Chicago eagle. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1889-19??, 1894-10-27
VeAoY FOR INSPECTION At LAST
fhe rebusntcpcc Railroad. which nss
fseen Fifteen Years Under WAY,

fhe rebuautcpcc Railroad. which nss
fseen Fifteen Years Under Way.
President Diaz has been notified of
the completion Of the Tehuaptepec
Railroad and has been invited by the
contractors to Inspect IL, with a view
To its acccptancCby the Government.
Thus Is completed an enterprise
viii h has been 1fteen years under
way, aud as to which. when 1t Is In
running order. says the san Francisco
Call. people will wonder that IL had
not been constructed long before.
Gonzalez was President Of Mexico
when the original Tehauntepec Com.
pany obtained its concession, sur
veyed It's line and began work. II
built twenty.eight miles Of road and
then broke down for want Of funds,
abandoning the line 1t had construct.
ed. Then Capt Eads started his
scheme of a ship railroad across the
isthmus. and though 1t was gener.
ally regarded as fantastical, II di.
vertcd mems minds for nearly ten
years from the subject of a prac tical
railroad. At Eads death the project
was dednately abandoned, and the
Mexican Government. which had
come into possession Of twenty Eight
miles Of road at the Atlantic end aud
0f about twenty-five miles which IL
had built at the Pacific end, under.
took t. complete the line as Gov.
eminent enterprise. Porfirio Diax
borrowed about els. ZOO, 900 In Eng.
land and issued for the loan s per
cent. gold bonds secured by the In.
come Of The new line with the money
thus obtained he pushed the work to
completion.
1t Is the only rival of the Panama
Rail. and II has great advantages
over that line on account OF the ma
tcrial shortening OF the distance be.
tween New York and San Francisco.
The distance from SEA TO sea Is only
$50 miles, and the depression on the
Sierras, which 1t crosses can be over
come by a gradient 800 feet to the
mile. The headwaters of the streams
which feed the Coatzacoalco, flowing
into the Atlantic, and Of those which
flow westward into the Pacific lagoons
are only q Jew miles apart. One.
third OF the road, In fact. runs
through a level aliuvial plain. through
which the Coatzacoalcos pursues its
tranquil course. The port OF Tehuan.
tepec, which Is the western terminus
OF the road, lies north OF the region
OF Gains In which Panama Is stu.
ated. Sailing ships departing from
Tehuantepec can always rely on the
northeast trades. A year ago, when
the completion OF the road was q
foregone conclusion, the Southern
Pacific offered to lease IL from the
Government OF Mexico The offer
was decii by President Diaz on
the ground that he proposed to throw
the road opeL to all carriers, and was
unwilling that 1t should become part.
ner 10 q monopoly
1t would seem that the new road
Ought to do q good business with.
out entangling alliances The har.
bors at each end are good, aud
after the line IL In complete running
order the traffic between California
aud the east will have the benefit Of
. new competing routa. 1t ought to
DO possible to organize a line of
freight steamers to carry goods from
New Orleans to San Francisco via
Tehuantepec 10 as short time as the
average freight trains on tho Pacific
roads take to cover about the same
distance. The country traversed by
the road lies Ia the States OF Vera
Cruz and Oaxaca, and Is imperfectly
known. Even the valley of the
COatzacoalcos has only been described
by few travellers, through the river
OF that name, unlike most of the
rivers OF Mexico, Is naviga.
BILE for thirty miles inside
the bars 1t Is known that
Vera Cruz grows a tobacco which Is
little II at all inferior to that OF
Cuba, and that the cocoa OF Oaxaca
Is OF unrivaled excellence. But the
people are still largely OF the aho.
Iiginal breeds, and !civilization pene.
trates among them with difficulty
The engineers Who made the first
surveys for the Teuhantepec line re-
ported that IN many parts they ad.
hered to the primeval simplicity In
respect to costume GeolOgists have
said that a line drawn from the CAPT.
tai OF Mexico through the center of
Oaxaca, cutting the main axis Of up.
peaval at an angle Of fOrty.five de.
Rrees, would probably intersect the
richest argentiferOus region ID the
world. The field Is practically virgin.