COSTA KICA. 275 



become a great railway engineer in making known the 

 use of the locomotive on the level road of the Liver- 

 pool and Manchester, while the real inventor, who 

 looked upon railways and locomotives as things of a 

 quarter of a century before, was about to recommend 

 them as the means of passing across the isthmus of 

 Costa Eica from the Atlantic to the Pacific, over the 

 heights of the Cordillera, by the river San Juan from 

 Grreytown, and by its tributary the Serapique, then by 

 railway towards the high ground of San Jose, the 

 capital, and down the western slope, passing, somewhere 

 not far from the mines, forward to the Gulf of Nicoya 

 in the Pacific. 



The approximate distance would be fifty miles of 

 river navigation, and eighty or a hundred of railway, 

 with perhaps stiffish but still manageable inclines, and 

 no avalanches. 



A loan by the Costa Rica Government of 1872 

 states, 1 " for the completion of the railway from the 

 port of Limon, in. the Atlantic Ocean, to San Jose de 

 Costa Rica, and on to Heredia and Alajuela," near to 

 Trevithick's mines, as if to carry out his design of 

 forty-six years ago to connect the Atlantic and Pacific 

 by railway. 



1 See ' The Times,' 7th May, 1872. 



