THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL PROBLEM 89 



pany has remained solvent and faithful to its trusts, and it has 

 protected the enterprise and preserved it for the people and gov- 

 ernment of the United States." Referring to the Grace con- 

 cession, he said, " It was entered into by Nicaragua in violation 

 of the rights and interests not only of this company (Mari- 

 time Company), but of the United States and of Costa Rica." 

 The representatives of the Grace-Cragin syndicate ap- 

 proached their examination by the House committee in the 

 jaunty manner of victors fresh from the fray, and bearing the 

 spoils of victory in the "shape of a remarkably liberal con- 

 cession from Nicaragua. They believed the Maritime con- 

 cession to have already become a worthless instrument, and 

 insisted upon their own paramount rights to begin work Oc- 

 tober 9, 1899. Upon that day, they asserted, the Maritime 

 Company would be called upon by Nicaragua to open the 

 canal to navigation, which, needless to say, the Maritime 

 Company would be unable to do ; then the latter company 

 would be obliged to stand forth and acknowledge its failure 

 to carry out the terms of its contract and accept its forfeiture 

 without further parley ; then the Grace Company, as a private 

 corporation, would step in with a clear field, and, with the 

 best of concessions from Nicaragua, it would enter upon 

 the task with every assurance of success. In substantia- 

 tion of their claims in regard to the forfeiture of the Mari- 

 time franchise, they pointed out how the Nicaraguan Govern- 

 ment had granted the Canal Association a generous concession 

 along with ample time allowance, which should have assured 

 the opening of the canal for universal commerce before the 

 close of the century. " They waited. . . . Their chagrin and 

 disappointment may be imagined as the weeks and months 

 rolled into years without the turning of a wheel upon the 

 work. . . . The dredges have for years been wrecks, rest- 

 ing on the bottom of Grey town Lagoon ; the railway is 

 rotted out and overgrown ; the buildings are mere shells 

 standing upon rotted timbers ; the harbor is filled with 

 sand, and the entrance from the sea is never, at the most, 

 over three feet in depth. Such of the property as has not 

 been destroyed has been realized upon. Much of the com- 



