J 78 ♦ KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



a means of transit as a canal, it possesses the following advantages: ist a Ship 

 Railway may be constructed in many localities where a canal would be impracti- 

 cable, thus giving the Engineer a wider field from which to select a location most 

 advantageous from all standpoints. 2d. that it can be constructed for about one- 

 third, and maintained at about the same cost as a canal, thus enabling it to charge 

 lower rates, and still pay good dividends on moneys invested ; a decided ad- 

 vantage to all parties concerned. And 3d, that when a growing commerce shall 

 demand increased facilities of transit, as it most certainly will, this means can be 

 enlarged without interfering with what is already in operation. 



These advantages, so weighty and apparent, certainly justify our claim that a 

 Ship Railway is the best means of inter-oceanic transit yet proposed. And we 

 may logically consider this conclusion proved for the Tehuantepec Road while 

 there are other advantages applicable to this particular case which we wish to 

 present : 



First among these the saving of time. In the rapid growth of our commerce 

 since China and Japan have opened their ports to foreign trade, since the Islands 

 of the Pacific have bloomed into rich gardens from which our merchants may 

 gather golden harvests, and last but not least, since the vast resources of our 

 western coasts have been opened up to the world's trade, there has been an ever 

 increasing demand that this transit be established, and to-day, so urgent is it, that 

 it forms one of the strongest arguments in favor of a Ship Railway, which can be 

 finished in four, as opposed to a canal requiring twenty, years for its completion. 



Who can doubt that the Tehuantepec Road, which crosses the Isthmus twelve 

 hundred miles north of Panama, and saves at least fifteen hundred miles to 

 ships from all the great commercial marts of the world — that the Tehuantepec 

 route, which avoids the continual calms of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, 

 west of the lower isthmus, making them such dreaded barriers to the sailing vessels 

 — that the Tehuantepec route, which instead bears the ship quickly and safely 

 from the constant winds of the Gulf to the regular trade winds of the Pacific, does 

 not present advantages in point of time which no proposed canal can possibly 

 off'er ? 



The second great advantage claimed for this road is the financial one. Add 

 to the well known business axiom that "Time saved is money gained," the start- 

 ling difference claimed in the actual cost — that the Ship Railway, crossing a space 

 of a hundred and twelve miles, can be built and put in running order for the 

 comparatively moderate sum of seventy-five millions, while the Panama Canal, cut 

 through the narrowest portion of the Isthmus, will at the lowest estimate, cost no 

 less than a hundred and sixty-eight millions, to which if we add the interest on 

 such an amount at five per cent, (the rate which M. DeLesseps proposes to pay 

 stockholders from time of subscription), for ten years, the shortest time in which 

 its most sanguine supporters hope to see it accomplished, we would have as the 

 great aggregate two hundred and fifty-two million dollars. 



Even if other things were equal would not \hQ financial difference be a con- 

 clusive argument in its favor ? 



