310 National Geographic Magazine. 



Published herewith is a sketch showing the location of the 

 railroad, canal and tributary drainage, and a profile along the axis 

 of the canal. 



The first surveys for the railroad were made in 1849, and it 

 was probably the excitement of the California gold fever that 

 brought about its construction at this particular time. Ground 

 was broken in January, 1850, and the last rail was laid in Jan- 

 uary, 1855. 



The length of the road is 47.6 miles and it crosses the dividing 

 summit at an elevation of 263 feet above the mean level of the 

 Atlantic ocean. The maximum grade is 60 feet to the mile. 

 Soon after the road was built accurate levels were run to deter- 

 mine the difference, if any, between the Atlantic and Pacific 

 oceans, and it was found that the mean levels were about the 

 same, although there are of course variations owing to local 

 causes, and considerable differences of height at times, owing to 

 differences of tides in the Atlantic and Pacific. At Aspinwall 

 the greatest rise is only 1.6 feet, while at Panama there is at 

 times a difference of over 21 feet between high and low water. 

 The cost of the railroad was $75,000,000. 



The existence of the railroad was probably the deciding cause 

 that led Lesseps to the adoption of this location of the proposed 

 canal. 



Now that the scheme has practicall}^ failed it is very easy to 

 see and appreciate the difficulties that lay in the way of building 

 a canal at this particular place ; and it certainly seems that if 

 sound engineering principles had been adopted at least some of 

 these difficulties could have been understood and properly com- 

 batted. The whole scheme, however, from an engineering stand- 

 point, seems to have been conducted in the most blundering 

 manner. 



Lesseps is a diplomat and financier, but in no sense a great en- 

 gineer. In the construction of the Suez canal, the questions of 

 diplomacy and finance were the most difficult to settle, while the 

 engineering problems were comparatively simple. In Panama 

 the opposite conditions prevailed. Concessions were freely given 

 him by the Colombian government and money freely offered him 

 by the French people, but he never grasped or comprehended the 

 difficulties that nature had planted in his way, and these only 

 seemed to occur to him when they blocked progress in a certain 

 direction. The Paris Conference, controlled by Lesseps, decided 



