other tributaries of the Tuyra. When it was found that a sufficiently
correct idea of the country for topographical purposes could not be
obtained by simply meandering the water courses, lines or _trochas_
were cut through the forest from stream to stream, and where two
streams thus connected were tributaries of a common river, all of which
had been previously surveyed, a closed figure was obtained, an
adjustment for errors of closure made, and by putting together the
topographical data obtained by the four lines, there was generally
found to be sufficient information to give a satisfactory though of
course a crude delineation of the included area.
After a number of rivers had been examined with more or less accuracy
in this way, it was finally decided that the area for one portion of
the grant best suited for the purposes of the Canal Company lay on the
right bank of the Tuyra river, and that the portion of the river which
lay between the mouths of two of its tributaries, the Rio Yape and the
Rio Pucro, should be one of the boundaries of the grant. The Yape and
Pucro have courses approximately parallel to each other and at right
angles to the Rio Tuyra, and these streams were also chosen as boundary
lines, so that the grant would have the three rivers as natural
boundaries, and the fourth and closing boundary was to be a straight
line from a certain point on the Yape to the Pucro, so located as to
include within the four boundaries an area approximately equal to the
amount of the grant, which in this particular case was 25,000 hectares.
The problem then presented was: given three rivers for three boundaries
of a figure to establish a fourth and artificial line, completing the
figure in such a way that it should contain a given area, and also to
procure data for a topographical map of the country surveyed.
This survey was put under my direction and I was instructed to proceed
to a point overlooking the Tuyra river, between the Rio Yape and the
Rio Pucro, near the mouth of the Rio Capite, for the purpose of
establishing a base camp. Leaving Real de St. Marie on the evening of
March 15th, with a fleet of twelve canoes and about thirty native
laborers, we reached the site for the camp in two days. After landing
everything, the work of clearing away trees and underbrush over an area
sufficiently large for the camp was commenced. The men worked willingly
with axe and machéte, and soon the forest receded and left bare a
semi-circular space facing the river.
Two houses were needed and without saw, nail or hammer the construction
was commenced and prosecuted rapidly. Straight trees about six inches
in diameter and twenty feet long were cut and planted vertically in
holes dug out with the machéte, and horizontal pieces of a smaller
diameter were securely fastened on with long tough strips of bark, and
thus a square or oblong frame was fashioned. The horizontal pieces were
placed at a distance of about three feet from the ground, on which a
flooring was eventually laid, and at the top of the frame where the
slope of the roof began. On the top pieces other poles were laid and
fastened across and lengthwise, and on these the men stood while making
the skeleton of the roof. The latter was made very steep for better
protection against the rain. After the ridge pole was put in position
other smaller poles were fastened on parallel and perpendicular to it
so that the whole roof was divided up into squares, and it was finally
completed by weaving in thick bunches of palm and other leaves in such
a way as to make it thoroughly water-proof. For our purpose no
protection on the sides of the structures other than the projecting
eaves was considered necessary. A floor of poles laid very close
together was put in one house, the one used for sleeping purposes, and
in the other a table for eating, writing, draughting, etc., was made.
Thus in two or three days the place was made thoroughly habitable, and
men were detailed to see that the grounds, etc., were always kept
thoroughly clean and in a good sanitary condition, a very necessary
precaution in a tropical country. The forest afforded game, the river
an abundance of fish; bananas, oranges, lemons and pineapples were
easily procured from the natives, who also furnished material for a
poultry yard, and thus while located at camp Capite, situated as it was
on a picturesque spot overlooking two swiftly flowing rivers, with good
drinking water, a commissary department well stocked, a French cook who
would have done himself credit anywhere, I could not but think that
heretofore pictures of life in Darien had been too somberly drawn, and
that where so much suffering and sickness had prevailed among the early
explorers it was because they had gone there not properly outfitted,
and because carried away with ambitious enthusiasm their adventurous
spirit had caused them often to undertake that which their calmer
judgment would not have dictated; and that to these causes as much as
to the unhealthy condition of the locality was due their many
hardships. Several days were spent here getting time and latitude
observations and in mapping out plans for the work. It was decided that
the mouths of the Yape, Capite and Pucro and other points along these
rivers, such as mouths of tributary streams, etc., should be
astronomically located, that these points should be connected by
compass lines, and also that cross lines should be run at various
points from the Yape to the Capite and from the Capite to the Pucro. It
was further decided that as time was limited it would be impracticable
to run out the fourth side of the figure that would contain the grant,
as the country around the headwaters of the streams was known to be
exceedingly rough and mountainous, and to follow any straight line
would necessarily involve a great amount of laborious cutting and
climbing.
