which will soon amount to some $10,000,000 | a year, is already beginning to make its way hither to market. Add to this the amount of Eastern capital, which is annually finding its way into those regions for investment, and we may safely reckon upon $15,000,000 a year, soon to be expended in the purchase of Californian products. But this is only a small portion of the advantages which California is destined to derive from the new road. From San Francisco to New Orleans is about two thousand miles; from Wilmington on the Pacific to New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico is about fifteen hundred miles. By both of these routes, chiefly from San Francisco, on account of the facility for obtaining return freights, a vast commerce is destined to spring up between India, China, Japan, Australia, and the Pacific Islands on the one hand, and the Southern and Eastern States of America and all Europe on the other. The Tehuantepec route, if indeed it is ever completed, cannot compete successfully, either for freight or passengers, with the Southern Pacific. It involves two ocean voyages, and thus is little better than the Panama railway; it lacks good ports on either ocean. The climate of Nicaragua is too hot, and, above all, too humid for many classes of goods to pass through it unharmed; it has no back country with railway connections to add any local traffic to the through traffic; it is subject to the caprices of an unstable and insecure government, to the vicissitudes of almost incessant war and revolution, and to pillage by bandits. The Guaymas route is open to all the same objections except the first named, and to the further one, that it will have no Eastern outlet nearer than New York. The Panama Canal is still in the air. As before stated, the Southern Pacific is the shortest land route between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, which lies wholly within the territory of the United States. This is a geographical fact, which practically settles the question of through trade between Asia and Polynesia on the west and the Atlantic States and Europe on the east, and it must settle it for a long time to come. To wind up the long list of benefits which the new overland route premises to confer upon our State, it should be mentioned that it offers a direct land route to Europe for Californian grain. Shipping cannot always be obtained at San Francisco to load with grain. At the present time, for example, there is a great dearth of vessels. The result is that our grain lacks a quick market. To ship it to New York or Eu rope via the Central and Union Pacific railways is impracticable; the price of transportation, even if lowered to cost, would almost equal the value of the grain at its place of destination. To ship it via the Isthmus is equally impracticable. Cape Horn is the only practicable route now open. When the Southern Pacific possesses a continuous line of rail to New Orleans, the problem of a grain market for the Pacific Coast will be solved. It will cost no more to ship grain from this coast than from Minnesota or Kansas to Europe. To the prospect which this great public work opens for the creation of a new and prosperous industrial era in California, but a single objection has yet been offered. It has been claimed that the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway, after its junction with the Southern Pacific, which, it is expected, will take place within a few weeks and a little west of the Rio Grande River, will be continued south-westwardly by a branch to Guaymas, and north-westwardly by another to San Francisco; and that, when thus completed, it will secure, through the first named branch, a portion of the Asiatic trade, and, through the last named, a portion of the San Francisco trade. So far as the latter contingency is concerned, San Francisco has nothing to fear. Whether her products are conveyed to a market by one route or another, can be a matter of little consequence to her. What she wants, what the entire State wants, is new markets; and if we possessed a dozen means of reaching them, instead of two, it could do us no harm. The loss of the Asiatic through-trade would, however, be a great misfortune to us. This trade yields considerable profit to our capitalists, and affords employment to large mercantile and industrial classes of our citizens. We cannot well afford to lose it. The prospect of such a contingency is, therefore, well worth considering. Up to its point of junction with the Southern Pacific, the Atchison and Topeka Railway will doubtless prove a valuable franchise. It will place within reach of south-eastern Colorado and New Mexico the farm products of the Western, and the manufactures of the Eastern States, and open the mining product of Colorado and New Mexico to the markets of the world. And it is the prospect of this valuable trade that has enabled the enterprising projectors of this line to favorably market their stocks and bonds in the East. Any attempt to extend the line beyond this limit must, however, prove disastrous. There is no trade to support an extension south-westwardly to Guaymas, nor westwardly to California; and should such ex now being made at Guaymas, an extension to that port will, as likely as not, be abandoned. It has no footing as a legitimate enterprise, and its only apology will be the object of making a profit through the sale of securities for which a market will have been afforded by the success in placing the stocks and bonds of the only portion of the line that can hope to prove self-sustaining-viz., that to the junction with the Southern Pacific. tensions be completed, the losses upon them will hardly make good the profits on the main line. Guaymas cannot, under any circumstances, compete with San Francisco as a port for the through trade to Asia and Polynesia. As a harbor for vessels, it is greatly inferior; it is a long distance up the Gulf of California, so difficult of navigation; it is out of the way; it