St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1890-10-02
Gbe Californian
THE NICARAGUA CANAL.

Below are given parts of private
letter written from Camp Ammen
Nicaragua. August 81, by Mr.. A. A
Mckenzie, an engineer on the Mic
aragua canal to a business man in
this place:
l have been in Nicaragua nearly
three months and have not been sick
day, and in fact was never better in
my life. Nicaragua is not such bad
country as | was led to suppose be
fore coming here, but then it is no
summer resort either.
We left New York Sunday morning
May 18th. There were about Is
passengers on board, most of them
employees of the Canal company. 1t
was certainly not a pleasure trip for
me for l was very sick nearly the
whole voyage which lasted, includ-
ing stops, twelve days. The weather
was good with the exception of one
day and most of the passengers
seemed to enjoy it; but | never spent
such a miserable time in my life
The first stop we made was at King
stOn, Jamaica. We arrived there the
Sunday following the day we left
New York, and left Sunday evening
was very glad to be able to get on
solid ground for even day, and it
did me great deal of good. l went
to church in the morning, and took
n drive through the city in the after
noon. You probably know that
Jamaica is an English possession and
that quite proportion of the in
habitants are English and that Eng
lish is the language of the island.
We arrived at Grcytown on DecOra-
ton day, and | can tell you that |
was glad the voyage was over, for
it is no pleasure for one who is so
subject to sea-sickness as | am, to
take a voyage. You cannot fail to
be somewhat familiar with the plan
of such an important work as this
canal. but at the risk of telling you
what you already know, will give
you a brief outline of the work
The whole route of the canal from
ocean to ocean is ITO miles For
the first ten miles from GreytOwn it
is through d low swampy country
which at any place is only a few feet
above sea level. The entire work on
this portion will be done by dredging.
From this point to five or six miles
farther comes the series of three
locks which will raise vessels to the
level of Lake Nicaragua which is 40
feet above sea level. These locks are
to be constructed along the Deseado
valley. There will be very little eX-
cavatiOn between the locks as there
will be dams at each which will form
basins. Probably the greatest piece
of work is the rock cut through the
Divide. This is about 16 miles above
Greytown, about three miles long
and in the deepest place about 300
feet. Beyond the divide for a dis
tance of about dozen miles there
will be basin navigation in what
they call the San Francisco valley
The water is turned into this valley
by large dam across the San Juan
river From this dam there will be
free navigation for 65 miles in the
San Juan river and Sc miles in the
lake. From the lake to the Pacific
ocean the distance is twelve miles,
about twO-thirds of which will have
to be excavated and three locks will
have to be made. The total distance
that will have to be excavated is
only 81 miles, 10 of which will be
done by dredging. Artificial basius
into which the water will be turned
and which need no excavation will
take % miles. All the rest of the
distance will be free navigation in
the San Juan river and the lake. So
you see that only a small part of the
whole distance will need any work,
and it seems very probable that it
will be very successfully completed.
In addition to the work on the canal
proper there will need to be a good
deal of work done on the harbOrs at
both termini.
think that the impression at home
is that there is more work done than
there really is. There has been no
work at excavation on the canal,
but good deal of work has been
done on the harbor at Greytown and
they are building a railroad to the
divide to aid the work on the big cut
and the locks.
| came down here to work in the
engineering corps but have yet
done no regular engineering work
They first sent me to lock 3 to work
as Sub-fOreman in the boring party
After three weeks the man who had
the charge of that party resigned
and they placed me in charge and
have been at that work ever since |
The object of the work is to ascer-
tain the quality of the material they |
will have to excavate and the kind |
of foundation they can obtain. Near
lock 3 | had to do boring to find a |
fOunda ton for a dam and it's en- |
bankment 1t will be about a thou |
sand feet long and sixty or seventy |
feet high at the river. Earth work |
we do with augers and rock work |
with diamond drills, but so far there |
has been very little diamond drill |
work, for there is very little rock in |
this vicinity. We completed the |
work at lock the first of this month |
and moved to lock to do the same |
kind of work. The dam and en-
bankments here will be over two |
thousand feet long but not as high |
as at lock g. | do not know lust |
what sort of dams they intend to |
put in but they have no rock founda-
ton for them.
The men have at this work are
Jamaican negroes, a pretty poor set of |
men they are My estimat ton of the