Furthermore, in order to know just what direction this line should
follow it would be first necessary to make a connected preliminary
survey of the three rivers; to plot this survey and then by inspection
of the map and consideration of various starting points to decide on
the most available location of the fourth side.
Instead of this it was considered best and sufficient to arbitrarily
adopt a certain waterfall on the Rio Yape, the location of which was
approximately known from a reconnoisance previously made, as the
initial point of the line connecting the upper Yape with the Pucro and
closing the figure. Thus it only became necessary, as far as the
boundaries were concerned, to run a line along the Tuyra, joining the
mouths of the Yape and Pucro; to run a line from the mouth of the Yape
to the waterfall above referred to; and to run up the Pucro
sufficiently far to be certain that when the work was completed and
plotted, a line drawn from the position of the waterfall on the map in
such a way as to include the desired area would intersect the Pucro at
some point within the limit of what had been surveyed. I have not time
to go into the details of the various trips by land and water necessary
to carry out these plans.
Before starting it was known exactly what was necessary to be done;
each assistant engineer had his work clearly mapped out before him, and
each one faithfully performed the task allotted to him, so that the
whole survey was brought to a successful completion. This brought to a
close all the work in Darien, the other tracts having been surveyed
before my arrival and consequently the whole expedition returned to
Panama, and soon afterwards I returned to this country.
In going to and returning from Darien, I passed twice over the Panama
railroad and along the line of the Panama canal, and I have thought
that a few facts relative to the canal and railroad might prove of
interest to the Geographical Society.
Published herewith is a sketch showing the location of the railroad,
canal and tributary drainage, and a profile along the axis of the
canal.
[Illustration: SKETCH SHOWING LOCATION OF PANAMA RAIL ROAD, PANAMA
CANAL AND TRIBUTARY DRAINAGE. N. Peters, Photo-Lithographer,
Washington, D. C.]
[Illustration: PROFILE OF THE PANAMA CANAL. Black indicates work
executed; stipple, work to be executed to complete a lock-canal; white,
additional work to be executed to complete a sea-level canal.]
The first surveys for the railroad were made in 1849, and it was
probably the excitement of the California gold fever that brought about
its construction at this particular time. Ground was broken in January,
1850, and the last rail was laid in January, 1855.
The length of the road is 47.6 miles and it crosses the dividing summit
at an elevation of 263 feet above the mean level of the Atlantic ocean.
The maximum grade is 60 feet to the mile. Soon after the road was built
accurate levels were run to determine the difference, if any, between
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and it was found that the mean levels
were about the same, although there are of course variations owing to
local causes, and considerable differences of height at times, owing to
differences of tides in the Atlantic and Pacific. At Aspinwall the
greatest rise is only 1.6 feet, while at Panama there is at times a
difference of over 21 feet between high and low water. The cost of the
railroad was $75,000,000.
The existence of the railroad was probably the deciding cause that led
Lesseps to the adoption of this location of the proposed canal.
Now that the scheme has practically failed it is very easy to see and
appreciate the difficulties that lay in the way of building a canal at
this particular place; and it certainly seems that if sound engineering
principles had been adopted at least some of these difficulties could
have been understood and properly combatted. The whole scheme, however,
from an engineering standpoint, seems to have been conducted in the
most blundering manner.
