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, C.E.

ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS.

CINCINNATI:
R. W. CARROLL & CO., PUBLISHERS,
117 WEST FOURTH STREET.
1870.

The following notes upon Interoceanic Routes across the American Isthmus were collected and arranged during intervals of professional occupation, and are doubtless affected by the haste incident to this method of preparation.

They were laid by a friend before the Hon.William H. Seward and the late R. J. Walker, for their perusal, and receiving the commendation of their enlightened judgments, the writer has thought that the publication may not be without interest to those who are seeking information as to the feasibility of an intermarine ship canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Prepared before the completion of the Suez Canal and the sailing of the last Darien Expedition, some additions have been made to bring the parts of the Notes relating to these topics up to date.

August 1, 1870.

IS A SHIP CANAL PRACTICABLE?

CHAPTER I.

Columbus discovers Darien—Opinions of Berghaus, Humboldt, Garella, Hughes—Expectation of finding a Strait—Influence of Oriental Trade—Names identified with the Project of a Canal—Defeat of Miranda’s Scheme—Object—Opinion of Admiral Davis—Sketch of Oriental Trade—Contest for its Possession—Four different Solutions—United States—Russia—France—England—English Diplomacy and the Suez Canal—History of its Difficulties—Empress Eugenie Inaugurates—Dimensions of Canal—Capital of Company—Expenditures—Effects on Commerce—Circumstances affecting the Permanence of the Suez Canal—Teaching of History—Sand Dunes—Inferences from Geology—Sediment of the Nile—Deltas—Silting up of Port Said, and rate of advance of the Shore Line.

Upon the 14th of September, in the year of our Lord 1502, three caravels, bearing Columbus and the destinies of the New World, long baffled by opposing storms and currents, at last doubled Cape Gracias a Dios.

To appreciate the courage of the daring Navigator, it is necessary to call to mind the fact that the largest vessel of this little fleet did not exceed seventy tons burden. With seams opened by the stress of the gales, sails tattered by the winds, hulls eaten to a honey-comb by the teredo, distrust at home, dissension around, and danger everywhere, this great man abated not a jot of his high hopes, but repairing his shattered ships as he was able, continued his adventurous voyage.

The air came to the toil-worn mariners freighted with spicy fragrance, gentle winds wafted them in sight of lofty mountains and of verdant slopes, clothed with the majestic palm and the pink and golden blossoming flor de Robles.

The simple-minded natives of Honduras and Costa Rica welcomed them with supernatural devotion, bringing gifts of fruits, gold, gems, and tenders of hospitality.

Strange rumors reached them of a people living in houses of sculptured stone, and occupied in the arts of peace. Columbus could not be diverted from his purpose.

The season was that of gales, and the little fleet was shut in the beautiful harbor of Porto Bello.

The Norther ceasing, the voyage continued as far as the little, craggy Bay of El Retreate; here, near the present Puerto de Mosquitoes, Columbus reached the westward limit of his last voyage of discovery.

Sixty-six years of sorrow and disappointment, of disinterested purposes maliciously opposed, of bold designs ignorantly thwarted, of a pure and illustrious character misjudged and traduced, had humbled the pride and subdued the enthusiasm of that aspiring intellect; and now, at the close of a career of vast and useful discoveries, he was called on to face a trial which Goëthe has affirmed to be the severest and most inexorable of life.

Welcomed with the approving plaudits of his king and countrymen, or loaded with ignominious chains, he had ever kept one object constantly in view. This object, pursued with unexampled courage, self-abnegation, and constancy, he was now called on to renounce. Who will venture to depict the thoughts of this remarkable man as he turned to retrace his path, leaving behind him the prospect of discoveries far greater than those which had cast the hallow of immortal fame around his name?

“Here ended,” says Irving, in a strain of tender eloquence, “the lofty aspirations which had elevated him above all mercenary views in his struggle along this perilous coast”——“it is true, he had been in pursuit of a chimera, but it was the chimera of a splendid imagination and a penetrating judgment. If he was disappointed in finding a strait through the Isthmus of Darien, it was because Nature herself was disappointed.”

This sagacious conjecture has its foundation in nature, and is supported by the opinions of savans and the facts of recent geological explorations.

The Prussian geographer, Berghaus, as early as 1823, and Prof. Hopkins, contested the accepted opinion as to the unbroken continuity of the Isthmus and the contiguous continents.

The French engineer, Garella, after making a geological reconnoissance, declares that the Isthmus is of more recent origin than the continents which it unites. Col. Hughes and Garella concur in a belief in the existence, at an early period, of a strait uniting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The identity of the species of fish inhabiting the waters on both sides of the Isthmus is an additional argument in confirmation of this view.

It is without surprise that we find the discoveries of another science confirming this inference. Prof. Huxley, in a recent address on the progress of palæontology, is unable to explain the distribution of mammals at the close of the miocene period, except upon the supposition of a barrier which prevented the migration of the apes, rodents, and edentata from the southern to the northern continent. He cites the opinions of Carrick Moore and Prof. Duncan in support of the same conclusion. Further investigation will, no doubt, add to the number of facts which indicate the separation of the two continents by the ancient sea, and may even establish the fact that portions of Central America once formed parts of the Antilles group of the equatorial belt of islands.

General Michler, in his interesting report of the survey of the Atrato, observes: “All the stratified rocks on the Isthmus, exhibiting strong marks of disturbance and even dislocation since they were originally deposited, clearly prove that the upheaval which brought this narrow neck of land above the level of the ocean must have taken place at a comparatively late era. This period was undoubtedly accompanied by the protrusion of certain metamorphosed shistose (?) rocks, the doubtful nature of which has induced us to mark them as belonging to a trappean series. If Darwin had good reason to believe that the granite of South America, now rising into central peaks 14,000 feet in elevation, must have been in a fluid state since the deposition of the tertiary group, we may also do so in pronouncing the formation of the Isthmus, now linking together South and Central America, as decidedly post-tertiary.”

The deductions of Columbus were, however, based on the direction of the coast of Cuba, which he supposed to be a continent, and the parallel coast of South America; and was further confirmed by the westerly current flowing between them, which must, he thought, find an outlet near Darien.

These bold generalizations, drawn from stores of profound observation and varied reading, although we now know them to be erroneous, evince the sagacity of the man, and place him far ahead of the intelligence of his age. With heartfelt sorrow he reluctantly renounced a chimera so plausible, which he expected would lead him to the fabulous kingdom of Prester John, or, perhaps, to the marvelous splendors of the imperial dominions of Kublai Khan, and which would, he believed, open new fields for the peaceful conquests of the banner of the Redeemer.

The delusive representations of travelers was the chief impulse to some of the greatest achievements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The coveted wealth of “Ormus and of Ind” was a siren who had lured adventurous navigators to dare the dangers of unknown seas.

The same diversity of motive may be found in the men of that period which now exists and animates the westward course of civilization. Love of money and fame are found contending by the side of the desire to extend the domain of knowledge and zeal for the spread of religion.

The result of these combined passions was to open new avenues to wealth, industry, and science.

Four hundred years have elapsed since the wondering eyes of Spanish discoverers first gazed on the strange beauty of the New World. In this interval a nation of forty millions of people have been planted in the country of Columbus, its wildernesses are traversed by steam, its products supply food and clothing to a large part of the world; but, with all this progress, the visionary strait of the great navigator is yet an unrealized dream.

Impossibilities have been accomplished, poetical fictions have become facts, visionary theories of the past are the industrial arts of the present. In wealth, comfort, health, longevity, art, science, organized labor and charities, the human race of the present have out-stripped the Arcadian felicity of the golden eras of Hesiod and Cervantes.

Possessing every facility, occupying a preëminent coigne of vantage, we have left one thing unachieved. This ought we to have done, and not to have left the others undone.

Many minds, speculative and practical, have closely scrutinized the feasibility of making the American Isthmus a highway for the commerce of the world.

Its importance grows in dimensions in proportion to the study bestowed on it. It ranks among its friends some of the most able men of the race.

Columbus, Cortes, Charles V, Alverado, Gonzales de Avila, De Solis, Gomaro, Bautista Antonella, and, in more recent times, Paterson, Pitt, Jefferson, Humboldt, Guizot, Napoleon III, Wheaton, Dallas, Biddle, and a long and honorable list of statesmen and publicists have contributed to the project.

According to the scheme of General Miranda, sanctioned by Wm. Pitt, it was proposed that Great Britain should supply the money and ships, and the United States should send 10,000 men.

The failure of this plan is attributed to delay on the part of President Adams.

The tonnage of the trade which would annually seek this route has been estimated at 3,094,000 tons, equal in value to $152,475,750. The value of the exports and imports of all the nations which would annually pass the Isthmus would amount to $451,029,132.

