"The misfortunes of Strain's expedition were due in great measure to information which proved to have been almost entirely false. An English engineer, named Gisborne, had published a book containing a pretended survey of the country, which he claimed to have surveyed; in consequence of this report the governments of England, France, New Granada, and the United States of America sent expeditions, all of which failed disastrously. Strain's was the only one of the number that succeeded in crossing from ocean to ocean, the rest having turned back on account of the many unexpected difficulties, and the hostility of the Indians, who attacked them repeatedly. It turned out that Gisborne had never crossed the Isthmus, and his map of the Darien region was almost wholly imaginary.
"Several companies have been formed at different times," the Doctor continued, "for the construction of a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but the most of them have existed only on paper. The first of these companies was based on Gisborne's imaginary surveys, and was organized in England, with a capital of seventy-five million dollars. Sir Charles Fox and other heavy capitalists were the promoters of this company, and they confidently expected to complete their work before the year 1860. The preliminary operations showed that the canal, if built at all, would cost several times that amount, and the enterprise was abandoned.
"Concessions have also been granted on other routes, but no serious work has been performed; the concessions were limited in the time of commencing and completing the work, and one after another the limit of time expired without anything having been accomplished. The Panama route is the only one on which there has been an attempt to make a canal; the government of the United States has made a treaty with Nicaragua for the construction of a canal through that country, but, up to the present time, the scheme has not gone beyond the surveys and the reports of the engineers."
"We are confident," said Mr. Colné, with a smile, "that our canal from Aspinwall to Panama will be completed, and that large ships will pass through it before the 1st of January, 1890. Indeed, some of our engineers promise it for the New Year of 1889. Thus far the work has progressed quite as fast as we expected at the outset, and if no unforeseen difficulties arise, we shall have the canal completed before 1890."
One of the youths asked how much the canal was likely to cost, and how it would compare with the Suez Canal, which they had visited on their return from the Far East.
"Not to trouble you with details," replied the Doctor, "the estimate of the cost was originally six hundred millions of francs, or one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. Very few enterprises come within the original estimates, and it is probable that not less than thirty millions of dollars, and perhaps another hundred millions, must be added to these figures, and some engineers say three hundred millions will be required. The cost of the Suez Canal was about one hundred millions, and the work at Suez was very light compared with that at Panama."
"I remember," said Fred, "that the Suez Canal is practically a great ditch through a sandy country, with no elevation of more than sixty feet, and but very little rock to be cut away. Nearly half the length of the canal was made by filling up depressions in the desert, which were turned into lakes by allowing the water to run into them. Is there anything of the kind here?"
"Not by any means," was the reply; "the Panama Canal is being cut through a region where the difficulties are enormous by comparison with those at Suez. Instead of a waste of sand, there is a tropical forest for the greater part of the way, and in place of the depressions which were converted into lakes to form part of the Suez Canal, we have a chain of hills which are nearly three hundred feet high at the lowest points. The summit level of the Panama Railway is two hundred and sixty-three feet above the level of tide-water on the Atlantic coast, and the canal must have the enormous depth of three hundred feet, and at some points more than that."
"That is quite correct," replied their host. "It will be the deepest canal cutting in the world when it is completed. On the section of Culebra, in a distance of little more than a mile, we must remove twenty-five million cubic metres of earth and pile it up elsewhere. Fortunately, our work is rendered easy in this respect, as there are many valleys close to the canal where the earth can be disposed of. Do you know how much is represented by twenty-five million cubic metres?"
Fred made a calculation on a slip of paper, roughly converting metres into yards by adding one fifth. Then he reduced the yards into cubic feet, and announced that, with the earth to be removed from the Culebra section of the canal they could build a wall nine feet thick and twenty feet high for a distance of twenty-eight miles, and have a good many car-loads to spare.