Lesseps is a diplomat and financier, but in no sense a great engineer.
In the construction of the Suez canal, the questions of diplomacy and
finance were the most difficult to settle, while the engineering
problems were comparatively simple. In Panama the opposite conditions
prevailed. Concessions were freely given him by the Colombian
government and money freely offered him by the French people, but he
never grasped or comprehended the difficulties that nature had planted
in his way, and these only seemed to occur to him when they blocked
progress in a certain direction. The Paris Conference, controlled by
Lesseps, decided on the 29th of May, 1879, that the construction of an
interoceanic canal was possible and that it should be built from the
Gulf of Limon to the Bay of Panama.
The tide-level scheme was adopted and the following dimensions decided
upon, viz: Length, 45.5 miles; depth, 28 feet; width at water line 164
feet, and width at bottom 72 feet.
The route determined upon was about the same as that of the railroad,
that is along the valleys of the Chagres and Obispo, crossing the
divide at the Culebra pass and then descending to the Pacific along the
course of the Rio Grande. The profile which is reproduced from
"Science," shows the state of progress on January 1st, 1888, and the
amount of excavation that has been done since that time would make but
a slight difference in the appearance of the profile. The portion shown
in black is what has been removed along the axis of the canal and
represents an expenditure of over $385,000,000 and seven years' labor.
The reasons that make the scheme impracticable are briefly these, some
of which were known before the work was commenced, and all of which
should have been understood.
The first great difficulty is in cutting through the ridge culminating
at Culebra where the original surface was 354 feet above the bed of the
proposed canal. It was never known what the geological formation of
this ridge was until the different strata were laid bare by the
workman's pick, and the slope adopted, 1½ to 1, was found to be
insufficient in the less compact formations, even at the comparatively
shallow depth that was reached, and many and serious landslides were of
frequent occurrence.
Another serious difficulty was the disposition of the excavated
material, for upon the completion of a sea-level course this channel
would naturally drain all the country hitherto tributary to the Chagres
and Rio Grande, and any substance not removed to a great distance would
eventually be washed back again into the canal. But perhaps the
greatest difficulty was in the control of the immense surface drainage.
The Chagres river during the dry season is, where it crosses the line
of the canal near Gamboa, only about two feet deep and 250 feet wide,
but during a flood the depth becomes as much as forty feet, the width
1,500 feet, and the volume of water discharged 160,000 cubic feet per
second. The bed of the river is here 42 feet above sea level, or 70
feet above what the bottom of canal would have been. Now add to this a
40-foot flood and we have a water surface one hundred and ten feet
above the bed of the canal.
In order to keep this immense volume of water from the canal it was
proposed to build a large dam at Gamboa, and to convey the water by an
entirely different and artificial route to the Atlantic. It is
impossible to show on the map the whole drainage area of the Chagres,
but a rough calculation shows it to be about 500 square miles. This
seems a small total drainage area, but when it is considered that the
annual rainfall is about 12 FEET, that this rainfall is confined to
about one half the year, and that in six consecutive hours there has
been a precipitation of over six inches of rain, some idea of the
amount of water that finds its way through the Chagres river during the
wet season may be formed.
As I said before it was proposed to protect the canal from the waters
of the upper Chagres by an immense dam at Gamboa, and for the purpose
of controlling the water tributary to the lower Chagres two additional
canals or channels were to be constructed on either side of the main
canal. Thus, as the river is very tortuous and the axis of the canal
crossed it twenty-five or thirty times, many deviations of the former
became necessary. In some places the canal was to occupy the bed of the
river and in others it cut across bends leaving the river for its
original natural purpose of drainage. The difficulty in retaining the
floods in these constructed channels would of course be immense,
especially in some of the cases where the water rushing along its
natural channel is suddenly turned at right angles into an artificial
one. Thus it is clear that aside from the enormous expense incident to
the removal of the immense amount of earth and rock necessary to
complete the canal, that granting all this accomplished, it would be
practically impossible to maintain a sea-level canal by reason of the
difficulty in controlling the Chagres and preventing the canal from
filling up.