With such enormous commercial interests, backed by advocates so able, it is not a little curious that the question of feasibility should be yet unsolved.

Political vicissitudes have often postponed its consideration. Conflicting interest and rivalries have prevented the coöperation long deemed essential to its successful execution.

The hereditary policy of the United States has always been anti-social and insular. Schooled in this policy, it is difficult to enlist the sympathies of our people in questions which are to be answered in regions beyond their jurisdiction.

The utility and practicability of the work must first be made clearly manifest.

Passing in review the present state of our knowledge of Isthmean routes, one of the objects of this paper is to attempt to appreciate the probable advantages which would result from the completion of an intermarine ship canal.

In selecting from material, much of which bears little relation to the questions at issue, many objects may be omitted which deserve notice, and some may be noticed which might have been omitted.

If serious attention is attracted to this important project, the writer will have attained his object.

“There does not exist in the libraries of the world,” observes Admiral Davis, “the means of determining, even approximately, the most practicable route for a ship canal across the Isthmus.” This deficiency in our geographical knowledge will shortly be supplied. An exploration is now in progress, under the auspices of Government.

If a practicable route is found, there is reason to believe that execution will follow as certainly as the settlement of America followed its discovery.

We may not unreasonably expect the progress of the future to keep pace with the past, and that the absolute increase of the commercial marine, and an enlarged area for its operations, will lead to a proportionate extension of the beneficent influences of religion and civilization. The speculation opens a prospect of the future destiny of intertropical America; destined, perhaps, to produce as great a revolution on our globe as the colonization of America.

“The completion of this work,” observes an earnest advocate, “will be the same as if, by some great revolution of the globe, the eastern continent were brought nearer to us.”

The produce of the Indies has always been a coveted prize; wealth has followed in its path; commercial supremacy has been the property of its possessor. As changes in the route brought about new political relations, and raised up a more successful competitor for the trade of the Orient, a reconstruction of the map of the world has become necessary.

Its importance may be gathered from the fact that the annual exports and imports of the United States to the East Indies, China, Australia, and the South Pacific Islands amount to $39,380,000, and the aggregate exports and imports of Great Britain to the same points amount to $378,857,000.

If this trade has ceased to be a monopoly, and has lost some of its importance since the colonization of the Americas, it is yet sufficient to hold the guerdon of commercial supremacy. A history of its course and influence is beyond the scope of this paper. A passing notice will show how important a part it has played in the destinies of nations.

It is probable that the wars of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon were waged for the control of the trade of the East. The expedition of Alexander was not the result of an unreasoning lust for dominion and military glory. The apple of discord then, as now, was the beautiful land of the East. The descendants of the great Aryan and Semitic families, constantly moving westward, never forgot the land of their birth.

At an early period, caravans brought the rich products of India across the desert. Under the influence of this traffic, the palaces of Palmyra sprang up amid the sands. The Saracens drove the course of trade to the Caspian and the Euxine. The Mediterranean felt its beneficent effects, and Venice, Trieste, Marseilles, Cadiz, Barcelona became the marts of its rich and varied commodities.

After the discovery of de Gama, the busy hum of industry began to cease in these once populous emporiums. When Shylock drew up his bloody bond, the trade of the Indies had set around the cape. While commerce was suspended and industry prostrated by wars and civil dissensions, Holland bore off the prize. The devastating armies of Alva threw the Indian trade into the strong hands of Elizabeth.

England now began to lay carefully the foundation of her empire. The policy she now adopted, whether through instinct or forethought, was one which looked beyond the temporary advantages of position and possession. She attempted to make these advantages permanent by the conquest of the territory from whence all these bounties seemed perennially to flow.

The British Empire in India, in its extent, power, wealth, and future possibilities, stands an enduring monument of the courage, energy, and wisdom of the British people. Whether actual possession has secured the reversionary benefit, time alone can show.

That wealth, power, and dominion follow oriental traffic, is now patent to the world. It is no longer the object of secret diplomatic intrigue; it has become an open question, to be solved by the general competition of commercial nations.

In the pursuit of this object, the leader in the Pansclavonic movement is pushing her outposts past India to the wall of China. The United States, conscious of her natural advantage, is awakening to the importance of a systematic policy.

The French Emperor seems at present, by the aid of the [Suez Canal], likely to appropriate the lion’s share. While American commerce is disappearing from the seas—fifty per cent. of her exports and imports being carried in foreign ships—the flag of France may be seen by the side of England in every sea. The hereditary policy and commercial instinct of the British may prove to be more than a match for the astuteness of one man. Who will ultimately bear off the prize, is a question admitting three possible solutions.

Russia, as has been said, rapidly extending her frontier eastward, stretches out her hand to grasp the trade of the East. The Suez and Darien Canals—the one an unsolved problem, the other an accomplished fact—represent the two other contestants. One of the most constant objects of war and diplomacy has been for the possession of the highway through Egypt for the trade of the East.

It was designated by the Portuguese conqueror, Albuquerque, as one of the three important points essential to the “command and monopoly” of this trade. England, anticipating the day when it might be important for her to have the military control of this highway, has persistently established military ports, beginning at Gibraltar and ending at Aiden. She has secured strong posts at Malta and Beb el Mandeb. The Great Leibnitz called the attention of Louis XIV to the commercial and political advantages of a conquest and colonization of this country. Napoleon, flushed with the conquest of Italy, took the initiative in this bold design. By his order, M. Lepere, “a distinguished engineer,” completed an examination in 1801. The results of this examination have been published by the Imperial Government.

M. Lepere asserted the practicability of a ship canal along the line of the ancient canal from Suez to the Nile, as far as the Bitter Lakes. From thence its course has to proceed to the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. Here, on the sea, it encounters the accumulating banks and bars of the Nile, one of the two very serious obstacles to the execution and permanent value of a ship canal between the two seas.

The project of a canal uniting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean appears to have been suggested by M. de Lesseps to Said Pacha, the Viceroy of Egypt, in 1854. The company was definitely formed in 1869.

It is not very easy to estimate the important effects of opening this route to the maritime States of Europe.

Lord Palmerston, acting in the interest of England, constantly opposed the design. He at once perceived that the restoration of trade to the Levantine ports would seriously disturb the commercial equilibrium. All the ingenious devices of a clever lawyer in conducting a bad case were employed by English diplomacy in order to arrest the operations of M. de Lesseps.

The first and most valid objections alleged by Lord Palmerston were based on the practical difficulties in the way of execution, and were stated with great force and acuteness. The shifting sands of the Desert would, it was affirmed, soon fill up the canal; and the sand and silt, which from time immemorial had been brought down by the great father of waters, and which swept to the westward by the prevailing winds, would soon fill up any artificial harbor which might be constructed.

That these difficulties were resolutely encountered and overcome, is one of the marvels of this truly marvelous work.

To these objections M. de Lesseps cautiously replied that all questions would be referred to a commission of engineers.

After an examination of all the plans, the commission reported favorably on that which has just been successfully executed. The work found a few friends among the English people and in Parliament.

Lord Palmerston, being interrogated, declared that the scheme was hostile to the interest of the country. His real objection was obscurely hinted. “It is founded,” he remarked, “in remote speculations in regard to easier access to our Indian possessions, which I need not more distinctly shadow forth, because they will be obvious to any body who pays attention to the subject.” He further characterized it as one of those plans “so often brought out to make dupes of the English people,” and he expressed his preference for the communication by railroad between Suez and Cairo. As this railroad can never be more than a passenger route, it is evident that its influence on commerce must always be insignificant.

The work had barely commenced when, through the instigation of the English Embassador, the Sultan issued an order arresting the operations. The plea assigned for this interference was that the authority of the Viceroy was insufficient without the sanction of the Sultan. De Lesseps invoked the interposition of the Emperor, who, with apparent indifference, was watching the proceedings from his retreat at Biarritz.

Within a month after the presentation of the memorial the misunderstanding between the two cabinets had been explained, and Lord Palmerston was for a time silenced by the consent of Egypt to receive a Turkish garrison. This acquiescence was in appearance only, as the real object of these repeated assaults was to arrest the work. The Viceroy, desirous of silencing all opposition, consulted French jurisconsults in regard to the rights of the company, and definitely settled the powers of the contracting parties.

For a moderate sum he ceded to the company the belt of country bordering the fresh water canal. Immediately the cry was raised by the opponents of the canal, that it was intended to colonize this region with Europeans.

While this matter was in controversy, and the work was steadily proceeding, Said Pacha suddenly died, and Ismail, his nephew, reigned in his stead, with the title of Khédivé. He confirmed the concessions of his predecessor and entered into new conventions. His confidence in the work, which had appeared uncertain, was established by the able report of Sir John Hawkshaw, the President of the Society of Civil Engineers. This report, however, which was confirmed by the personal inspection of Sir Henry Bulwer, aroused all the fears of the English Government. The success of the work, at first problematical, now seemed more than probable. A decisive blow must be struck; one that should be fatal to the undertaking.

