March t«, l-^S.'i] 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



197 



Fig. 1.— A Sliip in Transit on the Inter-Oceaiiic Sliip liaihvay. 



three fatal objections, the Panama tide-water canal scheme 

 is open to the first and third, and the Nicaragua lifting-lock 

 plan to the second and third. The ship-railway i/roject 

 of Mr. James B. Ead^ now under discussion, is open 

 neither to the one ohjection nor to the other, and, Vjesidcs 

 beinf far less costly, it furnishes a quicker means of isthmian 

 transit than either of them, and will shorten, hy con- 

 siderably over a thousand miles, the contemplated route vid 

 Panama between the Atlantic States and San Fraucisoo or 

 the East Indies. 



Until the arrival in the field of Mr. Eads, it seemed to 

 have occurred to no one that anything but a waterway 

 would serve for ship transit between the two oceans. It 

 did not appear impracticable to some of the transmithian 

 projectors to build a ship canal in a region annually inun- 

 dated by mountain streams, or to expect failing-vessels to 

 traverse hundreds of miles of wind- bereft seas. But to 

 take ships across a narrow isthmus by rail was monstrous, 

 and not to be thought of. 



In the ship-railway project a ship is lifted out of the 



