92 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



best route through Nicaragua (differing in some particulars 

 from the route selected by the Menocal survey), but they 

 disagreed seriously in their estimates of the cost of construc- 

 tion. Admiral Walker and Professor Haupt calculated the 

 sum as not exceeding $118,113,790, while Colonel Haines be- 

 lieved the probable cost would reach quite $16,000,000 more. 

 These figures were deduced from a generous estimate of the 

 expenses of actual construction ; nevertheless, there was left 

 to the imagination a formidable array of unknown quantities 

 which might call for extra millions. 



The effect of this report, made by the most competent and 

 disinterested engineers, and after a prolonged and most care- 

 ful survey of the region, was, in one sense, encouraging to 

 the friends of the Nicaraguan Canal, and, in another sense, it 

 was quite the contrary. The feasibility of the Nicaragua 

 route was thoroughly established ; there could be no further 

 question upon that score, and the best course for the canal 

 from Grey town and Brito, as well as the most advantageous 

 disposition of locks and dams, were definitely fixed ; but the 

 amount of treasure the monster would consume was, after all, 

 highly problematic. 



The recent appearance of the Panama agents in the con- 

 ferences of the Senate and House committees, and the sudden 

 awakening to new^life and vigor of that once hopelessly 

 discredited French project, produced a marked rl'IVrt upon 

 Congress. Had all been progressing smoothly in Nicaragua, 

 the case might have been different ; but the Nicaragua 

 canal project was becoming each year more and more en- 

 tangled in a web of conflicting concessions, claims of 

 rival companies, and the vexations of diplomatic misun- 

 derstandings. The Maritime Company, that step-child of 

 the Senate and exponent of the Nicaraguan route, was 

 dying on the street for want of the financial nourishment 

 the Senate had constantly striven to supply, but had 

 always failed to give. Year by year the determined efforts 

 of its friends to make the building of the Nicaragua Canal 

 a governmental project had also failed. In both branches 

 of Congress, and especially in the House, a strong under- 