Throughout Egypt, according to an ancient and still prevailing custom, private and public work is executed by a system of forced labor, termed Corvē. The conscription is limited to the period of one month, at a fixed rate of wages. The company engaged to pay higher rates than usual, and to supply food, lodging, medical attendance, and half pay when sick. No sooner had twenty thousand men been collected on the excavations, than a “howl went up from Exeter Hall.” Lord Stratford de Redcliffe demanded of the Sultan “to stop the scandal.”

The British Government were instantly seized with one of those sudden spasms of morality, or humanity, which Lord Macaulay affirms has been observed periodically to afflict the British people.

The Sultan, who appears to have been a pliable tool in the hands of English Envoys, issued an order abolishing the system of compulsory labor, and disbanding all the fellahs employed by the company.

This arbitrary and unjust interference had but one meaning, and seemed likely to have but one result. The plea of humanity, advanced by a Government which had overlooked the sacrifice of 1000 men in one day, when that sacrifice had been made by their own injudicious advice, and for their own benefit, could be nothing more than a manifest subterfuge.

This vigorous handling of the political puppets on the diplomatic chess-board proved how serious were Lord Palmerston’s apprehensions. It was the old question which every age revives. In the past, the issue had again and again been brought to the arbitrament of the sword. With such antagonists as Palmerston on one side and de Lesseps and the Silent Emperor upon the other, the duel was necessarily ā l’outrance.

It was now evident that war alone could arrest the completion of the maritime highway between the two seas. Was it the death of Palmerston or the progress of peaceful arts that kept this question confined to the field of diplomacy?

Opposition only stimulated the energy and confirmed the determination of de Lesseps. The controversy was referred to the decision of the French Emperor. A smile, half machiavellian, must have flitted over the face of his reticent Majesty when the question was submitted to his Imperial arbitration. By his decision the Egyptian Government were called on to pay, not unwillingly, an indemnity to the company for a release from the obligation to furnish compulsory labor, and for the retrocession of certain land grants and privileges of navigation.

“The indomitable Lesseps did not despair.” After months of delay, he collected laborers from all parts of Europe, and the work was resumed.

The vigilance of the English opposition soon found another vulnerable point. The Sultan was again persuaded to issue a firman denying the right of the Viceroy to cede the land through which the canal was to be excavated. This well-aimed blow caused a suspension of operations for two years. Any man less able, self-reliant, or resolute than M. de Lesseps would have succumbed.[1]

The Emperor was induced to intervene. M. Thouvener, the French Minister at Constantinople, was requested “to enlighten the mind of the Sublime Porte as to the views and wishes of France.”

The introduction of machinery now became a matter of necessity. Ten millions of dollars were expended for this object, and forty enormous dredges were soon at work upon the excavations. One of the novelties in the construction of these machines was a provision for carrying off the excavated material by means of a stream of water. One of the workmen, it is said, noticed that when removed in this way the slimy earth spread over a wide surface and became soon indurated, instead of flowing back into the place of excavation. It also possessed the further advantage of fixing the mobile sand.

The total amount of earth removed amounted to about four hundred million cubic yards. By working day and night, the machines of M. Borel and Lavelley were able to remove 78,056 to 108,000 cubic meters per month.

Although the completion of the canal now seemed assured, the opposition of the English Government continued up to the last moment. Every effort was made to prejudice the Sultan and the Khédivé against the work, and, by exciting the jealousy of the Sultan, to induce him to arrest the excavations.

After ten years of labor, this great work was completed. Upon the 17th of November, 1869, the opening of the canal was inaugurated in the presence of the Empress Eugenie and the Emperor of Austria, and of princes, embassadors, and men of science from Europe and America.

The Empress, leading the van of the fleet in her steam yacht, l’Aigle, entered the canal amid salvos of artillery. The yards of the ships were manned with sailors, every mast-head was decked with a flag, and the bands played the martial airs of the assembled nations. The transit between the two seas was safely made by the fleet. But the requisite depth had not been attained. Seventeen and a half feet could be carried through the canal. Since then the depth has been increased to twenty-two feet, and ultimately will be twenty-six feet.

The length of the canal is one hundred miles. The established surface-width is about 328 feet, except in difficult cuttings, where it is 190 feet. The least bottom width is 72 feet. The highest ground cut through is at El Gúisr, where it is 85 feet; at Serapeum it is 62 feet; and at Chalouf, near Suez, it is 56 feet.

The excavation of the canal, although of considerable difficulty, was exceeded by the necessity for creating artificial harbors at the extremities. The harbor at Port Said, upon the Mediterranean, has the general form of a triangle, the base resting on the shore and the longer side on the west, protecting the entrance from the moving sand. The longer arm, or mole, is 8,200 feet, extending to the 26 feet curve of sounding. It is proposed to extend this mole 2,300 feet farther. As this harbor is exposed to N. E. winds, an inside basin has been constructed. The area of the outer harbor is equal to 400 acres, and will permit twenty line-of-battle ships to swing freely at anchor.

At the other extremity of the canal, a mole 2,550 feet in length protects the channel, which has been dredged to the depth of 27 feet. The mole at Suez differs from that at Port Said in construction; the latter being formed of concrete blocks of 13 cubic feet, the former of stone quarried from the neighboring mountain.

The organization, equipment, sanitary regulations, and division of labor among twenty thousand men, employed at one time, is full of interest and instruction, but must be omitted in this place.[2]

The following statement of receipts and expenditures, taken from a recent periodical, deserves preservation:

The following is a summary of the expenditures up to the date of the opening of the canal:

[Click image to enlarge.]

The balance on hand for the completion of the dredging is $9,437,560. This sum will probably be sufficient to excavate the canal to the uniform depth of 26 feet.

The effect of the opening of the canal is felt in the revival of maritime interests in the Levantine ports. Port Said is the depot of seven companies, Russian, French, and Austrian. A Spanish company is organizing with the intention of establishing a line between Barcelona and the Philippine Islands, and an American company is preparing a depot in the Mediterranean.

In 1869, thirteen hundred and sixty-two ships, amounting to 637,440 tons, entered Port Said. M. de Lesseps estimates that the annual revenue from tolls on the tonnage passing through the canal will be $12,000,000.

The canal has conquered a peace. Its enemies have become its most sanguine friends. The benefits it is destined to confer upon the commerce of the world, and the changes in the present commercial equilibrium of Europe, although important in their influence and immediate in their effects, must be proportionate to the duration of the canal as a highway for the commerce of the world.

The circumstances affecting the permanence of the canal have been so ably canvassed, that, apart from the intrinsic importance of the question, they deserve attentive consideration.

The ancient Pharaonic canal connected the Nile with the Red Sea, and partly avoided the destruction threatened by the unceasing advance of the sand dunes. The absence of harbors on the Mediterranean was compensated by the channel of the Nile, which afforded a passage over the bar for the light draft ships of that period. The French engineers, confident in the resources of modern science, have boldly conquered the difficulties which Egyptian engineers dared not encounter. It is well known that the distinguished engineer, Robert Stephenson, pronounced the work impracticable, and many cautious investigators have doubted its permanence.

The objections may be classed under two heads:

1. To the permanency of the excavation of the canal.

2. To the permanency of the harbors.

The arguments relating to the duration of the canal are drawn from history and the observations of travelers.

“We can not approach history,” says M. de Lesseps, “without touching on Suez.” Its records, fragmentary and uncertain, are hid in the mists of five thousand centuries. The stream of its history, now lost, now re-appearing, is joined in its course by the tributary traditions of nearly all the Indo-Germanic and Semitic nations. The tramp of armies and the desolation of conquest has alternated with periods of intense activity in the arts, sciences, literature, and commerce. The Egyptian name, once a synonym of the profoundest learning, is now only known to us by an architecture which is still invested with a unique and imposing grandeur.

The value of a canal to afford transportation for the products of the East occupied the attention of the Pharaohs at an early date. Since the time of Rameses II, it has been repeatedly reconstructed and repaired. This Pharaoh, who lived about the period of the Mosaic exodus (1400 B. C.), was probably the Sesostris of Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny.

If the Sesostris of the 12th dynasty was the constructor of the canal, its date would be carried back 2730 B. C. Its construction has also been attributed to other Egyptian rulers, but with more certainty to Nechao, B. C. 625.

Sir G. Wilkinson accounts for this uncertainty by a very plausible explanation. The sandy site of the canal required frequent excavation. These operations gave to successive kings the credit of having commenced the work which they only repaired.

The canal used by the Romans was afterward closed, and subsequently re-opened by the Caliph Omar. It was again closed for 134 years, when it was once more rendered navigable by El Hakim, A. D. 1000. It appears at this period to have extended to the Bitter Lakes before turning toward the Nile.

