in the summer of 1890. It extends across what had always been considered an For the first 10 miles, there are but about 4 miles of nat

impassable swamp.

urally hard ground.

There are several places along the line where streams and other water courses are crossed. These are spanned by pile bridges, and a powerful steam pileThe length of road already built is

driver has been used in their construction. 11 miles the most difficult of the whole line-and 7 miles remain to be completed in order to reach the "divide." There are several miles of side track, switches, etc., already put down.

The road is equipped for construction work, and supplied with four locomotives, fifty cars, steam shovel, ballast unloader, jacks, and other requisite appliances. All the cross-ties and bridge timbers are of Northern pine and charged with 16 pounds creosote oil to the cubic foot. At the railroad terminus in the harbor is a fine wharf 264 feet long, built in the best manner of creosoted timber and equipped with modern steam conveniences for handling freight rapidly.

The survey for the remainder of the line, extending to the San Juan River at Ochoa, has been completed; in fact, there have been two lines surveyed and profiles prepared in sufficient detail to enable a close estimation of cost.

In the summer of 1890, there was purchased from the American Contracting and Dredging Company the very extensive and valuable plant used so successfully on the eastern end of the Panama Canal from the year 1881 to the collapse of that enterprise in 1888. It consisted of seven dredges, the most powerful ever built; two fine tugboats, twenty lighters, several launches, and a vast quantity of tools, spare parts, materials for repair and renewals, an entire machine shop, stationary engines, pumps, etc. Many of the articles are in abundance sufficient for completion of the canal. During the autumn of 1890, this property was transferred to San Juan del Norte. Upon its arrival, portions of it were immediately equipped for work, and three of the dredges have since been in use for various periods-two upon the line of the canal proper and a third in increasing the depth of the water at various points in the harbor and upon the bar. The canal line, to the width of 280 feet and depth of 17 feet, has been opened for 3,000 feet inland from the harbor, the material excavated being sand almost wholly. No buried wood or other obstructions to free dredging has been found.

Under a provision of the concession, the Canal Company has the right to expropriate private lands found requisite for its uses. It also possessed similar rights as against a company which held the exclusive privilege of navigating the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua with steam vessels. In 1889, the Construction Company became the purchaser of the rights and property of the steamboat company, and since the purchase has opened the line in the interest

of the canal.

The franchise is valuable independently, but in connection with construction its ownership became necessary to the company. Considerable acquisitions of private lands between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific have been made under the expropriation provisions mentioned.

The country through which the course of the canal is laid for the first 10 miles from the coast is a flat, alluvial formation, the accumulation of centuries, with occasional lagoons and swamps covered with zacate and silico palms or the primeval forests and a dense, tangled, almost impenetrable, mass of underbrush and vines. From thence its course is through wooded and fertile valleys between low hills to the divide cut, and thence to a connection at Ochoa with the San Juan; above Ochoa, it receives the waters of the San Carlos. From the mouth of the San Carlos, the course of the San Juan-then and thereafter the route of the canal-is through what may be termed the highlands of the river, the abutting flanks of the Cordillera. Sixteen miles above the San Carlos occur the Machuca Rapids; 5 and 6 miles farther on, Balas; 6 miles beyond are Castillo Rapids, the most important of all; and 9 miles farther the Toro Rapids, beyond which, to the lake, the course of the river is through a broad valley of lowlands, bounded by remote hills. Above the San Carlos and at Machuca, the forests which clothe the banks of the river are tropical in luxuriance. The lofty trees are draped with vines which creep and twine among their branches and droop to the water's edge in massive walls of verdure.

Above Machuca there are occasional clearings-where the lands are cultivated or grazed-through which the distant hills appear. At other places the hills themselves rise with steep and almost precipitous slopes directly from the river. Squier likens this part of the river to the highlands of the Hudson. At Castillo is an old Spanish fort, garrisoned by the Nicaraguan Government. considered impregnable by its builders, but was captured by a British force in 1780. Post Captain (afterwards Admiral) Nelson was in command of the naval corps of the expedition.

The erection of a dam at Ochoa and the execution of other works of canalization will, of course, change many of the present aspects of the river, deepening its waters over the rapids, and in numerous places expanding them into broad and lake-like surfaces, adding to its advantages for navigation and to its beauties as part of an already delightful landscape. One important peculiarity of the San Juan, already adverted to, should be particularly noted. It is exempt from the floods common to other tropical streams. This is owing to the fact that the great lakes serve as receiving reservoirs, on the broad expanses of which the rainfall is stored and from which it is delivered slowly instead of being concentrated from the adjacent hillsides into narrow valleys, and thus massed into rushing torrential floods.

The commercial problem which the opening of a canal across Nicaragua would solve is the same to-day as that which stimulated Columbus and his contemporaries and successors to their arduous efforts. The only difference is in the increased magnitude of its advantages.

It is still the discovery of a direct east and west route for the commerce of the world. Four centuries ago, that commerce consisted of the interchange of commodities between Europe and Asia. Since that time, there has been added to the nations then existing and to their growth in population, production, and consumption, a new continent, peopled now by 100,000,000 inhabitants, to whom the advantages of such a route for extension of their commerce is proportionately greater in a degree almost beyond. computation than it was believed in the fifteenth century that it would be, if discovered, to the Spain, or France, or England, of those days, or than it can be to them to-day when completed.