Chap. XI. HONDURAS INTER-OCEANIC RAILWAY. 189 
ordinary difficulty of any kind. This survey has not only 
been executed by the engineers of the company which is in 
possession of the grant from the government of Honduras, 
but Colonel E. Stanton, of the Royal Engineers, who was 
sent out by the British ministry to verify the labours and 
statements of the company's surveying corps, has corro- 
borated these results and declared the enterprise practicable 
throughout and in every respect. The length of the rail- 
way, according to these surveys, will be about 200 miles 
from sea to sea, and the time occupied between New York 
and San Francisco, by this route, will not exceed fourteen 
days, while the passage between these two places, via 
Panama, has averaged upwards of twenty-four days ; and, 
in one way or the other, all the various routes, existing or 
projected, for the purpose of connecting the eastern and 
the western world across the Central American Isthmus, 
must remain far behind the advantages * offered by the 
Honduras Inter-oceanic Railway. The Ship Canal through 
Nicaragua, it is true, if it were feasible, would be a work 
of a higher order altogether than any railway through 
Central America, whatever line the latter might follow. 
But, though we are now told that the time for the realiza- 
tion of that great project has ultimately come, we must be 
allowed to remain in doubt with regard to the question 
whether any of the existing generation will live to see ocean 
vessels pass through Nicaragua. It may be that the possi- 
bility, in an abstract sense, is only an affair of time and 
money ; but if it really be so, I venture to say that all the 
time and money left at the disposal of the present genera- 
tion from other schemes of a more urgent character will 
prove insufficient. The feasibility of a ship canal between 
Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific, though even this may be 
surrounded by difficulties arising from the necessity of 