It again became filled with sand between the Nile and the Bitter Lakes. Mohammed Ali closed it entirely, after having lost 10,000 men from hunger, having hurried them into the desert without suitable preparation. At a more recent period, 1000 men died in one day from the same want of preparation, having been hurried into the desert, at the request of the English authorities, to work on the railroad between Suez and Cairo.

Pliny affirms that the ancient canal had a width of 100 feet and a depth of 40 feet as far as the Bitter Lakes, and the geological evidences indicate that the Bitter Lakes were once connected with the Red Sea. A stratum of salt, 8 to 10 feet thick, covers the bottom of the Lakes, and sea-shells are found in them and between them and Suez.

History for 3300 years bears testimony to the constant movement of the sand, burying all obstructions and obliterating channels which have lain in its path; and the statement of Herodotus, that Lower Egypt is a gift of the Nile, is sustained by a large number of scientific investigators, who maintain that ancient and modern Egypt was reclaimed from an arm of the sea. When nature acts so constantly and irresistibly in one direction, the difficulties of those who contend with her can hardly be overstated.

The winds of Libya, sweeping over the desert, bear the sands irresistibly before them. The ruins of Isamboul and Palmyra are partly buried or threatened by the sand waves. The base of the great Pyramids are concealed, and the gigantic head of Memnon and Sphinx are partially engulfed. The sand dunes near Ismailia move at the rate of ninety-eight feet per annum.

The following excellent description of the sand dunes is taken from Mr. Mitchell’s report: “In the central part of the land of Goshen, where there are broad plains covered with flints, solitary dunes are seen, like golden islands, and they are objects of grace and beauty in every detail. On near approach to one of them, the sands may be seen traveling up the long rear slope before the wind, flying in the air at the crest, and falling down the fore slope in a perpetual cascade—everywhere in motion, but preserving always the same faultless curves. Nor do these dunes leave a grain behind them to mark their tracks. The homogeneous sands of which they are composed are as fine as those usually seen in an hour-glass, and, like the latter, serve to measure the lapse of time in their steady march. The prevailing winds in this part of the desert blow from due north, and are more steady than at Port Said or Suez. In consequence of this, the course of the dunes is so nearly parallel to that of the canal, that their slow approach can always be prepared for. They can at any time be fixed by covering them with brushwood.”

Between Lake Timseh and Port Said, it is estimated that 130,000 cubic yards of sand will be swept into the canal annually. This will give employment for one of the largest dredges for three or four months, working twelve hours each day. This estimate is based on the work done by one of Lavalley’s first-class dredges, which removed 120,000 cubic yards per month, working day and night. But as the material will be distributed in a thin stratum along the entire length of this section of the canal, a longer period will be requisite for its removal. The able engineers who conducted the operations of excavation express confidence in their ability to keep the depth from decreasing. The chief danger from this source, therefore, can only come from a suspension of the work of the dredges.

2. Permanence of the harbors, particularly that of Port Said.

The reports of Capt. Spratt, Royal Navy, and of Mr. Mitchell, U. S. Coast Survey, supply very interesting information on this subject. M. Lartet is now publishing, in the Annales des Sciences Geologiques, his observations upon the Isthmus. From the map of M. Lartet it appears that an arm of the Gulf of Suez once extended, by the way of the Bitter Lakes, to the Mediterranean, and that, at the same time, the Gulf of Akaba united the waters of the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. The endogenous movement which raised the mountains of Gebel Attaka and the crystalline rocks surrounding the north end of the Red Sea, placed the first barrier between the seas, and, by a succession of seismic movements, raised the cretaceous plateau of Egypt and Syria, or Palestine.

The mouth of the Nile at this period must have emptied into the Mediterranean, near the great Pyramid of Gizah; and here the river must have begun to lay the foundation of modern Egypt along the border of the cretaceous formation.

Thus the geological record is in harmony with the traditions of the Priests as handed down to us by Herodotus, “Egypt is a gift of the Nile.” Within historic times, the elevating movement has been inappreciable. The Nile still continues to roll down its plenteous bounty of sand, and to spread unceasingly its desolating influence over the plains of Suez and along the coast of Egypt as far as Syria.

Capt. Pratt, in the Medina, made a careful survey of the coast, sounding and dredging with sufficient minuteness to determine the limit of Nile influence. Within this limit, the bottom was found to be composed of siliceous sands, differing in no respect from the sands of the desert about the Pyramids. Outside of the Nile sand, the bottom of the sea was found to be composed exclusively of calcareous particles. The suspended matter, which is greatest during the Nile floods, driven eastward along the coast, accumulates upon the beach in the form of dunes, and overwhelms the huts of the coast guard and the fishermen, and, in twelve months, nearly buried the Mosque of Brulos. Commencing its devastating march, it advances irresistibly toward Suez.

The Nile brings down a prodigious quantity of sand, which is swept into the river by the Libyan winds, and borne by the current to the sea, mingled with fragments of pottery from the villages on the banks. The quantity of sand brought into the sea has excited the astonishment of the most experienced students of delta formations. The Ganges, the Indus, the Dneipper, the Danube, and the Mississippi, the Yang-Tse-Kiang, and the Hoang Ho bring down annually millions of tons of solid matter to add to the accretions at their mouths.

[Click image to enlarge.]

The whole amount carried yearly into the Gulf of Mexico by all the passes of the Mississippi is seven hundred and fifty millions of cubic feet, or a mass of one mile square and twenty-seven feet thick. “As the cubical contents of the whole mass of the bar at the South-west pass is equal to a solid of one mile square and four hundred and ninety feet thick, it would require fifty-five years to form the bar as it now exists.”[3]

Since the time of Strabo the Nile has advanced the coast line of Egypt, by its yearly contributions of sand, from four to six miles into the sea. Any interruptions of the littoral currents greatly accelerates this result. Such is the well-known effect of jetties and moles. Since the construction of the mole at Port Said, the shore line has advanced 1213 feet in eight years. Eighty-eight feet of this distance was made in the last six months. “If the shore line continues to advance,” Mr. Mitchell remarks, “at any thing like its present rate, the dry land will extend to the end of the mole in forty years. The shoaling of the entrance to the harbor will keep pace with the advance of the shore line, and before the end of twenty years an extension of the mole will be necessary.”

The silting up of the interior of the harbor by the sand which sifts through the interstices of the concrete block is regarded by Mr. Mitchell as a more serious evil. But as it may not be impracticable to close these interstices, this danger does not seem comparable to that which must arise from the unceasing eastward movement of the sands brought down by the Nile. It was for this reason that Alexander placed his city to the west of the mouth of the Nile.

The boldness and skill displayed in the construction of the harbor of Port Said may be appreciated from these facts. The excavation of the canal presented comparatively little difficulty. The entire cost of the canal and harbors was about forty-three and a half millions of dollars, or more than half of the entire cost of the work, which includes the expenses of hospitals, negotiations, surveys, machinery, and the miscellaneous expenses of administration, amounting in the aggregate to $80,893,665.

The doubts of the permanent value of the [Suez Canal], as expressed by Lord Palmerston and Sir Robert Stephenson, do not appear to have been without sound and reasonable foundation. It is evident that a few years of war will, as in the days of the Pharaohs, Ptolemies, the Cæsars, and the Caliphs, necessitate a reconstruction on a scale almost as great as that which has recently challenged the admiration of the civilized world.

It is unnecessary to say any thing of the harbor of Suez. The difficulties encountered at this point were much more easily conquered than at Port Said.

The Egyptian Government has provided excellent docks and every facility for the repairing of ships at the southern terminus.

CHAPTER II.

Influence of Commerce—Distances Reduced by the Suez Canal—Tables showing the Gain of the United States and European Ports—Navigation by way of Red Sea and Good Hope—Napoleon III on Advantages of the American Route—Darien and Suez Canals as parts of one system of Navigation—Lieut. Maury on Darien Canal; its influence on the Resources of the Basin of the Mississippi—Table of Distances by Cape and Canal—Saving to the Commerce of the World—Table showing how far the great Maritime States are interested in the American Canal—Advantages of Suez and Darien Canals.

Statistics have been accumulated to show to what extent commerce will be benefited by the [Suez Canal]. The question of choice of route is not dependent on distance alone. The winds and currents are natural advantages or dangers which the navigator skillfully avoids or employs. Steam, while it enables a vessel to contend with wind and current, is yet obliged to obey their dictates. The distance of coaling stations, the large space occupied by fuel to the exclusion of freight, renders steam desirable rather as an auxiliary than as the sole means of propulsion.

The [Suez Canal] has reduced the distances from European ports to India about one-half. England derives an equal advantage, yet she has justly regarded with apprehension the diversion of trade from the old route. Anticipating the day when she would be compelled to acquiesce in the opening of the new highway, she has shrewdly secured the military command of the new course of trade which threatens her monopoly.

