CHAPTER V

SOME FUTILE SCHEMES

WHILE Great Britain and the United States were wrangling over their ill-made treaty, another French essay was made in Nicaragua. Louis Napoleon had temporarily abandoned his canal scheme in favour of his imperial coupd'état, but he took it up again during the Anglo-American deadlock following the ratification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, in a way which caused some concern. At the time of Walker's filibustering operations, one Felix Belly, an enthusiastic French adventurer and promoter, organised a company for the construction of a canal along Oersted's route, through Nicaragua and Costa Rica. He played strongly upon local sentiment in those countries by exploiting the evils of Walker's raids, publicly declaring that thitherto all the official agents of the United States in Nicaragua had been accomplices and auxiliaries of Walker and other filibusters; and in order to protect Nicaragua from any more such outrages he proposed that the canal, if not, indeed, the whole country, should be placed under the protection of the European powers which had just guaranteed the integrity of the Turkish empire, to wit, France, Great Britain, and Sardinia. Working with shrewd pertinacity along such lines, Belly persuaded the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican governments to adjust their boundary disputes, and then, in May, 1858, to grant him a canal concession for ninety-nine years on the Oersted route. He was to have all the privileges which had been enjoyed by the American Atlantic and Pacific Canal Company, and in addition that of stationing two French warships in Lake Nicaragua. At this the United States Government was aroused, and it warned Nica

ragua that such stationing of French warships in the lake would not be tolerated, and insisted that the rights already granted to American citizens must be respected. Mr. Cass, the American Secretary of State, writing to Mr. Mason, the American Minister to France, spoke plainly as follows, his words being intended for the French Government:

"The general policy of the United States concerning Central America is familiar to you. We desire to see the Isthmian routes opened and free for the commerce and intercourse of the world, and we desire to see the States of that region well governed and flourishing and free from the control of all foreign powers. The position we have taken we shall adhere to, that this country will not consent to the resubjugation of those States, or to the assumption and maintenance of any European authority over them. The United States have acted with entire good faith in this whole matter. They have done all they could to prevent the departure of illegal military expeditions with a view to establish themselves in that region, and at this time measures are in progress to prevent the organisation and departure of another, which is said to be in preparation. Should the avowed intention of the French and British governments be carried out and their forces be landed in Nicaragua, the measure would be sure to excite a strong feeling in this country, and would greatly embarrass the efforts of the Government to bring to a satisfactory close these Central American difficulties which have been so long pending."

In the face of that strong and statesmanlike assertion of American principles and purposes, the French and British governments paused, and Nicaragua quickly reversed her untenable attitude. Belly and his schemes were swept aside, and in March, 1861, the Central American Transit Company, directed by William H. Webb, of New York, received. a franchise for the old monopoly of navigation on the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua. The French menace was not, however, past. Louis Napoleon would not openly support Belly in his schemes, but he presently took them up on his own account. He was already deeply involved in schemes for the practical conquest of Mexico and the crea

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tion of a French Empire in America, and he conceived the design of extending his aggression southward so as to secure the Nicaraguan Isthmus and the site of the future interoceanic canal. To this end he sent Michael Chevalier, a distinguished French engineer, to survey a route and to obtain a concession for a canal at Nicaragua, in which errand Chevalier was successful. Unfortunately for the imperial intriguer, however, the civil war in America came to an end, and the United States Government was thus enabled to vindicate the Monroe Doctrine by practically driving the French out of Mexico. For a few years longer Napoleon clung to his Nicaragua canal scheme, but could do nothing with it before the German war of 1870 brought his career to an end. Meantime, in 1869, the Nicaragua transportation line which had been established by Cornelius Vanderbilt twenty years before was abandoned, and its almost worthless franchise was sold to an Italian corporation, which held it for twenty years and then resold it to the ill-fated American Maritime Canal Company.

