OCR Text |
Show Figuring on the Panama Canal. New Yobk, February 12. De Lesseps's journey to the scene of the Panama Canal enterprise, and his invitation accepted by the New York Chamber of Commerce to send a representative of the Chamber with his party of inspection, gives a peculiar interest to an article just published in the Pall Mall Gazette. The writer says that in July, 1880, De Lesseps announced that 44,000,000 for the supposed cost of the canal, as the Paris Congress had suggested, was ridiculously high; that a celebrated contracting firm would willingly undertake to cnt a sea level canal for 20,480,000, so that, including all accessories, the local oost could never exceed 28,000,000. An International Technical Committee early in that year reported that instead of 46,000,000 cubic meters, which the Congress had estimated to cost 44,000,000, there was really 75,000,000 meters. De Lesseps's Les-seps's estimate of the cost, therefore, while 36 per cent, less than that of the Congress, was based upon , an estimate of an excavation excava-tion 63 per cent, greater. What .has happened hap-pened to date is that 6,000,000 has been called from the shareholders and 34,600,-000 34,600,-000 has been raised by debentures. |