90 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



pany's property has been sold under judgments. Piers, 

 buildings, telegraph and telephone lines, steamboats, and 

 dredges are gone. The remnant of railway that remains re- 

 verts to Nicaragua next October. We were told that the 

 last sale of the company's assets was of hand tools, surveying 

 instruments, etc., sold to the Nicaraguan Government for a 

 few thousand dollars, part of which was paid to the company. 

 The company's representative is now pushing the Govern- 

 ment for the balance, in order to pay his salary and that of 

 the watchman. To the Nicaraguans, at least, the attitude of 

 the company, claiming ability to carry out an enterprise in- 

 volving $100,000,000, pressing a claim of a few thousand 

 dollars against a Government which is the company's credi- 

 tor, is ridiculous." 



Such, then, being the deplorable condition of the Maritime 

 Company, the representatives of the Grace Company believed 

 that any claim on the part of the former to an extension of its 

 franchises beyond October 9 of that year " would be treated 

 by the Government of Nicaragua as the merest effrontery." V- 



Before the committee examination into the status and 

 prospects of the three canal companies had terminated, 

 the Senate took into consideration a bill to amend the 

 old act incorporating the Maritime Canal Company, its 

 purpose being, as. in the previous year, to place the com- 

 pany more completely under the auspices and control of 

 the national government. Under this bill all the stock of the 

 company originally issued was to be recalled, and new 

 shares in place of it were to be issued to the United States 

 Government, to Nicaragua, and to Costa Rica. Thus the 

 financial bureau of the company would be transferred to an 

 office in the Treasury Department. In the Senate bill a 

 guarantee of neutrality of the canal was inserted with the 

 following proviso : " The Nicaragua Canal being a necessary 

 connection between the eastern and western coast lines of 

 the United States, the right to protect the same against all 

 interruptions and at all times, is reserved and excepted out 

 of this declaration of the neutrality of said canal and its free 

 use by other nations." 



