made the curious error of reporting that there was three feet difference between the mean levels of the two oceans. This error was generally accepted as a fact, and was enlarged upon, until it was widely believed that the Pacific Ocean was from 10 to 20 feet higher than the Caribbean Sea. The LloydFalcmar route was, however, on the whole singularly well chosen, and was afterwards substantially adopted for the Panama Railroad. This error concerning the level of the two oceans was not original with or confined to Lloyd and Falcmar. Many years before Humboldt had referred to the "vulgar opinion" existing in every age and clime, that of two seas, separated by an isthmus, one was invariably higher than the other. Strabo mentioned that in his time the Gulf of Corinth was believed to be higher than the Egean Sea, and that thus it would be dangerous to make a canal across that isthmus. In America, Humboldt recalled, the South Sea or Pacific Ocean had long been supposed to be higher than the Caribbean. This theory had been combated by Don George Juan, however, who found the barometric readings the same at Panama and at the mouth of the Chagres River. A French engineer, on the other hand, had reported that the Red Sea was 38 feet higher than the Mediterranean. Humboldt's own observations made him believe that if there was a difference between the Pacific and the Caribbean, it could not possibly be more than from 19 to 22 feet, but he did not believe, as he afterward declared, that there was any difference at all.

Another interesting speculation of Humboldt's related to the possible effects which the construction of an Isthmian canal at tide level might have upon the currents of the ocean. "We cannot doubt," he said, "that if the Isthmus of Panama were once burst, the current of rotation, instead of ascending toward the Gulf of Mexico and issuing through the Bahama Channel, would follow the same parallel from the coast of Paria to the Philippine Islands. The effect of this opening, or new strait, would extend much beyond the Banks of Newfoundland, and would either occasion the disappear

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ance or diminish the celerity of the Gulf Stream." But such a result could not follow the construction of a canal with locks, and probably would not follow the construction of one at sea level on account of its small size.

That the United States should become interested in the Isthmian canal project was, as Goethe observed, natural and inevitable. Henry Clay, the Secretary of State, as we have remarked, in 1826 ordered an official survey of the Nicaragua route, and in the next three or four years several canal schemes were put forward in this country to no avail. The United States Senate in 1835 adopted a resolution for the construction of a canal at Nicaragua, and President Jackson sent Charles Biddle to the Isthmus to make surveys and negotiations; but Biddle, instead of visiting Nicaragua, went to Panama, and privately secured Thierry's concession, whereupon he was repudiated by the United States Government, and the whole business lapsed. Next the United States of Central America took up the work again, President Morazan sending two engineers, Bailey and Bates,-the former having been the agent of an English corporation,—to survey the Nicaragua route, but the chief result was a twelve years' war with the Mosquito Indians, and the dissolution of the Central American Government ended the enterprise.

Horatio Allen, the engineer of the Croton Aqueduct, in New York, in 1837 aroused American interest in the scheme, and got Mayor Aaron Clark, of New York City, and other leading citizens of New York and Philadelphia to prepare a plan for the Nicaragua Canal, and to present a memorial to Congress on the subject, in January, 1838. In this memorial it was asked that the Central American States, the United States, and all the great powers of Europe, should unite in opening a ship canal across the Isthmus, and that the United States should at once begin the preliminary surveys. The outcome of this was the adoption of a non-committal resolution by Congress, simply expressing deep interest in the project. Captain Edward Belcher, in 1838, made

explorations at Nicaragua, and proposed a canal with its Pacific outlet in the Bay of Fonseca. In 1839 the United States Government sent John L. Stephens on a confidential mission to Central America to do the work which Biddle had failed to do. He recommended the construction of a canal on the Nicaragua route, and estimated its cost at $25,000,000, but added that the country was at that time too unsettled and revolutionary for capital to risk investment in it.

In the political chaos which then prevailed, various wild schemes were launched. Guatemala sent ecclesiastical envoys to Rome, to get the Pope to patronise the canal scheme. New Granada gave vast concessions to a French speculative scheme, whose promoters professed to have found, by Morel's surveys, a route between Porto Bello and Panama with no elevation above 10 1-2 metres. This preposterous fiction was pushed by Messrs. Salomon & Co., until Guizot, for Louis Philippe, sent Napoleon Garella to find out the truth. He reported that the elevation of the lowest pass was more than 115 metres. At about this time Nicaragua and Honduras also tried, through a French promoter, to get French capital interested in their routes.