Some attention was also paid, from time to time, to the Tehuantepec route. Thus in 1842 Don José de Garay, a Mexican promoter, sent Gaetano Moro, an Italian engineer, to survey the Mexican Isthmus for a railroad or a canal route, and secured a concession from President Santa Anna. The route adopted was intended for both a railroad and a canal, the latter to be fifty miles long and provided with locks. At the end of the war between Mexico and the United States, President Polk offered to double the $15,000,000 indemnity to be paid by the United States under the treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, if the Mexican Government would cede to this country the exclusive right of way across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This offer was declined, the Mexican Government expecting Garay to fulfil his plans, which he failed to do. Instead, he sold out his concession to a syndicate of New York capitalists, and after the Gadsden treaty in 1853 the Mexican Government confirmed to the United States the privileges it had granted to Garay, for a Tehuantepec rail

road. There was still, however, too much ill-will in Mexico against the United States for capitalists to risk important investments in that country, and moreover the Panama railroad was being pushed to completion; wherefore the Tehuantepec scheme was abandoned, to be revived many years later by Captain James B. Eads, with his imposing project of a ship railway, and finally to be carried to completion in the twentieth century by a British company under the lead of Sir Weetman Pearson, in the construction of a fine railroad with ample shipping terminals, a work calculated to be a not insignificant rival of the Panama railroad and canal.

More and more, however, both European and American attention was recalled to and centred upon the Panama route, and other possible routes on the lower Isthmus. There arose in that region a sharp rivalry between Great Britain and the United States. This had its origin in 1850, when Dr. Edgar Cullen, of Dublin, residing at Bogotá, laid before the Royal Geographical Society of London a most favourable report upon the Caledonian Bay route. Lord Palmerston, flushed with his Clayton-Bulwer triumph, and expecting great things in Nicaragua, paid no attention to it, but practical business men in London assumed a more favourable attitude. A corporation was formed, which sent out Lionel Gisborne, an engineer, to make surveys. The local Indian tribes drove him away from the Caledonian Bay region, and he went to Panama. There he began surveys, but had more trouble with the natives, and finally went home with his work unfinished. He made a favourable report upon the Panama route, declaring that the greatest height of land to be overcome was only 150 feet above sea level, a statement which attracted much attention in England and on the continent. Meantime Dr. Cullen secured from the New Granadan Government at Bogotá a concession for a canal on the Caledonian Bay route, and declined the earnest entreaties of a French company to be permitted to share in the enterprise.

These things aroused the apprehension of James Bu

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chanan, then American Minister to England, and he urged the United States Government to do something to counteract them. Accordingly, Lieutenant Isaac C. Strain, of the United States Navy, was sent to Caledonian Bay with a surveying party. Marching inland, he found mountains from 1,000 to 3,500 feet high in the way of a canal, which he regarded as practically insurmountable obstacles. He thereupon returned to the coast, discouraged, and there met Gisborne's party and a French surveying party. Joining forces with the former, he returned inland and made his way across the Isthmus, with great difficulty and with complete confirmation of his first unfavourable impressions. Thus, as he said, he "dispersed a magnificent and dangerous fallacy" -the fallacy originated in 1680 by Sharpe and Wafer.

The Caledonian Bay route was thereupon abandoned. The several Atrato routes were next considered. We have already referred to the legends of a natural waterway in that region (quoted by Mr. Scruggs from Governor Alceda), and of the canal dug by a priest in 1788 in the Raspadura Ravine (cited and credited by Humboldt). It was further said that in 1799 the attention of the French Government had been called to the Raspadura canal by a French pilot, and that in 1820 a ship's boat had been taken from ocean to ocean by that route. Moreover, Humboldt, as the result of personal observations and inquiries, had declared that no chain of mountains or even ridge of partition existed in that region. If these reports were true, it seemed that there was the most promising route for a canal. In order to determine their truth or falsity Frederick Kelly, an American capitalist, in 1851, sent J. C. Trautwine, one of the engineers of the Panama Railroad, to explore the Atrato valley. The result was that the story of the priest's canal in the Ravine of Raspadura was pronounced to be entirely fanciful. Two more surveying parties were sent to the same general region by Mr. Kelly in 1853, with unsatisfactory results. A fourth, sent in 1854 to the Atrato-Truando route, made more favourable reports. Mr. Kelly then went to England and France and aroused