to make a safe harbor at either end, and expensive locks and dams would have to be built before large steamers could navigate the river and the lake, the same disadvantages had to be overcome at Panama. The greater length of a canal at Nicaragua,—the continent at this point is one hundred and fifty miles wide,—and the closer proximity of more or less active volcanoes, with the greater danger of eruptional earthquakes, would make it inferior to the canal at Panama. The continual revolutions and political disturbances of Nicaragua, which has been so badly governed that no foreign government or private company has been willing to risk the investment of the hundreds of million of dollars needed to build a canal there, finally turned the scale against that country. Nicaragua is probably the only other place, beside Panama, where it would be physically possible to build a modern ship canal across the American continent.
E. The Tehuantepec route. Not long after the Spaniards, under Cortez, had conquered Mexico, they built a road across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is the narrowest part of that country. Centuries ago, there was more than a little trade by this road, between Spain and Mexico and the Far East, as was proved by the discovery at Vera Cruz of two large bronze cannon bearing the stamp of the old Manila foundry. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is too wide and the summit-level too high, to be pierced by a sea-level canal; and the supply of water is too scanty for a canal with locks. When the French were trying to dig a canal at Panama, an American engineer, Captain Eads, proposed to build across Tehuantepec a "ship-railway": a railroad with a