The canal company finally came to the conclusion that the sea-level
scheme was impracticable and it was abandoned, and plans were prepared
for a lock system. As seen on the profile there were ten locks
proposed, five on each side of the summit level. The summit level was
to be 150 feet above sea level and consequently each lock would have a
lift of thirty feet. The profile was constructed especially to show the
amount remaining to be executed to complete the lock system, and a mere
inspection will show the relative amount of completed and uncompleted
area along the axis of the canal. To complete the summit cut it is
still necessary to excavate 111 feet, 93 feet having already been
excavated, through a horizontal distance of 3300 feet. The width of cut
at top surface for the required depth at a slope of 1½ to 1 would be
750 feet, but as I said before, at this slope landslides were of
frequent occurrence and the slope would probably have to be increased
to at least 2 to 1.
Granting the necessary excavations made, there would be still the
problem of the control of the Chagres river and the water supply for
the summit level to provide for. At first it was thought that the water
supply could be obtained from the storage of the waters of the Chagres
and Obispo, but this idea was eventually abandoned, either from a
belief in the insufficiency of the water supply during the dry season,
or from difficulties in the way of conveying the water to the summit
level.
Then it was that the advice of Mr. Eiffel, a noted French engineer, was
sought, and after a visit to the Isthmus he proposed that the summit
level should be supplied by pumping from the Pacific. A contract was
immediately made with Eiffel, who was heralded all over the world as
the man who would save the canal, and immediately a positive day, the
seventh that had been announced, was fixed for the opening of the great
canal.
I do not know just how much work was done towards perfecting the system
for pumping, but probably very little was ever accomplished in this
direction, as soon after this scheme was thought of the available funds
of the canal company began to be very scarce, and there has been since
then a general collapse of work all along the line until now it is
entirely suspended. From what I have said and from what can be seen
from the profile, it will be readily understood that as far as the
sea-level project is concerned the amount done is not much more than a
scraping of the surface, relatively speaking, and that what has been
done is in places where the obstacles were fewest.
In regard to the lock canal about one third of the necessary excavation
has been made along the axis of the canal, but taking into
consideration other requirements necessary for the completion of the
scheme, I should estimate, roughly, that probably only one sixth of the
whole amount of work had been accomplished. The question now naturally
arises as to what will be the probable future of this great enterprise.
The French people have seen the scheme fail under Lesseps in whom they
had the most unbounded confidence, and it is not likely that they will
raise any more money to be put in it as a business enterprise under any
other management. Saddled as it is with a debt of nearly four hundred
millions of dollars, it would be difficult to convince any one that it
could ever prove to be a paying investment. Nor do I think that any
American or English corporation can be organized that could obtain such
concessions from Lesseps as would make the scheme an inviting field for
capitalists, and thus my opinion is that the _"Compagnie Universelle du
Canal Interocéanique de Panama"_ has irretrievably collapsed, and that
the canal will remain, as it is now, the most gigantic failure of the
age.
ACROSS NICARAGUA WITH TRANSIT AND MACHÉTE.
BY R. E. PEARY.
The action of this National Society, with its array of distinguished
members, in turning its attention for an hour to a region which has
interested the thinking world for more than three centuries gives me
peculiar pleasure and satisfaction.
I propose this evening to touch lightly and briefly upon the natural
features of Nicaragua, to note the reasons for the interest which has
always centered upon her, to trace the growth of the great project with
which her name is inseparably linked; to show you somewhat in detail,
the life, work, and surroundings of an engineer within her borders; and
finally to show you the result that is to crown the engineer's work in
her wide spreading forests and fertile valleys.