cannot offer any return freights for vessels; a railway line from Guaymas to the East would be too long to compete with either of the San These considerations reduce the whole subFrancisco roads. An extension of the Atchi-ject to within the compass of a nut-shell. The son line west to San Francisco would traverse | Atchison and Topeka will secure the trade of little else except deserts, including those of New Mexico, Arizona, and the Mojave. Such an enterprise will necessarily prove disastrous, and, if carried out, will rob the stockholders of the Atchison line of all the advantages they will gain up to the point of junction with the Southern Pacific. San Francisco has, however, little to fear from such a contingency. Railway capital, whether of Boston or other origin, is not so plentiful as to be ready to spend $3 for $1 worth of road, and an extension of the Atchison and Topeka line to California is not likely to be attempted. Notwithstanding the preparations Colorado and New Mexico to Kansas and Missouri. The Southern Pacific will give the trade of Arizona and the surrounding country to San Francisco; it will secure the Asiatic throughtrade to California; it will afford a short and easy outlet for Californian grain, wool, and wine to Europe. There is no fear that the Golden State will be deprived of these advantages; and if it secure them, as probably it will, there can be little doubt that a new era of prosperity awaits the State-an era so active, so progressive, and so promising, that it will substantially create a new California. ALEXANDER DEL MAR. INTEROCEANIC COMMUNICATION. The subject of this paper is older than American civilization. Since the day that Nuñez de Balboa, from the summit of the isthmus cordillera, for the first time gazed on the vast Pacific, the question of an interoceanic canal has at various times agitated the greatest minds of the world. Now that "the dream of centuries" is undoubtedly on the eve of fulfillment, it is eminently proper that the people of the Pacific Coast, who, of all others, are the most interested in this great work, should carefully inform themselves as to the merits of the three projects claiming public attention, whereby the Pacific Coast is to be brought thousands of miles nearer the great marts of Europe. That the reader may the more readily comprehend the subject, it will be presented under five heads, viz.: (1.) A topographical description of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal route. (2.) A like description of the Panama Interoceanic Canal route, with explanations of the American and French surveys therefor. (3.) A like description of the Eads Ship Railway project across the Tehuantepec Isthmus. VOL. III.14. (4.) The effect of the completion of either of these three projects upon the interests of our Pacific Coast, and upon the commerce of the world. (5.) The political consideration of the question as it affects the interests of our country, and the application thereto of the "Monroe doctrine." It will be perceived readily that a full discussion of these points would far exceed the limits of a magazine article; but it will be the aim of the writer to concisely state the leading features in connection therewith in such a manner that the general reader will derive a fair idea of the whole question, and thus be able to deal with it intelligently hereafter. The interoceanic canal projected by the Nicaragua Maritime Canal Company, of which General Grant is the President, has its initiative point on the Atlantic at San Juan del Norte,* Nicaragua, this port being situated at the mouth * Called by the English, "Greytown," a name not used in Nicaragua, where it is commonly called "Del Norte," as distinguished from San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific, commonly called "Del Sur." of the San Juan River, which connects Lake Nicaragua with the Caribbean Sea. This harbor, as late as 1858, was an excellent one, with an entrance deep enough to float the largest ships. The San Juan is a large river, averaging about six hundred yards in width, and navigable for light draught steamers during the entire year, while during the rainy season, steamers of four hundred tons can ascend through it to Lake Nicaragua. It empties into the Caribbean Sea through two principal channels, each about twenty miles in length (the Colorado branch and the San Juan proper), and also through a secondary branch leaving the San Juan below its junction with the Colorado, called the Tauro branch. In former years the San Juan River proper carried most of the water, and, while this was the case, its current scoured the harbor of San Juan del Norte, and maintained a depth of twenty-eight to thirty feet at its entrance. | pleted the work-thus isolating the harbor, which is then to be dredged, and its outer line protected by an artificial work, which fortunately finds below the shifting river sand a solid clay foundation. This obstacle overcome, the rest of the work offers nothing that modern engineering cannot easily and safely accomplish. Indeed, nature meets man more than half way on the rest of the projected canal line. From the port of San Juan del Norte the canal line reaches the San Juan River just above where the San Carlos River empties into it from the Costa Rica side. The San Juan, above the mouth of the San Carlos, has no streams of consequence emptying into it. Below the San Carlos, this latter and the Serapaqui River (also emptying into the San Juan from the Costa Rica side) render the main river liable to sudden freshets and unadapted to canal purposes. Above the San Carlos River the San Juan is subject to only such moderate increase of volume as may arise from an increased hight of the level of Lake Nicaragua during the rainy reason. In fact, it becomes a natural drainage channel from the lake, with a fall of only nine inches to the mile. Since 1858, the volume of water going down the San Juan proper has gradually diminished, and has been diverted to the