In time the French Government became further interested in the matter, and upon the strength of the surveys made by Garella and Courtines was inclined to attempt the construction of a canal at Panama, which should have 25 locks, be navigable by vessels of 600 tons only, and cost $40,000,000. In support of this scheme Guizot read in the French Chamber of Deputies, on June 10, 1843, a letter which Baron von Humboldt had written, on August 1, 1842, to Salomon, the French promoter already mentioned. In this letter Humboldt referred to the advice which he had formerly given to the British Embassy at Paris, that a competent engineer should be sent to explore the various routes across the Isthmus, and expressed regret at the failure to act upon his advice. "I am," he wrote, "sorry to learn that you are no further advanced in your interesting undertaking than you

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were when I had the pleasure of seeing you in my last visit to Paris. Twenty-five years have now elapsed since the proj ect of a communication between the two oceans, either by the Isthmus of Panama, the Lake of Nicaragua, or the Isthmus of Cupica, has been proposed and discussed topographically; but nothing toward realising this project has even yet been begun. I should have thought that the English Embassy might have found the means of inspiring confidence by proposing to send a scientific engineer to study the valley between the two seas along which the canal might be cut to the western part of the port of Chagres. Be persuaded that those persons who make use of the authority of my name to support the idea that the two seas are not on a level, do so only in order to excuse themselves from engaging in the undertaking."

In 1844, Francisco Castellon, of Nicaragua, disgusted with the unsettled political state of Central America, went to France as a Nicaraguan envoy, to try to persuade Louis Philippe to establish a protectorate over Nicaragua, and to undertake the construction of a canal. The King paid little attention to him, but Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, then a State prisoner in the fortress of Ham, became deeply interested in the scheme. That "man of destiny" began to regard it, because of the old concession to Baron Thierry, as properly a French enterprise, and while yet in prison secured from the Nicaraguan Government, in 1846, a concession and franchise for a company to construct the "Canale Napoléon de Nicaragua." So interested was he in the scheme that he informed the French Government of it and begged to be released from prison, in order that he might carry it out. He promised that if he were released he would proceed to America, and trouble France no more, but the Government refused to grant his request. In the same year, however, he escaped from Ham, and went to London, where he published a pamphlet on the subject of an Isthmian Canal, advocating a route in Nicaragua by way of the San Juan River and the two lakes, to Realejo. In this he said:

"The geographical position of Constantinople rendered her the Queen of the ancient world. Occupying, as she does, the central point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, she could become the entrepot of the commerce of all these countries, and obtain over them immense preponderance; for in politics, as in strategy, a central position always commands the circumference. This is what the proud city of Constantine could be, but it is what she is not, because, as Montesquieu says, 'God permitted that the Turks should exist on earth, as a people most fit to possess uselessly a great empire.' There exists in the New World a State as admirably situated as Constantinople, and we must say up to this time as uselessly occupied. We allude to the State of Nicaragua. As Constantinople is the centre of the ancient world, so is the town of Leon the centre of the New, and if the tongue of land which separates its two lakes from the Pacific Ocean were cut through, she would command by virtue of her central position the entire coast of North and South America. The State of Nicaragua can become, better than Constantinople, the necessary route of the great commerce of the world, and is destined to attain an extraordinary degree of prosperity and grandeur.' France, England, and Holland have a great commercial interest in the establishment of a communication between the two oceans, but England has, more than the other powers, a political interest in the execution of this project. England will see with pleasure Central America becoming a powerful and flourishing State, which will establish a balance of power by creating in Spanish America a new centre of active enterprise, powerful enough to give rise to a feeling of nationality, and to prevent, by backing Mexico, any further encroachments from the north."

This essay attracted much attention in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. But two years later the revolution in France gave its author his opportunity to become President and to plot for the establishment of the Second Empire, and the canal was forgotten by him in those larger ambitions.