THE ISTHMIAN SHIP RAILWAY. 403 



wages, supplies, and in fact everything except interest on the capital invested. 

 To-day they are paying from San Francisco to Liverpool, via Cape Horn, $21 

 per ton for freight. I saw a number of owners of ships engaged in this trade, 

 and was assured by them they could well afford to pay one-third of what they 

 received for crossing the Isthmus with their ships. This would be $7 a ton, more 

 than ten times the actual cost of transporting ships over the railway when it is 

 once completed." 



Captain Eads seems certain that Congress at its next session will pass his 

 bill, and gives the following reasons why it should be passed : " i. Because no 

 proposition of such novelty has ever been presented to the people before which 

 has so completely silenced ridicule and won the confidence of thinking people. 

 2. Because the work is required more imperatively at this time than during any 

 previous period of the world. 3. Because the concession secured by me from 

 Mexico enables me to give to the United States the absolute control of the Isth- 

 mus, exclusively in the interest of American commerce. 4. The route lies through, 

 Mexican territory, and the railway will tend to develop a greater commercial and 

 social intercourse between the two republics, and immensely promote the material 

 interests of both. 5. It will be almost unanimously supported by the representa- 

 tives of the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf States, for the reason that it will give 

 to this section of the country, embracing much more than one-half of the total 

 area of the American Republic, direct communication with the enormous com- 

 merce of the Pacific Ocean and the Orient, from which they are to-day completely 

 shut out by the Isthmian barrier. It is not generally known that New York is 

 considerably nearer to the Orient by way of Cape Horn than either New Orleans 

 or Galveston. Finally, I am confident that the bill will be passed by Congress 

 because the proposition is a fair one, and I have received the assurance of more 

 Senators and Representatives that they will support the measure, than I ever re- 

 ceived before the passage of any one of the jetty bills, although they were passed, 

 by immense majorities in every instance." 



In regard to 



THE CONDITION OF THE JETTIES 



At the mouth of the Mississippi River, Captain Eads assured the reporter that, 

 "There has not been an hour nor a minute in the last two years during which 

 there has not been an abundance of width and depth in the jetty channel, not 

 only for the larger steamers visiting New Orleans, but for those visiting New 

 York. It is asserted that a vessel rubbed the bottom while drawing only twenty- 

 three feet. Vessels will rub the bottom if there was fifty feet in the channel, if 

 they get too far to one side or the other of it. I am not required to furnish 

 pilots, and if they do not find a channel it is their own fault. If the vessel allud- 

 ed to had grounded at the time named, the captain would have found a twenty- 

 six foot channel, more than 200 feet wide, immediately to the eastward of his 

 ship, and through which there existed at the time a central depth of thirty feet.. 

 In only a few instances have vessels grounded by getting out of the channel dur- 

 ing the last two years. The Pass is not straight, and long steamers, unless great 