For the United States, the distances to the East are reduced to from 2000 to 4000 miles. But on account of winds and currents for homeward-bound ships, the old route by way of Cape Horn is still preferable.

The following table, computed by M. de Lesseps, exhibits the distances from European and American ports to Bombay:

Tables showing the Gain of U. S. and European Ports.

The subjoined table contains distances from London, New York, and Port Royal to certain Eastern ports, compared with distances to the same ports from New York via the Pacific Railroad and Darien:

According to the first table, distances from the European and American ports therein named are shortened one-half. According to the second table, the distances to Oriental ports, from the great European and American entrepôts, are greater by the Darien route; but by reason of winds and currents, the voyage by the way of Suez is from four to five days longer.

In the Red Sea the prevailing winds are from the north, which retard the steamers and compel the sailing ships to beat up to Suez. “From Suez to Ceylon,” according to the London Times, “the winds are unfavorable. From Point de Galle to Swan River, terrible hurricanes sweep the Indian Ocean. Along the coast of New South Wales, violent winds prevail from the westward, causing a prodigious sea to arise, which nearly precludes navigation in that direction.”

The route by way of Good Hope is beset by gales from the south-west and north-west, rendering the return passage a matter of great uncertainty; but by Darien or Panama route, going or returning, regular voyages and smooth seas may be counted on with precision.

For steam, but more especially for sailing vessels, the American route, lying in the zone of the trade-winds, possesses special advantages. Outgoing and returning ships may trim their sails to favorable winds; and the experienced navigator may have the aid of confluent currents, and enter the monsoons at greater advantage.

Napoleon III, when a prisoner in Ham, thoroughly examined the advantages of the American route. “In regard to the United States of America,” he observes, “all the distances would be shortened 1400 miles and fifteen days”——“Europe would gain forty-seven days in a voyage to the coast of South America, while the United States would gain sixty-two days. To China and Sidney, Europe would gain twenty-nine days, and the United States twenty-four days.”

But it is not as rivals that the two routes should be compared, but as parts of the same system by which maritime nations are brought into commercial union. The benefit which each route will confer upon commerce is doubled by considering the effects of both together. The one opens the gates to the East, the other to the West. While one route is favorable to outward ships, the other affords equal advantages to the homeward bound, so that in many cases the most desirable route would lead to a circumnavigation of the globe.

To appreciate the importance of such a system of navigation, and exhibit some of the advantages of the American route, it may be well to compare it with the old route, by the way of the Cape, which will still remain the principal highway to the East.

“The Englishman,” says Lieut. Maury, “meets the American in all the markets of the world with the advantage of ten days or upward. Cut through the Isthmus, and instead of some ten days’ sail or more, the scale would be turned, and we shall have the advantage of some twenty days’ sail, thus making a difference of thirty or forty days under canvas.” The distance between New York, China, India, and Australia, and the west coast of South America exceeds that by way of Cape Horn from 8,000 to 14,000 miles.

To the States lying in the great basin of the Mississippi, and to all the cities situated on its navigable waters, the gain is much greater. These parts of the continent, now secluded by their position from direct trade with the west coast of South America and the Indies, will be brought into closer commercial relations with these ports of the world. With but one transshipment, the silk, teas, spices, and fabrics of India, China, Japan, and the Pacific Islands may be landed on the banks of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio.

The following tables, taken from the Report of Lieut. Maury to the Committee on Naval Affairs, will show the sailing distance from New York and Liverpool to the principal ports beyond and around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. The distances to South and North Pacific ports are greatly reduced by the Darien or Panama route.

The following table shows the saving of time from New York by the new route, via the Isthmus of Panama, as compared with the old routes, via Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope, to the places therein named, estimating the distance which a common trading ship will sail per day to be one hundred and ten miles, and calculating for the voyage out and home:

The following condensed statement, from tables carefully prepared by an advocate of intermarine canals, exhibits some of the commercial advantages depending upon the completion of the route:

Table showing the saving to the trade of the world, in insurance on vessels and cargoes, interest on cargoes, saving of wear and tear of ships, and saving of wages, provisions, etc., by using the Isthmus Canal:

Exports of Great Britain increased one hundred and seven per cent. in ten years; exports of France increased one hundred and thirty per cent. in ten years; exports of the United States increased ninety-three per cent. in ten years. If the trade increases one hundred per cent. in the next ten years, the saving to the world will then be ninety-nine millions sixty thousand four hundred and sixteen dollars ($99,060,416) per annum.

Taking this statement as a basis, and representing the gross pecuniary interest of the United States in the proposed canal as unity, the saving to Great Britain will be one-fourth, to France one-eighteenth, and to all other countries one-thirty-fifth.

This preponderance of interest on the part of the United States may be taken to imply a proportionate share in the cost. Such would be a correct conclusion if our Government retained control of the route. Surrendering the latter claim, she relinquishes with it her proportionate liability, and is entitled to be received as one of the contracting parties upon terms of equality. The respective shares of the parties is, however, a proper subject for diplomatic arrangement. But while the greatest saving accrues to the United States, the absolute value of our oriental exports and imports is about equal to that of Great Britain, and about double that of France and other countries.

Neutralization of the Isthmus is only, in appearance, a suspension of the policy understood as the Monroe Doctrine. It can be made an international recognition of that policy. Such objections, even if well founded, sink into insignificance in comparison with the benefits which must accrue to mankind at large. The United States has not shown herself so incapable of adopting a policy in accordance with her high destiny, as to justify a suspicion that she will ever by her acts sanction the selfish theory that “nations may combine to oppress and plunder, but rarely for any useful or benevolent purpose.” The progress of events has already made her an arbiter in the destiny of nations, and she can no longer, by an insular and anti-social policy, separate herself from the interests of the great family of nations. Mutual and liberal concessions in the generous spirit of our civilization, looking to the extension of commerce, industry, arts, science, and religion throughout the world, can alone lead to that harmonious coöperation without which an interoceanic ship canal must remain forever problematical.

The above tables supply material for other important conclusions. Eighteen vessels, sailing from as many different ports in East India, China, Japan, Australia, and South America, would save the average distance of 8,791 miles, equivalent to a voyage by sail of about eighty days, or to between thirty-six and forty days by steam.

Supposing the average tonnage of ships to be one thousand tons, then three thousand and ninety-four steamships would be requisite to carry the freight which would now seek the Isthmus annually. The saving of time to trade and to each man would be about three and four-tenths years to every generation of thirty-three years. The amount of tonnage above mentioned would give employment to 86,632 seamen, giving to them, by the new route, a saving of time in one generation amounting to the aggregate of 294,548 years. The benefits being diffused among all engaged or interested, directly or indirectly, the accession to the time, wealth, and industry of so large a number of men is not only a great economic and commercial advantage, but may be regarded as participating in the nature of those beneficent, moral movements which characterize the age.

The annual saving to the trade of the world is shown to be $49,530,208.00. The annual increase of the trade of Great Britain, France, and the United States is together more than one hundred per cent. The saving to the maritime powers in one year at the end of a decade will be $99,060,416.00. Assuming the trade of the three powers to increase in the same ratio, the total amount saved at the end of ten years will be equal to the aggregate of the amounts saved each year, and foots up as follows:

This result is verified by an estimate based upon the tonnage which will be actually engaged in this trade:

The annual saving for each ship will be $15,420, giving as the aggregate saved upon the tonnage which would pass the Isthmus the sum of $47,709,480, and the saving of one year at the end of a decade as $95,418,960, a sum sufficiently near the first to establish its correctness.

The following tables were compiled by Mr. F. W. Kelley, of New York, and were intended to exhibit the effect upon the trade of the world by the completion of the canal through the Isthmus:

Table showing the trade of the U. S. that would pass through the Isthmus Canal, if now finished. Taken from the official returns for 1857.

“Whale ships and coasting vessels have been estimated generally throughout this appendix at forty dollars ($40) per ton. The United States and European commerce around the Capes is conducted in first-class ships, which often cost eighty dollars ($80) per ton. Fifty dollars ($50) have therefore been taken as the fair average value in the construction of this table, which does not include coasting trade.”

Table showing the trade of England that would pass through the Isthmus Canal, if now finished. Taken from the official returns for 1856.

COUNTRIES TRADED WITH.				EXPORTS AND IMPORTS.	TONNAGE.
Half of Mexico				$ 2,775,137	$ 11,833
Half of Central America				1,244,817	5,615
Half of New Granada				2,437,605	10,188
Chile				15,486,110	118,311
Peru				20,473,520	244,319
Ecuador				360,015	1,820
China		Outward; only 40 days saved by the canal		7,077,390	68,530
Java				3,821,410	16,003
Singapore				4,364,070	16,500
Australia and New Zealand				78,246,095	522,426
Sandwich Islands				520,560	1,950
California				2,378,105	11,800
Value of trade				$139,184,834	$ 1,029,295
Value of ships, at $50 per ton				51,464,750
Total value of trade and ships				$190,649,584	$51,464,750

Table showing the trade of France that would pass through the Isthmus Canal, if now finished. Taken from the official returns for 1857.

