While keeping honorably the name of Commander Selfridge in our thoughts, with all regret we must put out of sight a plan the success of which is at best doubtful, while its cost would be relatively enormous.
Shall we now take up the San Blas project? This line is the shortest which joins the two oceans, but to carry it out a harbor must be built on the Atlantic, and then you soon find yourself facing a mountain-chain which has to be passed by a tunnel sixteen kilometres long; next you come to the Bayano, with elbows in its course too square to be straightened out, and a bar also on the Pacific side, which it is not certain could be mastered. The expense calculated for all this is fourteen hundred million francs.
The plan of a tunnel does not frighten M. Favre,[1] the contractor of the one through the St. Gothard Mountain, nor would it frighten me, especially if he were willing to undertake it; but shipmasters do not take kindly to so long a passage without fresh air and the light of day; and, although it is proposed to give electric light instead, which will be as bright as day, there would still be an unconquerable antipathy against this project.
For these reasons I decline to accept the San Blas plan, which, moreover, has only been hastily surveyed, and it is possible that a more careful examination of it would bring to light other difficulties of which we are not now cognizant.
Therefore, throwing out other plans, we find ourselves in a position to examine the project of a tide-level canal from Colon (Aspinwall) to Panama, a project which has been so patiently and courageously explored and worked out by Messrs. Wyse and Reclus, lieutenants of the French navy.
This plan demands two changes, important and absolutely necessary, the success of which, while not easy, seems to me perfectly certain.
In the first place, a large part of the ship-canal must be made in the valley of the river Chagres, a river so inconvenient and dangerous that we must have nothing to do with it, at no matter what cost, if we desire that the canal should have a regular water-level—a condition absolutely necessary for its success.
For this, two plans offer themselves. The first is to keep the canal above any possibilities of overflow. Theoretically, nothing is easier; the railroad, now in operation between Colon (Aspinwall) and Panama, which the canal should follow, and as near as possible, is above the overflow of the Chagres. By prolonging the level of this roadway to the sides of the valley a winding line would be traced, bringing us to the place beyond which the canal can be constructed, without danger from
- ↑ This great engineer died at his post in the St. Gothard Tunnel, from a stroke of apoplexy, a short time after the adjournment of the Paris Congress, of which he was one of the most valued members.
