ination of the canal route from Brito to Greytown, through Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan outlet, to determine the feasibility, safety, or cost of a ship canal for vessels of the largest size or burden.

The upper limit of cost, under the most unfavorable conditions as to the prices of labor and material, and all incidental expenditures, and with ample capacity for the safe and rapid transit of the largest vessels, is $140,000,000.

The lowest limit of cost is, probably, $70,000,000.

Between these sums there is a margin of security as absolute as any forecast or skill of engineering can provide, in advance, so that the possibility of an undercalculation is reduced to the minimum.

The capacity of the canal, as it is projected in the latest surveys made by our Government, is larger as to its prism and locks than is provided for in any previous plan, and it is greater than any ship canal in the world.

If any possible increase of the dimensions of ships should ever require a corresponding increase of the capacity of the canal, or even its duplication, there is ample room for such works, and the water supply is greatly more than sufficient for all such possible demands.

The Isthmus of Darien has been carefully explored by many able engineers and geographers, and the Nicaragua route and the Panama route have excluded all other possible routes from consideration. It may be more assuring to some who are overcautious, to prosecute other explorations for the discovery of other possible routes, but otherwise there can not be any reasonable ground either for the delay or the expense.

Engineering measurements and tests, conducted by various parties at great expense, have demonstrated, at least, that the route established in the bill herewith reported is the best, the safest, the most favorable in respect of the motive power of the winds, and is in the healthiest region for a canal on the isthmus.

In the long list of great engineers who have made careful examinations of the Nicaragua route for contractors, promoters, companies holding concessions, and for governments are the names of Mr. Colquhoun, of England, who describes this route in his "Key to the Pacific,” and Ferdinand de Lesseps, who testified before a committee of the House of Representatives.

Without dissent or hesitancy these great engineers state that, for a canal with locks, the Nicaraguan route is really the only available route for a ship canal through the Isthmus of Darien, and the common sense of mankind adopts their conclusions without any distrust.

This conclusion has been so fortified by subsequent careful surveys of the Nicaraguan route as to dispel all reasonable doubt of its correctness. In 1850-51 Col, O. W. Childs, of Philadelphia, made the first thorough instrumental survey of this route for Cornelius Vanderbilt and his associates, which has been a basis of all subsequent surveys, and his report was examined by the United States Coast Survey and the route was pronounced feasible.

In 1872-73 the Panama route and the Nicaragua route were surveyed by the Government by Commander E. P. Lull, aided by A. G. Menocal as his chief engineer.

This report demonstrated the feasibility of the canal and included estimates of the cost of construction. The work was thoroughly done and was compared with Child's survey.

Lull's survey demonstrated the superiority of the Nicaragua route over the Panama route, and the disregard of the warnings of Mr. Menocal and Admiral Ammen, given to the international canal congress that assembled in Paris in 1879, has cost the French people the loss of $300,000,000, and severe convulsions of popular indignation that are not yet quieted.

In 1884 Mr. Menocal was again sent to Nicaragua by Mr. Frelinghuysen to resurvey the canal from Lake Nicaragua to the Caribbean Sea. He made a still more careful survey and reported to the Secretary of the Navy.

In 1887 Mr. Menocal, as chief engineer, assisted by Lieut. R. E. Peary, again surveyed the entire route of the canal from ocean to ocean, under the employment of Hon. Charles P. Daily and many other distinguished men, who had united under the encouragement of the Government to obtain a concession from Nicaragua for the construction of a ship canal.

This strong corps of our best engineers made the final surveys and location of the canal, which the Maritime Canal Company was incorporated by Congress to construct, and they proceeded to expend on the work more than $4,500,000.

Although the artificial canal thus surveyed and located is less than 30 miles long, this survey included not less than 4,000 miles of actual measurement, and with lines run by the two subsequent commissions not less than 8,000 miles.

Congress, in legislating for the assistance of this work, for reasons of public importance and not at the instance or request of the Maritime Canal Company of Nicaragua, has organized two commissions to resurvey and re-examine this canal route, the first under Colonel Ludlow, in 1895, and the other under Rear Admiral Walker in 1897. Both commissions have made thorough examinations and elaborate and very able reports on

this canal route, which are in the archives of the Senate. In these reports both commissions verify the previous surveys of Lull and Menocal and found no error in their work.

It may be safely stated that no great work of this character has ever been examined with greater care or was ever found to have been surveyed with more accuracy in advance of actual construction.

There is a solid foundation of fact, mathematically demonstrated as to every engineering problem, and a careful examination into every fact and condition that relates to the canal, on which to base the uniform conclusions that all these scientific experts have reached, that the canal is feasible, with no new engineering problems to be met; that it is practicable and safe, and will be permanent, and of a capacity that need not be increased to accommodate any new demand of commerce.

As to the Nicaraguan route, there is no element of uncertainty that seems to justify any further delay in providing for its adoption.

If it could be reasonably assumed or satisfactorily established that the Panama route would admit of the construction of a canal at a lower cost, with a shorter line of transit and a safer water supply than the Nicaragua route, there are other difficulties in our adopting the Panama route that can not be removed, and are supreme in their control over our duty to select the Nicaragua

route.