Colorado branch, which now carries seven-eighths of the water from Lake Nicaragua to the sea. The result of this change has been destructive to the har- Where the canal joins the San Juan River, bor of San Juan del Norte. The loss of a scour- just above the mouth of the San Carlos, a pering current has caused a very serious shoaling of manent stone dam, 49 feet high, is to be conthe harbor, and nearly destroyed its entrance. structed, which at once raises the river above The restoration of this harbor is the most diffi- it two feet higher than the present high-water cult problem in the Nicaragua Canal project; level of the lake, and over this dam the San and, while willingly admitting that it can be Juan is allowed to find its way to the Atlanmade a good harbor, I am inclined to the belief tic. There is nothing especial about this dam, that it may cost double the amount allowed for either in hight or length (2,000 feet) to disin the estimates, which is placed at $2,822,630. tinguish it from works of a similar character The plan adopted for this purpose is to turn the elsewhere. The abrupt banks of the river af entire water of the San Juan River down its ford excellent abutments. From San Juan del Colorado branch-a point easy of accomplish-Norte to the dam the canal runs mostly through ment, since nature has already almost com- an alluvial soil, where dredging machinery will do most of the work with advantage. The hight of the lake and river above the dam being then 109 feet 10 inches above sea level, locks (probably seven in number) must be constructed to attain this level. It is proper here to state that, in the matter of locks, the Nicaragua Canal survey requires only what experience has already demonstrated as practicable--a lock having been three years in use on the St. Mary's Canal, constructed by General Weitzel, Engineer United States Army, with a length of 515 feet, and a lift greater than will be needed in Nicaragua. It is in this respect principally that the Nicaragua survey differs from the Panama French survey. The elevation of 109 feet 10 inches in Nicaragua is overcome by locks, while at Panama the De Lesseps survey surmounts an elevation of 294.7 feet by a low-tide, oceanlevel cut. The merits of the two schemes will appear more in detail hereafter. From the San Carlos dam to the lake the river will need a large outlay to fit it for uninterrupted slackwater navigation. Its most abrupt sinuosities must be removed, and its channel cleared of rocks. Above the San Carlos dam are four rapids-the Machuca, the Balas, the Castillo, and the Toro. Of these only the Castillo deserves the name, and I have often run over all of them in river steamers of light draft, while, as before stated, lake steamers, built in the United States, have always reached Lake Nicaragua by passing over them in the rainy season. Of course, the improvement of the river-bed would be made before the completion of the dam, and offers no obstacles that cannot be readily overcome. From the Toro Rapids to the lake (28 miles) the San Juan flows in majestic silencea wide and deep natural canal, needing little expenditure to fit it for heavy navigation. Lake Nicaragua* is a magnificent fresh-water inland sea, with an area of over 3,000 square miles, 110 miles long, and about 35 miles wide, averaging from 9 to 15 fathoms deep, and its surface 107 feet 10 inches above the sea-level. Situated north of it, 17 miles distant and 22.3 feet higher, is Lake Managua, about 30 miles long, which it is intended to connect with Lake Nicaragua by a light draft canal, as subsidiary to the ship canal. The length of interoceanic canal navigation on Lake Nicaragua is 56%1⁄2 miles, from the junction of lake and river to the lake end of the Pacific division of the canal, at the mouth of the little River Lajas; and the only labor necessary thereon is the dredging of the soft mud for about seven miles from the junction of lake and river, where, by the grad * Derived from "Nicarao"-an Indian chief discovered by the Spaniards residing on the shores of the lake-with the addition of the Spanish "agua," or water. ual current into the river, the lake has been shoaled by "silt" deposit to a depth of about twelve feet at low water. Lake Nicaragua is the great feature of this route. Its immense area prevents any floods, as the extreme difference from its low-water level at the end of the dry season and its high-water level at the end of the rainy season is only twelve feet. It furnishes far more water than can ever be used for lockage, while it constitutes an excellent inland harbor, and by its extent and connection with Lake Managua will render subsidiary to the ship canal the territory of the republic, than which there is no richer in natural resources in the world. The Pacific division of this canal is 174 miles long, from the mouth of the Lajas on the lake (before alluded to) to the Pacific seaport of Brito. The elevation above lake level is 42 feet, which, with the lake level above the sea, 107 feet 10 inches, makes the lowest summit at present known between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, 150 feet. There is nothing special in this cut between the lake and the Pacific. The only obstacle of note is the diversion of the small stream called the Rio Grande, which is a mere brook in the dry season, and never swells to respectable dimensions at any time. This diversion is necessary to prevent the interference of the stream with the canal, which is constructed mostly through a wooded country and solid ground. At the little port of Brito the Nicaragua Canal enters the Pacific. The harbor is merely a small indentation in the coast line, with good anchorage, but insufficiently protected seaward. Partly by the excavation of the low sandy land at the head of the harbor, and by the construction of a short breakwater from the bluff forming its northern limit, a good harbor can be made sufficient in size to answer every purpose, and as large as many important European