The proposed canal was to be a ditch dug down to twenty-seven and a half feet below sea-level, seventy-two feet wide at the bottom, and ninety at the water-line. In general, it was to follow the line of the Panama Railroad, from ocean to ocean. To keep the canal from being flooded by the Chagres, a great dam was to be built across that river at a place not far below Cruces, called Gamboa. Because of the difference between the tides of the two oceans, a large tidal basin was to be dug out of the swamps on the Pacific side, where the rise and fall is ten times that on the Atlantic.
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COUNT DE LESSEPS IN 1880.
The Paris Congress thought that such a canal might be built for $214,000,000. The Technical Commission, after a few weeks on the Isthmus, said that it could be done for $168,600,000. Ferdinand de Lesseps, on his own responsibility, reduced these figures to $120,000,000, and declared that the Canal would be open in six years, and that enough ships would pass through in the first year after that to pay $18,000,000 worth of tolls. Allured by these figures, and trust-