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 118 The proposed canal was to be a ditch dug down to twenty-seven and a half feet below sea-level, seventy-two feet wide at the bottom, and ninety at the water-line. In general, it was to follow the line of the Panama Railroad, from ocean to ocean. To keep the canal from being flooded by the Chagres, a great dam was to be built across that river at a place not far below Cruces, called Gamboa. Because of the difference between the tides of the two oceans, a large tidal basin was to be dug out of the swamps on the Pacific side, where the rise and fall is ten times that on the Atlantic.



The Paris Congress thought that such a canal might be built for $214,000,000. The Technical Commission, after a few weeks on the Isthmus, said that it could be done for $168,600,000. Ferdinand de Lesseps, on his own responsibility, reduced these figures to $120,000,000, and declared that the Canal would be open in six years, and that enough ships would pass through in the first year after that to pay $18,000,000 worth of tolls. Allured by these figures, and