Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/401

 and on my own responsibility that I offer you my solution and the following explanations.

I shall examine successively the various plans for lock-canals, showing which one seems to me to be the best, if such a system should be regarded as most advantageous.

I shall compare, in the same way, the projects for a tide-level canal. Finally, I shall compare the best plan for a lock canal with the best one for a tide-level canal.

[ (See map on the following page.)

 1. Plan by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Length, 148 miles; number of locks, 120; time for passage, twelve days. 2. Plan by the Lake of Nicaragua. Length, 180 miles; number of locks, 17; time for passage, four and a half days. 3. Plan for Level-water and Deep-cut Canal by the Isthmus of Panama. Length, 45 miles; time for passage, two days. 4. Plan by the Isthmus of San Blas. Length, 33 miles; time for passage, one day. 5. Plan by Atrato-Napipi. Length, 179 miles; number of locks, 3; time for passage, three days.—]

—I shall at once refuse a canal by the line of Tehuantepec, although it seems to me to be one of the easiest to be constructed: but it would demand a great number of locks; the passage through it would take a great deal of time comparatively; and, moreover, the canal would pass through a country which, from the unstable nature of the soil, is very undesirable for such a work. We have been told, I am aware, that these "movements," which I hardly dare to call earthquakes, were not to be feared; that during these "movements," to which the inhabitants of the country are well accustomed, sometimes in the walls of houses and of public buildings, cracks would appear wide enough for the light to be seen through them, but soon these cracks would be closed to crevices, mere lines, and that then the buildings threatened for the time would again become solid until there was a new "movement." These explanations do not entirely satisfy me, and I admit that such possibilities seem to me very objectionable for a canal with locks; simple crevices in the lateral walls, especially in the raised portions, would seriously compromise the working of the gates, and might necessitate, when least expected, long and costly repairs, and, what is more serious still, interrupt for a number of days, entire months perhaps, the passage of ships. Can one, therefore, readily imagine what would happen if fleets of vessels, becoming more numerous every day, should find themselves stopped in their passage, some on the Pacific and others on the Atlantic side, and compelled, in order to reach their destination, to continue their journey by Cape Horn or the Straits of Magellan, to