OCR Text |
Show INTEROCEANIC COMMUNICATION. For a great many years there has been talk of some way to avoid transporting goods around Cape Horn without the trouble of twice shifting cargoes. A like problem was under consideration in the eastern hemisphere when the Asiatic and European trade had to double the Cape of Good Hope - not as bad a voyageous the Cape Horn one but from its great length a sensible thing to get rid of. The Suez canal solved the eastern problem, and when De Leesapa, under whose management that canal was completed, earned his attention to this side of the globe and began on the [unreadable word] for a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama, the talk of getting ships from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the Atlantic to the Pacific without going around Cape Horn took a new start. There are now three plans that are much talked of in the business world and whose advocates are or will be before Congress for help of one kind or another. They are the Panama ship canal, the Nicaragua sihp canal, and the [unreadable word] ship railway. The route by way of Cape Horn which makes a ship's course from New York to San Francisco 15,672 miles. The Isthmus of Panama joining North and South America is between Aspin-walk, a seaport on the north upon the Caribbean sea to Panama on the south on the Bay of Panama about 43 miles wide. It is between Aspinwall and Panama that De Lesesps proposes to constract a ship canal. The territory to be traversed is in the United States of Columbia and the government of Columbia has made the necessary grants to enable the company to use the land needed. There is considerable jealousy of the sohems in question as it has been thought the company would be under European control. The estimated cost of this canal is $110,000,000. It is to be a tide-water canal - that is out to the sea-level so that no locks will be needed except a tide lock to deal with the Pacific tide which is twenty feet higher at Panama than the tide on the Atlantic side at Aspinwell. This is the company which Richard Thompson, late Secretary of the Navy, has accepted a position in, and which is perhaps pushing its plans most actively. The distance by it from New York to San Francisco is reduced to 6057 miles. Its location is about 80 deg west longitude from Greenwich and about the 9th parallel of north latitude. The Nicaraguan ship as proposed who run from Grey Town, or San Juan de Nicaragua, a seaport on the Caribbean sea round 253 miles northwest of Aspinwall, [unreadable word] about 75 miles to Lake Nicuragua, which it would utilize, and from whose westerly shore it would pass some 25 miles to the Pacific coast at Nicaragua Brito. This canal company propoeces to "climb" to the lake by locks and its advantages are claimed to be that of health fitness, nearness and cheapness. Its advocates say that the Panama route will cost enormously, that the tunneling necessary to make a tide-water canal is almost impracticable, and that the Panacas region is fearfully unhealthy both for laborers and for mere passengers. They claim the Nicaragua canal can be built for $78,000,000. Its western terminus is 100 miles bearer San Francisco than Panama and there is something more than that distance saved over the Panama route. Five or six hundred miles to the northwest of the Nicaragua route is the Isthmus of Tehmantopes? Separating the Gulf of Mexico on the north from the [unreadable lines] on the south. This Isthmus is 130 miles wide, but as a navigable river uns nearly 20 miles of it, the distance to be overcome is 112 miles. Capt. Made?, the engineer who did the famous work at the month of the Mississippi by the jetty system, proposes a ship railway across the Tehuntepee isthmus estimating its cost at $75,000,000. The route would be 1,200 to 1,500 miles shorter from the Pacific and Atlantic principal seaports than that by the Panama. The Nicaragua canal is the one in favor of which Gen. Grant has written in the North American Review. In 1868 Simon Stevens and others obtained from the Legislature of Vermont a charter for a railroad across the Isthmus of Tehnantepee and the promoters of that enterprise are said to be friendly to Eads plan. This seems to be an enormous undertaking, being no less a one than that of carrying ocean stormers by rail from one ocean to the other. To carry the larges tsteamers a car of 1,250 wheels would be needed, these wheels running upon twelve parallel rails. To load the steamers the car would be run under them by means of an extension of the road bed into a short canalding from the harbor. The advocates of the two canals of course regard Capt. Eads' scheme as impracticable. It now looks as though the enterprising advocates of those measures would get money enough to go at least far enough with their work to show whether it is or is not practicable and that by means of one or the other at these enterprises a few years will find ships making their way by canal or rail - perhaps by both - between the two oceans without taking the Cape Horn route [unreadable word] the "northwest passage." - [Gren Mountain Freeman. |