Mr. Eads claims that this system of improvement designed by him is, in several respects, wholly different from any ever before proposed for the treatment of a river; it is, however, only applicable to rivers flowing through alluvial deposits.
The grandest work, however, contemplated by Mr. Eads, is the ship-railway which he proposed to construct across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, for the transportation of large ships fully laden from ocean to ocean. This he holds to be entirely practicable—because the railway can be built wherever the canal can, at one half the cost of the canal with locks, or one quarter the cost of one at tide-level; because it can be built in one third or one quarter of the time needed to build a canal; because four or five times the speed practicable on a canal can be secured; because more vessels can be carried in a day over the railway than through the canal; because the capacity of the railway can be increased to suit increased needs without disturbance; because it will cost less to maintain and operate it than to maintain and operate a canal; because it can be built and operated where the canal can not be; because more accurate estimates can be made of the cost and time needed for its construction; and because its location is the very best of all those which are proposed on the American Isthmus. It is not generally known, but it is nevertheless true, that the location of the ship-railway and that of the Panama Canal are about twelve hundred statute miles apart, the whole immense territory of Central America lying between the two. It is, therefore, far superior in climate and in position to any other location.
Besides these works, Mr. Eads has, at the request of the Governments and individuals particularly interested, examined and reported upon the bar at the mouth of the St. John's River, Florida, the improvement of the Sacramento River, the improvement of the harbor of Toronto, the improvement of the port of Vera Cruz, the improvement of the harbor of Tampico, the improvement of the harbor of Galveston, and the estuary and port of the Mersey, England. He was President of the St. Louis Academy of Science for two terms, and made an inaugural address in which was embodied a review of the recent achievements of science, and, in another, the present knowledge of the laws of light. In 1881 he made an extemporary address before the British Association at York, upon the improvement of the Mississippi, and also upon the Tehuantepec Ship-Canal, which were, by unanimous vote, ordered to be embodied in its report of the proceedings; and in June, 1881, he was awarded the Albert Medal of the British Society of Arts, in token of its appreciation of the services he had rendered to the science of engineering—he being the first American upon whom this medal had been conferred. It is now his purpose to devote the remaining energies of his life, until the scheme is an accomplished fact, to the prosecution of the Ship-Railway.