That portion of Central America now included within the boundaries of
our sister republic Nicaragua, has almost from the moment that European
eyes looked upon it attracted and charmed the attention of explorers,
geographers, great rulers, students, and men of sagacious and far
reaching intellect.
From Gomara the long list of famous names which have linked themselves
with Nicaragua reaches down through Humboldt, Napoleon III., Ammen,
Lull, Menocal and Taylor.
The shores were first seen by Europeans in 1502, when Columbus in his
fourth voyage rounded the cape which forms the northeast angle of the
state, and called it "Gracias á Dios," which name it bears to-day.
Columbus then coasted southward along the eastern shore.
In 1522, Avila, penetrated from the Pacific coast of the country to the
lakes and the cities of the Indian inhabitants. Previous to this the
country was occupied by a numerous population of Aztecs, or nearly
allied people, as the quantities of specimens of pottery, gold images,
and other articles found upon the islands and along the shores of the
lakes, prove conclusively.
In 1529 the connection of the lakes with the Caribbean sea was
discovered, and during the last half of the eighteenth century a
considerable commerce was carried on by this route between Granada on
Lake Nicaragua and the cities of Nombre de Dios, Cartagena, Havana and
Cadiz.
In 1821 Nicaragua threw off the rule of the mother country and in 1823
formed with her sister Spanish colonies, a confederation. This
confederation was dissolved in 1838, and since then Nicaragua has
conducted her own affairs. In point of advancement, financial solidity
and stability of government she stands to-day nearly, if not quite, at
the head of the Central American republics.
Nicaragua extends over a little more than four degrees each of latitude
and longitude, from about N. 11° to N. 15° and from 83° 20' W. to 87°
40' W.
Its longest side is the northern border from the Gulf of Fonseca
northeasterly to Cape Gracias á Dios, two hundred and ninety miles.
From that cape south to the mouth of the Rio San Juan, the Caribbean
coast line, is two hundred and fifty miles. Nearly due west across the
Isthmus to Salinas Bay on the Pacific, is one hundred and twenty miles.
The Pacific coast line extends thence northwest one hundred and sixty
miles.
In point of size Nicaragua stands first among the Central American
republics having an area of 51,600 square miles. It is larger than
either the State of New York or Pennsylvania, about the size of
Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined, and is
one-fourth as large as France or Germany. Its population numbers about
300,000.
The Gulf of Fonseca, at the northern, and Salinas Bay at the southern
extremity of the coast line are two of the finest and largest harbors
on the Pacific coast of Central America. About midway between them is
the fine harbor of Corinto, and there are also several other ports
along the coast, at San Juan del Sur, Brito and Tamarindito. On the
Caribbean coast no harbors suitable for large vessels exist, but
numerous lagoons and bights afford the best of shelter for coasting
vessels.
The central portion of Nicaragua is traversed, from north to south, by
the main _cordillera_ of the isthmus, which, here greatly reduced in
altitude, consists merely of a confused mass of peaks and ridges with
an average elevation scarcely exceeding 1,000 feet.
Between this mountainous region and the Caribbean shore stretches a low
level country, covered with a dense forest, rich in rubber, cedar,
mahogany and dye woods. It is drained by several large rivers whose
fertile intervales will yield almost incredible harvests of plantains,
bananas, oranges, limes, and other tropical fruits.
West of the mountain zone is a broad valley, about one hundred and
twenty-five feet above the level of the sea, extending from the Gulf of
Fonseca, southeasterly to the frontier of Costa Rica. The greater
portion of this valley is occupied by two lakes, Managua and Nicaragua.
The latter one hundred and ten miles long by fifty or sixty miles wide
is really an inland sea, being one-half as large as Lake Ontario and
twice as large as Long Island Sound. These lakes, with the rainfall of
the adjacent valleys, drain through the noble San Juan river, which
discharges into the Caribbean at Greytown, at the southeast angle of
the country.