COUNTRIES TRADED WITH.				EXPORTS AND IMPORTS.	TONNAGE.
Chile				$ 10,000,000	$  25,688
Peru				13,160,000	35,096
Half of Mexico				2,790,000	10,004
Half of New Grenada				1,090,000	2,389
Ecuador				440,000	1,651
Bolivia				100,000	1,000
California				2,073,859	8,997
China		Outward only		2,180,000	2,028
Dutch East Indies				4,440,000	20,400
Sandwich Islands				2,000,000	4,119
Philippine Islands				1,000,000	1,463
Australia				19,800,000	50,000
Value of cargoes				$59,073,859	$ 162,735
Value of ships at $50 per ton				8,136,750
Toal value				$67,210,609	$8,136,750

The value of the tonnage which would take the Darien route is, according to the above table, $152,475,750, and the total value of exports and imports passing the same way is:

But the aggregate amount of British imports and exports from and to India and China is $378,587,122, giving the value of the trade which would pass through the Suez and Darien Canals $636,447,315, yearly.

The rapidly growing trade between Levantine ports and India would take the Suez route, but between the European ports and the Pacific coast of North and South America, and between the east and west coasts of these two continents, the American route would be exclusively employed.

In selecting a route to oriental ports it is evident, from the facts of physical geography, as stated by Lieut. Maury, Napoleon III, and the writer in the London Times, that the navigator seeking to make a rapid voyage would adopt the American route both going and returning, except, perhaps, between Levantine and Indian ports. Between French, English, Levantine, and Indian ports, the outward voyage by way of Darien, or Panama, and homeward by way of Suez would, in many cases, be favorable to the quickest trip.

The [Suez Canal] was built by French talent, French energy, French machinery, and French money. England and the Mediterranean States participate in the benefit. But the larger share of the profit belongs to France, by reason of her ports and industrial resources; and so far as France and the Levant enter into a direct trade with India, so far, it has been supposed, will the value of trade between Great Britain and India be impaired.

We have spoken of the piercement of the American Isthmus as an international work. It should rather be the work of American energy, American talent, and American money. It is part of the American continent. No foreign nation can have the same military control of it that Great Britain now has of the [Suez Canal]. The benefit of its construction, although shared by the maritime powers, will be most important to the Americas, and by reason of resources, organization, and position, especially to the United States. It deserves consideration as an American project.

CHAPTER III.

The Canal considered as an American Project exclusively—Currents and Winds—Resources of the Basins of the Rivers of the Gulf and Caribbean Sea—Their Productive Capacity compared with the Mediterranean Basins.

Let the reader refer to Berghaus’s map of winds and currents, and any map of the alluvial basins of the river systems of Europe and America. He will observe that the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico constitute but one sea, partially divided by the West Indies and Cuba, which, stretching toward Yucatan, is separated from that part of Central America by a channel 100 miles wide and 6000 feet deep.

The equatorial current, crossing the ocean with the trade-winds, enters the Caribbean Sea, and, passing between Cuba and Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico, flows out through the Strait of Florida. Ships from the east following this current are led in the path of favorable winds, both going and returning.

The Pacific trade-winds and equatorial current are equally favorable to the outward and homeward bound voyager. The skillful navigator shapes his course north of the equatorial current when returning from China to San Francisco or Panama.

The Humboldt and Mexican currents aid the coastwise trade. Thus, by the converging winds and currents, this great intertropical sea seems to be designated by nature as the future commercial center of the world.

The two American seas have been styled by Lieut. Maury as the heart of the continent. Its two compartments have been compared to the auricle and ventricle of the human heart, through which, in regular pulsations, by unceasing systole and dyastole, the ocean currents find constant entrance and exit, and circulate through all the world-arteries their vivifying influence.

Pursuing the analogy, the two continents, from their general shape and the alimentary part they perform, may not inaptly be compared to the lungs, which convert the blood of commerce into the nutrient and productive elements which contribute to the health and growth of the nationalities of two continents.

The rivers having their natural outlet in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, bring into commercial union two regions producing all the commodities of the globe. The rivers of North America bear to the Gulf the successive harvests of the temperate zone, and receive in return the fruits, woods, dyes, drugs, spices, coffee, cotton, and tobacco of intertropical America.

No part of the globe combines so many natural advantages as are found united around this body of water. Its shores present every advantage of soil, climate, vegetation, and convenient harbors likely to attract an enterprising and commercial people. The table lands of Mexico, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and Columbia afford the most salubrious climate, scenery of the rarest beauty and sublimity, equable temperature, and an endless succession of fruits and harvests. Mountains of perpetual snow look down on plains of unceasing verdure. All that is requisite for the support of life grows spontaneously.

The descriptions of Humboldt represent the table lands as suitable to the highest development of the race. One wonders that the tide of immigration, guided by the rational instinct for superior advantages, has not filled every bay and estuary and overspread the plains; or, sweeping down from the north, the Anglo-Americans have not taken possession, as the hardy races of the North of Europe overran the degenerate mixture of nations which overspread the northern shores of the Mediterranean.

Those portions of the world which possess the finest climate, whose soil returns the largest yield from the least amount of labor, are held by degenerate and effete representatives of a moribund civilization.

In America no alpine barrier interrupts communication with the interior, but an indefinite expanse of plains, prairies, and table lands stretch away to the north, or form broad plateau, as in Central and South America.

Millions of square miles of arable lands are intersected by rivers of unrivaled extent. The Mississippi, rising in such proximity to the northern lakes as to make their shores tributary to the trade of its valley, flows through twenty degrees of latitude before reaching the Gulf of Mexico. The Amazon, nearly at right-angles with the Mississippi, developing its course chiefly in longitude, bears the varied products of its valley to the ocean, where the equatorial current makes it tributary to the Caribbean Sea. The Amazon is more directly connected with this sea by the Orinoco, with which it is united by the Rio Negro. Humboldt surveyed the channel joining the two rivers, and ascertained the feasibility of a navigable channel between them at high water.

The different positions of the main commercial arteries of the two continents—the one extending through temperate latitudes, the other through tropical longitudes—supply the greatest variety of commodities for commercial interchange. The Mediterranean system, finding its most extensive development in longitude, is limited in the variety of its products by the climatic uniformity of one zone. While American rivers flow through twenty-five degrees of latitude, the European rivers of the Mediterranean extend through but ten degrees.

Berghaus’s map supplies data for a comparison of the river system of the two great continent-bounded seas of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres:

SQUARE MILES.
Area of the Mississippi	basin, including the basins of its tributaries			2,231,000
the Missouri,Ohio, Arkansas, Red River, etc.
Rio del Norte				180,000
South American basins		Magdelina		72,000
		Orinoco		250,000
		Amazon		1,512,000
Entire area of basins which drain into the Gulf of Mexico
and Caribbean Sea				4,245,000

Area of basin of the river system of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea is 4,245,000 square miles, a productive area nearly double that of the Mediterranean, which it exceeds by 1,835,000 square miles.

In the extent of its navigable rivers, the difference is proportionately large. The Mississippi and its tributaries constitute a continuous channel for steam navigation of 12,000 miles in extent, which would be nearly doubled by reckoning the length of the navigable channels at the period of high water.

The river system of the Mediterranean, Euxine, and the Caspian, to which may be added that of the Nile, will not together exceed 5000 miles, or less than half the length of navigable channels of the American system.

The natural advantages of the Mediterranean of America may be summed up as follows: with double the productive area, it has capacity for a greater variety of products, by reason of its variety of climate; it has double the extent of navigable rivers, which pour their bounties into the same sea; and not only are the rivers and continents tributary to this region, but the ocean currents and winds, converging at the same point, bring the products of the Orient to exchange for those of the New World.

In a letter addressed to Mr. Rockwell, M. C., at that time secretary of the special committee to whom was referred a resolution of Congress, asking for information respecting routes to the Pacific, Lieut. Maury has, with signal ability and in not too glowing language, sketched the future of the American Mediterranean, (which is destined to surpass its European prototype,) whose fine harbors will become the marts of an opulent trade and the centers of a higher standard of civilization.

These desirable ends will be greatly accelerated by the intermarine canal between the two seas, by which the trade of China and Japan may meet the commodities of Europe—

“Argosies of stately sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales,”

and the products brought down by the Mississippi and the Amazon into the Gulf of Mexico.

CHAPTER IV.

