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Show THE MANDINGO-DARIEN CANAL. The Senate is considering an Isthmus canal treaty between our Government and Colombia, but we do not believe that any canal will be completed com-pleted along the route marked out by the French and upon which such vast sums have already been expended. Away back in the sixties the Darien route was surveyed and a description of it was published, but the war was on at the time, people's minds were more concerned over the problem of holding the country together than in blasting a channel through the Isthmus; there was no surplus sur-plus money in our country; rather, the debt was grow at more than $1,000,000 per day; the I .- had an army in Mexico trying to subdue that country, and finally, there were no sucu explosives ex-plosives and no such facilities for drilling rock as are common now, so that the most sanguine recoiled betore the magnitude of the work of trying try-ing to blast a ship canal through a tunnel 5 miles In length of solid rock. But a pamphlet has recently been issued by General Wellman errell giving all the details of the original surveys, ana stating the manifest advantages of the route over the one on which the work has been done. The route treated treat-ed upon in this pamphlet in the Mandingo-Darien route, which was surveyed by Ruae, McDougal and Sweet for Mr. Frederick M. Kelly, a Wall street banker, in 1864. The route as surveyed begins on the north side of the isthmus in the Bay of Mandingo, at the southwest side of the Gulf oi San Bias, where the water is eighty feet deep within one hundred feet of the shore and ia nowhere less than sixty feet, out through the bay to the Atlantic. The Gulf of San Bias is landlocked at the west by high headlands, and the entrance to the bay fs abundantly protected by islands that are lovely under their deep tropical foliage. The proposed route is geometrically straight, very nearly north and south through tne Isthmus twenty-nine and a half miles, five miles of which will have to be tun. neled. Strangely, too, this is the very narrowest spot on the Isthmus. On the soutn terminal is another superb harbor behind the famous Pearl islands. The tunnel is to be thirty-five feet deep at extreme low tide, from ninety-five to one nun. dred and eighty feet wide, and above the water will be one hundred and sixty feet high. The canal will be all carved from solid rock, except a few feet on the southern side. The rock, according to Mr. Diller of the Geological Survey, is very dense, and he adds, "it had better be called an altered diabase." Work can be begun at each terminal ter-minal and the shape of the mountain will permit the sinking of three shafts. The pamphlet Is filled with details, but the more important ones are that 28,800 feet can be completed annually and tne total cost will be only $75,500,000 to $80,000,000. The Mandingo canal route is twenty-nine and a naif miles, the Panama forty-nine mlies, the NIc-aragua NIc-aragua 183 miles long. The harbors of the Darien are fine, better than the Panama, while the Nfc aragua has none at all. On that route artificial harbors would have to be made. The first named route means a sea level canal perfectly straight. The other routes involve great dams and locks. The Mandingo line can be completed in three yeais. Neither of the others could he finished H undpr from seven to twelve years. B The Mandingo can carry through 288 ships u dail.v ; the other from twenty to twenty-five ships. H The Mandingo can pass a ship through, day or night, in five or six hours; the otners would re-qiiiie re-qiiiie fifteen hours of daylight. We hope it is this pamphlet which has prompted prompt-ed the treaty and that it is the Mandingo canal that the authorities are making arrangements to begin work upon. It is quite possible that President Presi-dent Roosevelt is dreaming of attending, while yet President, the ceremonies of opening this canal to the world's commerce. It may be stated that the overland railway companies are not in love with the prospect, but the West rs growing rapidly; they will all do well enough. |
