ABSTRACT OF THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
329 
£3,000,000 ; and also the projected Manchester Ship Canal, for a 
similar purpose, to cost £6,000,000, but with a population three 
times as great and a traffic of much more importance. Two 
canals, however, and one railway, have more immediate bearing on 
our subject ; viz., the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and the 
Canadian-Pacific Railway. 
The Suez Canal is well known. Its length is 103f miles, depth 
25 feet, width 72 feet at bottom, to be increased to 75 yards at 
bottom and 90 yards at top, when it will take an indefinite 
amount of traffic, which hitherto has doubled every five years, 
The Company's capital is over £19,000,000; working expenses, 
£175,560 ; and it pays handsome dividends. 
The Canadian -Pacific Railway, which gives this country in- 
dependent access from London (via Plymouth) over its own 
territories to its Colonies and other countries with which it has 
large commercial interests, on the shores of the Pacific, is 2,895 
miles long, from Montreal to Vancouver. Add to this the con- 
tinuation from Montreal to Halifax, about 755 miles, and there is 
a railway, entirely through British territory, of about 3,650 miles. 
It goes over the Rocky Mountains, 5,000 feet above the sea, and 
passes through a very fertile region — perhaps the finest wheat- 
growing and grazing country in the world. 
The Panama Canal, now in course of construction under the 
superintendence of M. de Lesseps, the engineer of the Suez 
Canal, is, according to him, to be completed in 1889, and is 
estimated to cost £25,200,000, although it is quite clear that this 
estimate will be much exceeded, and may possibly be more than 
doubled. It is to be worked at an expense of £384,000 annually. 
It is but 45f miles in length, and very nearly follows the course 
of the present railway across the Isthmus of Panama — from Colon 
on the Atlantic to Panama on the Pacific. The highest elevation 
of the country through which it goes is only 278 feet. For the 
first 28 miles it will be excavated through soft ground, for the 
next 14i miles through rock of various depths, and for the 
remaining distance again through soft ground. In the soft ground 
the width at the water level is to be 164 feet 6 inches ; at bottom, 
105 feet; depth, 26 feet 3 inches. In the rock and cutting — 
width, 91 feet 10 inches at water level; 78 feet 9 inches at 
bottom ; depth, 29 feet 6 inches. In sea channel — width of bed, 
328 feet ; depth, 31 feet. There is to be a lock at the Panama 
