The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-11-03
SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 8. 1891
THE NIcARAGUA CANAL.

principal subject of discussion just now,
and indeed gives promise of becoming
an issue of the next political campaign.
But little is known by those who have
not taken the trouble to look the matter
up, concerning the route, or feasibility
of constructing canal and completing
q waterway across so wide an isthmus.
The formation of the country is peculiar,
q remarkable depression extending for
three hundred miles northwest and
southeast, parallel with the Pacific
coast and transversly to the Central
American plateau, which it almost COM
pletely interrupts. This depression,
which lies at mean elevation of
scarcely one hundred feet above the sea,
is now flooded by two great lakes, Mana
qua and Nicaragua, which collect nearly
all the drainage of the western province,
discharging it into the Atlantic through
the San Juan river.
The exploration of the route was
made by Commodore Lull, and is said to
show practicable route, with lake Mica
ragua as its summit level, 107 feet above
the sea. This route requires a canal 16
miles long, beginning at the mouth of
the Rio del Medic and terminating at
Brito. The first seven and a half miles
will require an excavation averaging
fifty-four feet in depth, and will be the
most expensive part of the whole work.
Ten locks and one tide lock will be re-
quired between the lake and the Pacific.
There will then be fifty-six miles of lake
navigation. From the lake the At
lantic will be reached through the San
Juan river, a sluggish stream 400 yards
broad and from ten to twenty feet deep,
which will be improved by four dams.
A short section of canal, with one lock,
will be required to get around each of
the upper three dams. From the fourth
to the Caribbean sea a canal forty two
miles long will be cut, requiring seven
locks.
One of the principal difficulties will
be in maintaining a sufficient depth of
water at Greytown, the Atlantic ter
minus of the canal. Some question is
raised as to there being sufficient water
70 maintain the canal. This seems to be
set at rest by an examination of the
lake, the watershed and the rainfall.
Lake Nicaragua has an area of 2,700
square miles, a drainage area of 5000
square miles, and an average rainfall OF
1O2 inches, and will supply, according to
actual measurements of the discharge OF
the San Juan river, thirty eight times
as much water as would be required.
David Stevenson, the eminent English
engineer, arrives at the conclusion, from
documents submitted to him by an au-
thorized official of the Unite.l States
and prepared by its authority, that the
principal engineering difficulty is tc
maintain deep water through an exten-
sive shallow ioreshore, composed of soft
materials and exposed to heavy seas
The estimated cost of the canal is $780,.
100000. Another thing that must be
taken into consideration is that the
country is subject to severe earthquakes
and while these have not been of suffi
cient violence or magnitude to materi
ally change the face of the country il
the past one hundred years, yet un
doubtedly they nave been powerful
enough to have caused immense dam
age to such structures as dams anC
canals had they been built at the time