published a book in England in which he declared that he had crossed and recrossed the Isthmus of Darien several times, and that there would be only three or four miles of deep cutting for the entire distance. On the basis of this book, some English capitalists sent an engineer, who made an equally rose-colored report that resulted in the formation of an English company, with a capital of $75,000,000. The engineer does not seem to have crossed the isthmus at all, and only penetrated a few miles into the interior. The Darien route was explored by Lieutenant Strain, of the United States Navy, in 1854, who demonstrated that the reports of the English engineer were 'conspicuously inexact,' and a canal would cost very much more than his estimates.
"In 1849 negotiations between the Government of Nicaragua and our Minister to that country led to the formation of an American company, of which Commodore Vanderbilt was a stockholder, with the object of making a canal by the Nicaragua route. Col. O. W. Childs and a staff of assistants surveyed the route, but the enterprise was broken up by the filibustering expedition of Walker, 'the gray-eyed man of destiny,' which caused the Nicaraguan Government to revoke the concession.
STREET IN GREYTOWN.
"From this time onward the interest of Americans in the canal project continued active. Several exploring expeditions were sent out by individuals and associations, Mr. Frederick M. Kelley, a wealthy New Yorker, sending out four expeditions, and spending $125,000 out of his own pocket. Between 1870 and 1875 the United States Government sent out nine expeditions for the survey of canal routes between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and altogether a valuable amount of information was gathered on the subject.
"In 1876 Lieut. Bonaparte Wyse obtained a concession from the Government of Colombia for a canal at Panama. His concession was transferred to M. De Lesseps, the famous builder of the Suez Canal; and you know all about the history of the Panama Canal, as it has been recorded in the daily newspapers and other publications.