90 ^ GISBORNE. [June 9, 185G. 



niittee to report in favour of the practicability of uniting Lake Nicaragua with 

 the Pacific, and using the Lake as a feeder, if not embraced in the direct com- 

 munication with the river St. Juan, which was navigable to the Atlantic at 

 most seasons of the year, by vessels of shalloAv draught. 



He did not believe, as the Lake was of great? dimensions — not less than 

 200 miles in circumference, and if shoal in some places, in others deep enough 

 for ships of any size — that it would fail of supplying a sufBcient quantity of 

 water for a constant navigation, by means of locks, from sea to sea. The use 

 of it for twenty-four hours would not, he believed, reduce the level of its sur- 

 face 2 inches, if in that time it received no supply from Lake Leon, which lies 

 N. of it, and disembogues the water, received from various streams, into Lake 

 Nicaragua, by a river of rapid current. 



Assuming it as a universal truth, that wherever there is a perpetually 

 descending navigable river, supplying a sufficient quantity of water for a navi- 

 gable canal, such a canal can be made, the Committee of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, without other data, deemed the whole line of navigation for the 

 largest ships, from the Pacific through, or by. Lake Nicaragua and down the 

 St. Juan to the Atlantic, practicable. Of the cost of such a work they could 

 pronounce no judgment. Of the quantity of materials of earth and rock to be 

 removed, in order to open that part of it, in which a line of levels had been 

 supplied by Thompson's work on Guatemala, they were furnished with a hasty 

 estimate by the Topographical Bureau of the War Department of the United 

 States, which made it with no other assistance, than from the cross-section of 

 the ground which the canal would pass on the line already surveyed. Those 

 materials exceeded 44 millions of cubic yards. 



From the profile of the entire line, and information derived from the con- 

 struction of a canal of 186 miles, leading from the city of Washington, along 

 the river Potomac, through many lofty mountains, the Chairman of the 

 Committee, availing himself of further information as to the general aspect of 

 the country between the Lake and the Pacific, was led to compute the cost of 

 so much of the line of proposed navigation, at 20 millions of dollars, or about 

 4 millions of pounds sterling. This, he admits, was rather a guess than an 

 estimate ; but he entertained no doubt of the practicability of the construction 

 of the entire work, for a sum much less than its value, which is beyond all 

 computation. 



General Mercer said, that he brought with him to Europe, near three years 

 ago, two copies of the Eeport of the Committee on Roads, Canals, and Internal 

 Navigation of the year 1838, on this subject. He despaired, on account of 

 the then existing war. Of being able to use it with any practical effect, although 

 the construction of the canal, with only one other object of public interest, 

 had led him, at a very advanced age, to make a seventh voyage across the 

 Atlantic since the commencement of the present century, having made his first 

 in 1802. 



Great Britain had a much deeper interest than France, in uniting with 

 America, in constructing the proposed canal. It has been rumoured, not 

 without circumstantial evidence of its truth, that an effort is to be made, which, 

 if made, will doubtless be successful, to unite the Red Sea with the Mediter- 

 ranean, by a canal through the Isthmus of Suez, where, it is believed, a canal 

 formerly existed. If successful, one effect of it will be obvious, that France, 

 Austria, and Russia, Italy and Greece, will be on the water line of communi- 

 cation between England and her possessions, from 1500 to 2000 miles nearer to 

 those possessions, than she will herself be. It is therefore much to her interest 

 to shorten, if practicable, her distance from them, by way of the Atlantic 

 and Pacific, by uniting those oceans as now proposed. 



In the Appendix to the Report of the Committee, occupying 160 pages, 

 reference was made to the history of several companies formed for the execution 

 of the Nicaragua and other lines of inter-oceanic communication across the 



