INTEROCEANIC CANAL ROUTES. 387 



the highest overflow of the water ; but this line will, doubtless, be too 

 tortuous to enable one to follow it correctly, or to be always above it ; 

 one should, in order to obtain reasonably straight lines, or curves not 

 too sharp, bring the canal partially to the Thahceg of the valley ; it 

 will therefore be necessary at several places to change the bed of the 

 Chagres, the bends of which multiplied would encroach upon the route 

 of the canal. But the land, coming from this partial changing of the 

 line, as well as that which would come from digging out the canal 

 itself, turned up to a moderate height, quite equal to the corresponding 

 height of the embankment of the railroad, would make a dike which 

 the water of the Chagres could not pass over. At the place where the 

 line of the canal will necessarily cross the bed of the Chagres to fall 

 into the Bay of Limon, the Chagres will be turned from its course to 

 allow the canal to pass at its left. 



On the other bank the river Trinidad, a left tributary of the Chagres, 

 would be, on the contrary, kept on the right side of the canal, and, by 

 means of an easy change of its course, would flow in the actual bed of 

 the Chagres to that very river to the north of Limon Bay, taking there- 

 fore, to become itself a river, the river of which it was only a tributary. 

 AVhat, then, would be the expense of this radical change ? We have 

 not at hand all the details necessary to calculate it ; but, allowing an 

 expense of fifty million francs for this work, we think it would amply 

 be provided for. 



But, should this plan not prove successful, there is another suggest- 

 ed by Messrs. Wyse and Reclus, which is also perfectly feasible, and 

 the expense of which can be more closely calculated. This is, to build 

 over Cruces an immense reservoir, capable of holding more than six 

 hundred cubic metres of water — that is to say, more than the volume of 

 water which could possibly be formed during several days of the great- 

 est overflows of the Chagres, which, we are told, amount to occasional- 

 ly, but for a very short time, twelve hundred cubic metres a second. 

 This work would cost twenty-five million francs, but it would free us 

 from all apprehension of the devastation occasioned by this river, which 

 at times becomes a torrent, for the letting it off under the reservoir 

 would be done gradually and without danger into a bed arranged be- 

 forehand, leaving the canal always on the left. For opening this bed, 

 which would not at all be the same one as that of the Chagres, for 

 straightening it at different places, and for doing the same for the 

 river Trinidad, seventeen million francs should amply suffice. 



Freed, therefore, from all fear, nothing more remains but to regu- 

 late, I can say even to a few centimetres, the height of the water in the 

 ship-canal ; and then comes in the second change that we suggest to 

 the plan of Messrs. Wyse and Reclus, which is, merely to provide 

 against the occasionally very rapid currents which would come from 

 the great rise and fall of the tide on the Pacific, which sometimes 

 amount to six metres. This can easily be managed by a tide-barrier 