The great lakes of Nicaragua and Managua are the best water supply in the world for a lock canal to connect two oceans or arms of the sea. As to the water supply sufficient for the highest level of a great ship canal, there can be no doubt of the superiority of the Nicaraguan route over that of Panama.

The Panama plan for getting water to fill its highest level is to impound the waters of the Chagres River near its source, in a pond of sufficient capacity to supply the canal, 10 miles away. The river is a capricious, fluctuating stream that varies from a bed that is nearly dry, at times, to an inundation that rises 40 feet in a single night.

The storage of water in a pond, with its bottom formed of unstratified earth and volcanic stones, must be an insecure admixture, and to convey the water 10 miles through a volcanic region, across deep ravines that require inverted siphons, constructed with iron pipes, is a costly and hazardous experiment. It is said that any work is possible to the skill of the engineer who is supplied with sufficient money, but even on that predicate, this scheme seems impossible.

It is too severe a tax upon credulity to ask the adoption of

this precarious water supply at Panama in preference to these two grand lakes, one of whch is 100 miles long by 45 miles broad, and affords nearly 72 miles of fresh-water navigation for the largest ships, as part of the canal route, and together they supply more than ten times the water needed to supply the canal line from Lake Nicaragua to both oceans.

Our coastwise traffic is largely carried on with sailing vessels, and the conditions of the winds at Panama are exceedingly unfavorable to such craft.

It frequently happens that sailing vessels can not leave the ports on either side of the isthmus at Panama without the aid of tugs, and must be towed to sea for distances varying from 100 to 500 miles to get wind enough to fill their sails. Lieut. M. F. Maury, the great geographer of the seas, made a close study of this subject, and declared that "even if the Isthmus of Panama were to be divided by a convulsion of nature, it would never become a highway for sailing vessels on account of the unfavorable winds, calms, and currents."

Lieut. Frederick Collins, U. S. N., was charged by the Navy Department with the scientific examination of this subject, and made an exhaustive report under a resolution of the Senate of March 17, 1882, to Secretary Chandler.

In February, 1880, he made a statement to a committee of the House of Representatives with reference to the comparative advantages of the Panama and Nicaragua canal routes and with reference to the time required for the passage of steam and sailing vessels between New York and San Francisco.

He gives the distance between the Pacific termini of the proposed canals at about 650 miles, or, on both directions, 1,300 miles, and the sailing distance between Panama and San Francisco, on the average of ships, at 5,350 miles, and between Nicaragua and San Francisco at 3,240 miles, the difference in time at 14 days in favor of the Nicaraguan route. The difference on steam vessels he states at 5 days.

He says. "The foregoing figures speak for themselves. They show that a canal at Nicaragua will bring New York or New Orleans nearer to San Francisco by nineteen days than will a canal at Panama or any of the proposed routes south of Panama." Then he asks: "What other argument can be necessary to show the direction in which American interest lies?"

The fact is established by positive data collected from a great number of actual occurrences that Lieutenant Maury was right in his declaration that the Panama canal if built, would be practically useless for sailing vessels.

In a letter written in 1886 by M. F. Maury, he says:

The great importance of one or more good commercial highways across Central America being admitted, the whole question of route resolves itself pretty much into a question of cost of construction and facility of ingress and egress by sea to and from the opposite termini. The latter is an affair of winds and currents, and their influence is powerful. Panama has the advantage of land transit; Nicaragua has the advantage of winds, terminal ports and climate. The first is obvious, but to place the latter in a clear light some little explanation is necessary. * I have spoken of the calm belt about the equator. Panama is within its range. *** It is difficult to convey to anyone who has never experienced these calms an idea of the obstinacy with which they vex navigation. We are all familiar with calms at sea, which last for a few hours, or even a day, but here they last for days and weeks at a time. I have known vessels going to and from Panama to be detained by them for months at a time. On one occason the British Admiralty wishing to send one of their vessels into the Arctic Ocean from Panama in time to save the season, had her towed by a steamer through this calm belt and carried 700 miles out to sea before she could find a breeze.

The advantages of the Nicaraguan route for all classes of ships are clearly stated in the report of the Walker commission of 1898, in connection with the fact that the trade winds there are constant, and seldom cease, even for a day, in their passage through the valley of the San Juan River across the lakes to the Pacific Ocean.

In the commercial view of the subject, this is a determining fact in the selection of a canal route across the Isthmus of Darien. No saving is possible in the cost of a canal that could compensate for the loss of business to sailing ships debarred from the Panama route by fixed conditions like these; and the loss of competition between steam and sail vessels, in price of freights would deprive the whole country of one of the most essential advantages of a ship canal to connect the oceans.

All the seacoasts of the world, except about one-tenth part of their length, are nearer to Liverpool than they are to New York on the usual routes of sea travel.

The length of sea voyages from New York and from Liverpool to all the points of importance, based on the charts of the Bureau of Navigation, of the Navy Department, is shown by the following facts:

The principal seaports of the world, situated at geographical points that furnish a fair basis of comparison of the length of sea