Effect of the Canal on the Interest of the Valley of the Mississippi—Pacific Railroad as a Rival of the Isthmean Canal—Rates of Freight on Ocean, Lakes, Rivers, Canals, and Railroads—San Francisco and the Trade of China and Japan—Considerations of General Interest—Probable Revenue.

The products of the Valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries may be collected at points along the river, to be shipped direct for China, Japan, Australia; and the products of the Orient may be brought, without breaking bulk, to Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Appalachicola, and even Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati, thence to be distributed by the river system, which extends throughout the States of the South, and reaches even to the borders of British America. With one, or at most two, transshipments, the produce of the Indies may be transported, by the way of the Illinois river, or the projected improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, to Chicago and Lake Michigan, thence to be distributed throughout the shores of the northern lakes.

Teas, silks, Japanese and East India goods may be transported by way of the ship canal and the Mississippi river, and delivered at St. Louis at one-third or one-fourth the cost of transportation of the same articles by the Pacific railroad. While the Pacific railroad is a great national highway, bringing into political and commercial union two great sections of the country, building up cities, opening mines, bringing under cultivation a vast extent of arable land along its route, the proposed canal across the American Isthmus must be the sole dispenser of the bulkier products of China and the Indies.

The question may be asked how far the railroads constructed and to be constructed between the Atlantic and Pacific, especially within the limits of the United States of America, may supersede the commercial advantages which would result from the canalization of the Isthmus?

Trade has always increased in proportion to the facilities for transportation; and it is evident that, even in the most populous country, the reciprocal relation of production and consumption may be increased by a better organization and a more judicious application of labor. In all cases of competition between railroads with canal, lake, or coast trade, the result has been the reduction of rates and the increase in the quantity of material transported. Two railroads, American and Canadian, skirt the shores of the Northern Lakes, making, with the line of lake steamers, three competing lines. The consequence of this rivalry has been a reduction upon freight during the summer months, to enable the two roads to compete with the lake route and canal.

To exhibit the relative cost of different methods of transportation, a statement is subjoined. The following table, compiled from different sources, exhibits the cost per ton per mile of transportation of freight upon the ocean, lakes, rivers, canals, and railroads:

TRANSPORTATION BY				PER TON PER MILE.
				CENTS	MILES.
Ocean—long voyage					1
Ocean—short “					2 to 4
Lakes—long  “		U. S.			2
Lakes—short “					3 to 4
St. Lawrence River					3
Hudson River					2½
Ohio River—long voyage				1	1.54
Ohio River—short “				1	3.6
Missouri River—long voyage					8.37
Missouri River—short “				2	0.1
Mississippi River—long voyage					5.07
Mississippi River—short “					8.50
Erie Canal enlargement					4
Railways transporting coal				1 to	6
Reading Railroad transporting coal					9.71
Reading Railroad transporting merchandise					4.468
Railways—ordinary grades				1	2½
Pacific Railroad		for transporting different		3	2.8
		kinds of freight.		6	0.6
Suez Canal—$2 per ton, transit of 100 miles				2	00
Proposed Panama Canal—$1 per ton, transit of 50 miles				1	00

The railroad rates above given have been established upon thoroughfares favorable for the attainment of a minimum. But upon all roads to be constructed between the Atlantic and Pacific, much higher rates must prevail for many years. Hurried construction, through a wilderness deficient in material and obstructed by hostile savages, must increase the cost of construction. For the same reason, the execution of the work is likely to be defective and the location of the route imperfect. The expense of alteration and repair must be proportionately increased. The cost of stations, machine shops, depots of fuel, and supply of water must far exceed the disbursements for the same objects in a settled country, possessing the advantages of skilled labor and convenient transportation.

To meet the additional expense, the rates for passengers and freights will have to be increased to probably six or eight times the value assigned for ordinary grades.

On the other hand, ocean transportation by way of the Isthmean Canal, collecting by tolls enough to pay the cost of repair—say one dollar per ton transit, or one cent per ton per mile for fifty miles—would be but one-fourth the average rate per ton per mile for the three thousand miles of transportation on the Pacific Railroad.

Passengers will always take the quickest route. Valuable packages of goods, gold, and silver, and even teas and small packages of costly silks, will be transported by the railroad. The Pacific coast and the interior country lying between the head of navigation of the tributaries of the Mississippi, will receive the commodities of the East chiefly through the port of San Francisco.

The following table shows the relative distances of San Francisco and London from Oriental ports:

From the above table it is evident that England will have a formidable rival for the trade of the East in the Pacific ports, and the interior which they will be called on to supply.

It is manifest that an intermarine canal is not impracticable to American talent and energy. It can undoubtedly be executed by international coöperation. It is demanded by the common interest, commercial, political, and social, of all peoples. It is supported by humanitarian considerations, immediate in their influence, broad and practical in their relations to the interests of society.

The chief obstacle to its execution is its cost, which would be nearly double that of the Suez Canal. Mr. Kelly estimates that 3,090,000 tons would pass through the American canal yearly. Assuming that its total cost will be 150 millions of dollars, the revenue from tolls, at the rate of one cent per ton per mile, would amount to nearly twenty per cent. of the entire outlay.

No work, so costly nor fraught with such stupendous consequences, has ever been attempted by man. The history of civilization is the history of the efforts of man to assert the right and to increase the means of individual development. The monuments of science, skill, and industry, left by ancient nations to perpetuate the names and conquests of Kings and Pharaohs, were wrung by oppression from suffering men.

To us is left the opportunity for a more extended organization—a combined world movement—in the interest of science and religion, for the extension of liberty, and for the diffusion of civilization among the races of mankind.

Less than the cost of one year of war, will establish for all time—only to be shaken by a paroxysm of nature—this enduring monument of peace and good will, and will secure to the United States a conquest pregnant with vast moral and political possibilities. It is an object worthy of consideration.

Fifty years ago the Pacific Railroad, the Panama Railroad, the [Mt. Cenis Tunnel], the International Telegraph and the [Suez Canal], were visionary schemes. It seemed the acmé of poetical fiction when the poet spoke of girdling the earth in forty minutes, as the work of supernatural agency. Sir Humphrey Davy, making science the basis of fiction, attempted to arrive at some conception of the composition of distant planets and the nature of their inhabitants. We can now send a message across the Atlantic in a minute, and know with certainty something of the composition of planets, stars, and nebulæ. These achievements have become the common property of the civilized world.

The piercement of the Isthmus does not involve greater practical nor intellectual difficulties. Neither science, ability, nor energy, is wanting. Conviction of its utility, sufficiently wide spread to secure the popular good will, and leading to a national movement in favor of combined international action, will secure the early completion of this great marine highway.

To secure popular favor it seems only necessary to exhibit the material advantages which must flow from its execution. Some of the facts, showing how far the completion of the canal would affect the commerce of the world, have been stated.

A small space may be given to the probable revenue. The moderate estimate given in Admiral Davis’s report may be assumed as a basis, which may be safety taken as doubling itself in ten years.

The tonnage which would pass the Isthmus yearly is, at one dollar per ton toll, $3,094,070.

This estimate is undoubtedly less than the revenue which will be received.

No conjectural estimate is made of the probable development of the agricultural and mineral wealth of the valleys of the Mississippi and the Amazon, of the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and Pacific coast of America. And yet, in attempting to form an idea of the probable revenue and actual value of this canal, all the industrial resources called into being by its influence should be taken into consideration. It is like opening the gate to commerce, which, for centuries, man has struggled to unlock.

No event in history has been followed by more marvelous consequences than the discovery of Columbus. So closely is man bound up with matter, that every conquest of nature not only adds to his material comfort, but opens new fields for the moral and intellectual progress of the race. America not only opened new industrial resources, but afforded the population of Europe an opportunity to escape from the social, moral, and physical oppression of caste, bigotry, and capital, which had become intolerable.

If we could lift the veil which conceals the future, and could see “the vision of the world and the wonder that will be,” it is not improbable that we should see the vast elements of progress latent in the American continents, working out their legitimate and logical results, as wonderful as those which have transpired since the colonization of America.

We should see the industrial resources—which have drawn thither in the struggle for existence the most energetic of the races of the globe—giving occupation to a happy and united people. The hum of industry, and the din of the steam hammers, would mingle together with smoke of furnaces and of factories, above the inexhaustible coal fields of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, and Iowa. The grain of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Kansas would be shipped to New Orleans, to be exchanged for the cotton and sugar of the South, and the coffee, dyes, and tobacco of Costa Rico, Havana, and Ambelema; the magnificent table lands of Mexico, Guatemala, Yucatan, and the plateau of Bogotá, occupied by a people more highly cultivated and capable of appreciating the grandeur of the scenery and salubrity of the climate, and of utilizing the fertility of the soil and the physical advantages of those most favored regions.

