THE PANAMA ROUTE FOR A SHIP CANAL. 



*3 



greatest possible extent. A judicious, effective organization and plant 

 would transform the execution of this work into what may be called 

 a manufactory of excavation with all the intensity of direction and 

 efficiency of well-designed and administered machinery which char- 

 acterizes the concentration of labor and mechanical appliances in great 

 manufacturing establishments. Such a successful installation would 

 involve scarcely more advance in contract operations than was exhibited, 

 in its day, in the execution of the work on the Chicago Drainage Canal. 

 By such means only can the peculiar difficulties attendant upon the 

 execution of great works in the tropics be reduced to controllable dimen- 



View on the San - Juan River in Nicaragua. 



sions. The same general observations may be applied to the con- 

 struction of the Bohio dam, even should a no more favorable site be 

 found. 



The greatest concentration of excavation on the Nicaragua route is 

 between the lake and the Pacific, but it constitutes only ten per cent, 

 of the total excavation of all grades, and it can be completed in far less 

 time than the great cut on the Panama route. If this were the only 

 great feature of work besides the dam, the time for completion of 

 work on this route would be materially less than that required for the 

 Panama crossing. As a matter of fact there are a succession of features 

 of equivalent magnitude, or very nearly so, from Greytown nearly to 

 Brito, extending over a distance of at least 175 miles, requiring the 

 construction of a substantial service railroad over a considerable portion 

 of the distance prior to the beginning of work. This attenuation of 