ports. Of course, a duplicate system of locks must be constructed in these 174 miles to overcome the difference between lake and sea level, already stated as being 107 feet 10 inches. The original United States survey was made for ten locks, each of 1034 feet lift, but it is now proposed to increase the lift and diminish the number of locks to seven, which will save expense and economize time. It will be noticed that the work I have described is not only an interoceanic canal, but forms a system of internal improvement which will insure a rapid development of the republic of Nicaragua, and thereby materially add to the revenues of the canal company. On the various advantages justly claimed for this route-climatic, engineering, commercial, and meteorological—it is foreign to the purpose of this paper to comment, and I close this description of the Nicaragua Canal route with the following figures, which the reader should refer to hereafter for comparison: Total length of interoceanic navigation, 173.57 miles. Canal, from San Juan del Norte to San Carlos dam, 35.90 miles. Slack-water river navigation, from San Carlos dam to lake junction, 63.90 miles. | by thirteen culverts, which carry them under the canal, to resume their channels on the other side of it. Besides the provision made for the thirteen small streams, there are in this section three minor branches, turned into side drains. An examination of the map will show that this section of the work runs nearly parallel with a range of hills inland, from which these streams start. Disposing of these minor obstacles, and raising the canal level by twelve Lake navigation, from lake junction to lake end of locks, at convenient intervals, the work apPacific division of canal, 56.50 miles. Extreme summit level, between Pacific and Atlantic oceans, 150 feet. Total length of canal to be constructed, 53.15 miles. Engineer's estimate of cost, $52,577,718. Engineer's estimate of time for construction, 5 years. Mercantile estimate of possible cost, San Francisco Board of Trade, $100,000,000. THE PANAMA CANAL ROUTE. There have been two surveys made at the Panama Isthmus for an interoceanic canal: First, a United States Government survey, under the superintendence of Captain E. P. Lull and Civil Engineer Menocal, both ranking at the head of their profession in the United States navy, and forming, with other officers and men of the naval service, about the same party which had previously made the Government survey in Nicaragua; second, the survey lately made by French engineers, under the control of Count de Lesseps. The United States survey is for a lock canal, with an elevation of one hundred and twenty-four feet, and the French survey for a low-tide level canal, without locks, through a summit level of two hundred and ninety-five feet above its surface. The Panama Railroad is forty-seven and a half miles long, and both surveys follow its track approximately. I will first describe the American lock canal project. Leaving the Atlantic at Aspinwall about one mile inside the present railroad wharf, the canal enters a low, swampy region, densely covered with tropical vegetation. Through this region and to the river Chagres there are two engineering difficulties to be contended with: First, the maintenance of the banks of the canal through a soil of such consistency, especially during the rainy season,* that it may fill in as fast as dredged, which difficulty could, if necessary, be overcome by training walls; second, between the Atlantic and the Chagres River there are thirteen streams running across the canal line, of small dimensions during the dry season, but troublesome when swollen by heavy rains. The American survey provides for these * At Aspinwall, during the year 1872, the enormous precipi tation of 170.18 inches was registered. proaches the key of the Panama Canal survey, -the River Chagres. Where the canal crosses the Chagres, near the present railroad bridge, it has a channel nineteen hundred feet widefrequently insufficient to carry its waters, which, only a year since, inundated the valley, swept the iron bridge down the river, and covered the railroad track for days. In fact, the Chagres is a violent, rapid stream during the rainy seasons, and has been known to rise forty-eight feet in one night. Over the Chagres, on a viaduct built on twelve arches, the canal is carried, leaving the river to find its way unvexed to the sea. This work, practical and permanent, although necessarily expensive, solves the problem of the Panama Canal. A feeder, for locking purposes, is run from the Chagres, tapping it twelve miles up the river, and there appears no doubt of the capacity of the river to furnish all the necessary lockage water, although it might tax it seriously, with a large traffic, during the dry season. Past the Chagres, the character of the work in not formidable, although, owing to the high summit, the excavation through the Culebra division is very heavy, even with the reduction made by the elevation of the canal, which, again seeking sea-level by thirteen locks, finally finds the Pacific quarter of a mile east of the present railroad wharf; whence, owing to the large rise and fall of tide, it is carried about two miles out into the bay until it meets deep water. The survey for the Panama Canal above described is considered by the best engineering talent in this country as the only manner in which the difficulties of the project can be surmounted at any cost within commercial limits. Count de Lesseps has decided that he must have a low-tide level canal across the Panama Isthmus, and, while he may over-value its advantages, his opponents must concede their existence. The French survey leaves the Atlantic at Navy Bay at the same place as the United States survey-in fact, both surveys follow the railroad approximately, and both encounter the same obstacles, but surmount them differently. Both surveys include a breakwater in Navy Bay (Aspinwall), protecting the end of |