The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-01
THE DARIEN CANAL-GEN. GRANTS
SPLENDID OPPORTUNITY.
From the N. Y. Herald.


From the exhaustive review given in Mon
day Herald of the various explorations made
from time to time since the year 1900, by
Spanish, English, French and American ex-
ploring parties of the Isthmus of Darien, in
view of a ship canal between the two oceans,
we think the intelligent reader, whatever may
have been his doubts before, has ceased to
have a doubt Of the feasibility of the grand
project. We think, from the facts ascertained,
that ship canal of one half the length of the
Suez Canal may be made from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, on the general level of the two
oceans, and without a tunnel; that it may be
completed within four years, and at a cost not
exceeding one hundred millions of dollars
We think it not improbable that route may
be found which will reduce the cost to sixty
millions.
At all events the enterprise, in being made
| O leading measure of General Grant S admin
istration, may be made great success under
| his official supervision; and, If so accom-
| plished, it will be an achievement which in
| history will link his name with the great
events of the nineteenth century, when all
| his achievements in war shall have passed
| into the realms of fable and tradition. In
contemplating the work of the Suez Canal,
| now that it is finished and in successful ope-
ration, our only wonder is that it should have
been held as an impractical undertaking
during all the centuries through which the
commercial nations of Europe have been
doubling the Cape of Good Hope to
the Indies. We do not wonder, how
ever. that Government has heretofore
regarded the proposed Darien Canal as a
desirable but impossible thing; for
within twenty years the same opinion in this
country was almost universally entertained of
the scheme for railway from st. Louis to
San Francisco. Before our late civil war,
moreover, one hundred millions of money as
an investment in anything was an amount too
enormous and too awful to be thought of
But the war, i'll developing our financial capa-
bilities. has reduced the matter of a hundred
or five hundred millions to a mere bagatelle
Why, indeed, should we hesitate at anything
now, when a railway company, for instance,
| operating upon a line of three or four hun
dred miles, can water it's stock to the extent
of twenty, thirty, or forty millions, and still
keep running and watering too!
: Seriously, however, as an investment this
Darien Canal will eclipse the Suez Canal, as
the Atlantic Ocean eclipses the Red Sea, and
as the Pacific ecipses the Mediterranean.
, The Darien Canal will make New York. in
fact, the commercial centre and settling house
of the world. 1t will give us the central ship
line to the western flank of our own CONT
nent and the eastern flank of Asia 1t will
develop the shipbuilding resources of Oregon
and the fisheries of Alaska. 1t will establish
! our occupation of the West India Islands
, Mexico, and Central America and develop {
; trade in those regions SURPRISING that ot
Hindostan and the isles of the Indian Ocean
1t will, in absorbing all the intermediate trade
! | on the eastern side of the continent, bring
$ the traffic of the mighty Amazon, by way o
the Gulf Stream, around to an interchang
, | with the Mississippi valley 1t will buil(
up cities on the Isthmus itself compared
f with which Tyre and Carthage, ''whose mer
s chants were princess" will dwindle into in
n significance.
/ We are gratifed that General Grant ha
n entered heartily into the movement for tn
q excavation of this Darien Canal. We believ
n that under his leadership the work can b
! done before his retirement from office, an
g we are sure that if done it will be the creates
: and the most enduring achievement of his ad
o ministration.