Opulent cities would spring up in the bays of Tampa, Mobile, and Pensacola. New Orleans, Galveston, and Vera Cruz would rival Marseilles and ancient Venice. From the ports of Carthagena, Sabanilla, Maracaibo, and Para, would be shipped the produce of the valleys of the Magdelina and the Amazon. Great as would be the transformations effected by these changes, they would be less than those which have transformed the continent of America into a congeries of civilized States.

Such speculations have a sober basis of fact. They are not wholly useless if they attract the attention of those who have more time for patient investigation. Sufficient has been said to show that the objects to be attained merit consideration.

CHAPTER V.

Admiral Davis’s Report—Table of the Tunnels of the different Isthmean Routes—Altitude of Ridge at Darien—Comparative Cost of Canals with and without Tunnels—Lift Locks and Thorough Cut—Tide in the Atlantic and Pacific—Moderate Lockage can not Obstruct the Navigation—Gisborne on Thorough Cut—His Error as to Velocity of Water—Objections to Strait—Tabular Statement of the Cost of Tunnels, English, French, German, and American—Tunnel of Mont Cenis—Hoosac Tunnel—Profiles of Mont Cenis and Hoosac Tunnels—Dimensions of Ship Tunnel—Cost of Open Canal—General Michler’s Report—Guard Locks Necessary—Cost of System of Lift Locks—Conclusions Supported by Garella and Michel Chevalier.

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate, dated March 19, 1866, we have an admirable report from Admiral Davis. In this report the relative merit of different lines is exhibited; carefully prepared tables, showing the amount of freight which would pass the Isthmus; a list of ninety publications and fourteen maps, are appended. Ten of these maps, based on recent surveys, supply much valuable information.

“It is to the Isthmus of Darien,” says Admiral Davis, “that we must look for a solution of the question of an interoceanic ship canal.” And he quotes from Airian, “who has made a careful study of this subject,” the assertion that, “with regard to the Cordillera, in proportion as it advances, proceeding from the base of the Isthmus, it descends a good deal, and is only, so to speak, a range of hills or isolated peaks, the bases of which are intersected by ravines, which point out to engineers the true route of the canal. The Indians in the neighborhood of Caledonia Bay make use of these passages. One of them is elevated fifty metres (164 feet), and is covered with a luxuriant growth of mahogany, palm, ebony, and other trees.” “This description,” Admiral Davis remarks, “is not based on actual measurement, but from probabilities deduced from M. Garella’s survey of another part of the Isthmus, and from data, equally conjectural, drawn from the published statements of Messrs. Cullen and Gisborne.”

A thorough exploration may justify this conjecture, but no data exists for fixing the absolute altitude at 164 feet. The value of the statements of Messrs. Cullen and Gisborne may be contested.

It will be seen from the altitude given in the table below, that however correct in point of fact these opinions may be, they are not sustained by the figures taken from the maps accompanying the Admiral’s report:

Table showing the length of Railroads and Canals, length of Tunnels, altitudes of Summits, estimated cost of some of the lines proposed for uniting the two Oceans, from actual surveys:

From the above table it would appear that the altitude of the dividing ridge falls off toward the two extremities of the Isthmus, viz.: near the Tehuantepec and the Atrato routes, but the greatest depressions have been found between Aspinwall and Panama, and on the line by the way of Lake Nicaragua and Lake Managua.

At the Isthmus of Darien altitudes of from one to two thousand feet are found. Cullen’s pass of 150 feet proved to be estimated at one-ninth of its true height. The least elevation of the divide is that given by M. Bourdial. This engineer did not cross the Isthmus, and his statement is so vague, the reader is left in doubt whether he actually reached the summit. Notwithstanding this uncertainty, there still exists a faint hope that “it is to the Isthmus of Darien we must first look for a solution of the question of an interoceanic canal.”

From another statement in this very valuable report, we feel reluctantly compelled to dissent. By imposing unnecessary conditions in the statement of the problem, its solution may be indefinitely postponed.

“The interoceanic canal,” it is affirmed, “in width, depth, in supply of water, in good anchorage and secure harbors at both ends, and in absolute freedom from obstruction by lifting-locks, or otherwise, must possess, as nearly as possible, the character of a strait.”

To insist that the canal must possess the character of a strait, may give rise to the necessity for a thorough-cut of such extreme depth, or a tunnel of so great length, as to render the work practically impossible. A line suitable for a thorough-cut may possibly be found, but so important a project should not be endangered by limiting its practicability to a communication of that nature.

If, by the employment of “lift-locks,” the cost of the canal can be materially reduced, the question to be considered is, to what extent such structures would obstruct navigation? This question depends upon the amount of trade drawn to the Isthmus by the canal.

The relative cost of the two methods for piercing the Isthmus can be best determined by a comparison of the cost of a canal in an open country with one by means of tunnels. These considerations, since they afford criteria for judging of the merits of different routes, may be considered more minutely. Let us assume the trade passing over the Isthmus—were the canal now completed—to increase one hundred per cent. in ten years; there would then be 2,066 tons in transitu daily, requiring seven ships of about 300 tons burthen each.[5] The progressive increase in the size of ships will raise this average to between 500 to 1,000 tons; reducing the number of ships arriving at the Isthmus daily, to five and three respectively. But, assuming the smaller average, giving the larger number of seven ships daily passing through the canal; an increase of four hundred per cent. in the trade would be equivalent to fourteen ships, or to seven ships leaving opposite extremities of the canal, and passing each other daily upon homeward and outward voyages.

Locks of four hundred feet long by ninety feet wide can be filled or emptied in twenty minutes; and this time can be reduced for smaller vessels by additional lock-gates, and for larger vessels by an increase in the size and number of filling valves.

The entire trade likely to seek this route, increased four hundred per cent. of its present amount, could be passed through one lock in about four hours and forty minutes. As the vessels come from opposite directions, one-half of the number would be waiting for lockage at the same point, which would reduce the time required for this purpose to two hours and twenty minutes. Eight locks, having an average lift of twelve and one-half feet, would delay the increased commerce eighteen hours and forty minutes, and would raise the level of the canal fifty feet; while to raise the level one hundred feet the delay would not exceed two days.[6]

As a summit level may be a necessary part of any Isthmean canal, it is manifest that the resulting lockage can not seriously obstruct navigation. The design of an artificial strait may therefore be reasonably abandoned, if, by so doing, the extraordinary cost of tunneling is excluded by the employment of a small number of lift-locks.

On account of the rise of the tide on the Pacific coast guard locks, not much less costly than lift-locks, must be an essential part of any canal from ocean to ocean.

The mean tide of the two oceans is about the same.

Mr. Lloyd found a difference of 27.44 feet between high and low water at Panama. The Red Sea is 3 inches higher than the Mediterranean. The Atlantic at Brest is 3½ feet higher than the Mediterranean at Marseilles.

The small variation in the mean tide at Panama of the two oceans is probably due to the action of winds and the Gulf Stream. At Panama the highest flood tide rises about ten and one-half feet above the level of the mean tide of the Atlantic, and the extreme ebb falls about the same number of feet below it. The alternate currents through the new strait, caused by the rise and fall of the tide, would prove a serious inconvenience to navigation.

The Pacific tide, piling up at the head of the new cut, and entering the strait with considerable violence, would be propelled toward the Gulf in a manner analogous to the progression of the tidal wave in a river. Upon the ebb of the tide a reverse current would prevail. Navigation would not only be obstructed by these alternate currents, but the channel would be choked by drifting timber washed into the canal during the rainy season. Silt and sand would be deposited in bars at the outlet of the canal, or swept inward to form shoals where the current could no longer transport it.

Mr. Gisborne, in his report, devotes some space to speculations on these results. “There can be no doubt,” he remarks, “that at high water there will be a current from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and that during the ebb tide there will be a current in the opposite direction. The extent of these currents, and the place of their greatest effect, depends on the comparative sectional area of different portions; and if the cross-section is uniform throughout, will be some time after high tide in the Pacific and at the Atlantic end of the canal. The phase of the tide wave (or the appreciable effect of the tide) will take one and one-half hours to reach from one end to the other, and presuming the current to be uniform in the whole length”——“the question may be examined as a maximum, i. e., what will be the surface velocity of a canal thirty miles long, having a fall of eleven feet, or with a horizontal bottom having at one end twenty-eight feet, and at the other thirty-nine?”

Employing Du Buat’s formula, with the following quantities:

he deduces a maximum surface velocity of three miles per hour. The assumed average fall per mile is strictly a variable function, and at its maximum would give a result greatly in excess of that deduced by Mr. Gisborne.

There is no reason for this assumption of a fall of 0.33 of a foot per mile. It directly involves the question to be determined, since the velocity depends upon the inclination of the surface. The value deduced by the formula is not the maximum but the minimum velocity attained in the canal upon the assumed fall per mile.