540 THE PANAMA KOUTE FOR A SHIP CANAL. 



divide in that vicinit}'. ImportcXiit con.siderations in connection with 

 the adjacent alignment made it advisable to cut the divide at a point 

 not its lowest. 



Various schemes were proposed for the purpose of controlling the 

 floods of the Chagres River, the suddenness and magnitude of which 

 were at once recognized as among the greatest difficulties to be 

 encountered in the construction of the work. Although it was seri- 

 ously proposed at one time to control this difficulty l),y building a dam 

 across the Chagres at Gaml)oa, that plan was never adopted, and the 

 problem of control of the Chagres floods remained unsolved for a long 

 period. 



It was estimated by De Lesseps in ISSO that eight years would l)e 

 required for the completion of the canal, and that its cost would be 

 $127,000,000. The companj^ prosecuted its work with activity until 

 the latter part of 1 SS7, when it became evident that the sea-level plan 

 of canal was not feasible with the resources at its conunand. Changes 

 were soon made in the plans, and it was concluded to expedite the 

 completion of the canal by the introduction of locks, deferring the 

 change to a sea-level canal until some period when conditions would 

 be sufficiently favorable to enable the company to attain that end. 

 Work was prosecuted under this modifled plan until ISSH, when the 

 company became l)ankrupt and was dissolved i)y judgment of the 

 French court called the Tribunal Civil de la Seine, on February 4, 188'.>. 

 An officer, called the li<(uidator, corresponding quite closely to a 

 receiver in this country, was appointed by the court to take charge of 

 tho company's afl'airs. At no time was the project of completing the 

 canal abandoned, but the liquidator gradually curtailed operations and 

 finally suspended the work on May 15, ISSD. 



He determined to take into careful consideration the feasibility of 

 the project, and to that end appointed a "commission d'etudes," com- 

 posed of eleven French and foreign engineers, headed I)y Ins[)ector- 

 General (Tuillemaiii, director of the Ecole Nationah^ des Pouts et 

 Chaussees. This commission visited the Isthmus and made a careful 

 study of the entire enterprise, and subsecjuently submitted a plan for 

 the canal involving locks. The cost of completing the entire work 

 was estimated to be $112,500, 00(», but the sum of $r)2, 100,000 more 

 was added to cover administration and flnancing, making a total of 

 $174,600,000. This commission also gave an a})proximate estimate^ of 

 the value of the work done and of the plant at $S7,8O0.O0O, to which 

 some have attached uuich more im])oitance than did the commission 

 itself. The latter appears simply to have made the ''estimate"' one- 

 half of the total cost of completing thi> work added to that of tinancing 

 and administration, as a loose approximation, calling it an "intuitive 

 estimate;" in other words, it was simply a gu(\ss l)ased upon such 

 information as had Ix^en gain(*d in connection with tlu* work done on 

 the Istlnnus. 



