The length of the canal will be 170 miles from ocean to ocean. Of this distance there will be 130 miles of navigation on Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River, leaving only forty miles for excavation or cutting. The surface of Lake Nicaragua is 110 feet above the level of the sea, and to reach or descend from this elevation there will be four locks between each end of the lake and the ocean from which it is separated. The lake is 110 miles long by 35 wide, and is a beautiful sheet of water in a basin 8000 square miles in extent. The plans are for locks 650 feet long and 65 feet wide, which will float any ship now in existence.
MOZO IN FULL DRESS.
For convenience of description we will suppose the canal to be in three divisions, eastern, middle, and western. The eastern division begins at Greytown, on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the San Juan River, and extends to the Arroyo de las Cascades, a distance of nineteen and one-half miles. This division contains sixty-three per cent. of the excavation required for the whole canal; it will include the digging of a channel through the low lands of the coast, and then through rising ground and hills, where locks must be made to raise the canal to the level of the lake.
At the end of the eastern division a dam across the San Juan River will fill the channel of that stream to a depth sufficient for the passage of sea going vessels, and also create a lake, or basin, where ships may pass each other, and also halt for repairs if any are needed. In some places the river must be dredged to reach the requisite depth, but these points are not numerous or difficult. The river is 1000 feet wide, so that ships will have plenty of room for moving either way, and there will be about eighty-three miles of river navigation from the dam to the lake.
On Lake Nicaragua the distance from the head of the San Juan River to the beginning of the western division is fifty-six and one-half miles, and here there is abundant depth of water except in one place where some rock-blasting and dredging will be needed.
Rio Lajas, on the western shore of the lake, will be the end of the middle, or navigable, portion of the canal, and the beginning of the western division, which extends seventeen and one-quarter miles to the Pacific Ocean. On this division ships coming from the east will descend by four locks, while those from the west will rise by the same means. The last of the locks, the one nearest the Pacific, will have a varying depth to accommodate itself to the rise and fall of the ocean tide, which is about nine feet. The entrance of this lock will be of a funnel shape, and a port will be formed by throwing out jetties on each side of the little bay of Brito, and converting it into a secure harbor.