a7} THE NICARAGUA CANAL. 
ocean to ocean across Tehuantepec, upon a railway. 
Resting his claims for notice, as does the eminent 
Frenchman, upon past services of unquestioned merit, 
Captain Eads advances, as the crown of his engineering 
career, a Scheme which on its face is of doubtful prac- 
ticability, and which, if proved practicable by the ex- 
penditure of vast amounts of money, labor, and in- 
genuity, can still be shown to be wholly unnecessary. 
He proposes, as a canal here is impossible, to take sea- 
going ships, loaded with heavy cargoes, out of the 
water, lift them upon a cradle, and carry them by rail 
across six hundred fifty feet of elevation, through 
Swamps and across streams, and finally to lower them 
into the water on the other side of the isthmus. 
The mass of engineering opinion regards the building 
of embankments, the management of grades and turn- 
ings, to be, under this heavy load, difficult and danger- 
ous—perhaps impossible. The mass of nautical opinion 
considers the lifting and carrying of heavy ships loaded 
with railroad iron and other heavy weights, to be 
dangerous in the highest degree to the integrity and 
safety of the ships’ hulls. This gentleman, though, is 
able, and possesses an ingenious mind. Perhaps he can, 
at enormous expense, succeed in doing it. But why 
does he wish to do it? Simply to avoid the breaking of 
bulk—the discharging cargo and loading cars, the dis- 
charging cars and stowing cargo—the two handlings of 
freight, in fine. 
There is more than one way of avoiding this breaking 
of bulk easier than he proposes. Ships for this isthmus 
trade can be easily fitted with interior decks on which 
rails are laid for cars of the lightest and snuggest con- 
struction, stowing closely together, and losing but little 
stowage room by their interstitial spaces. Cargo may 
be stowed in them, and these cars, of a size to fit a nar- 
row-guage road across the isthmus, can be hauled out 
56 
