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Title: The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. I., No. 4, October, 1889

Author: Various

Release date: December 16, 2015 [eBook #50704]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Ron Swanson


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, VOL. I., NO. 4, OCTOBER, 1889 ***




Produced by Ron Swanson





Vol. I. No. 4.

THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE.




PUBLISHED BY THE

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY.

WASHINGTON, D. C.


Price 50 Cents.




CONTENTS.


Irrigation in California, by Wm. Hammond Hall, State Engineer of
  California

Round about Asheville, by Bailey Willis
    (Illustrated by one Map and Profile.)

A Trip to Panama and Darien, by Richard U. Goode
    (Illustrated by one Map and Profile.)

Across Nicaragua with Transit and Machéte, by R. E. Peary, Civil
  Engineer, U. S. N.
    (Illustrated by one Map and three Views.)

  October, 1889.




PRESS OF TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR, NEW HAVEN, CONN.




THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE.

Vol. I. 1889. No. 4.




IRRIGATION IN CALIFORNIA.

BY WM. HAMMOND HALL.


_Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society:_

When I was invited to address this society I had no material at hand on
the subject. I have come to the east without any notes or memoranda
whatever, from which to prepare a lecture or address, no statistical
data which would make a paper valuable, no notes of characteristic
facts to render an address interesting, and no time to write anything
to guide me in any way to a proper treatment of the subject. Some of
your members have thought that I have written something worthy of being
read, and hence this invitation to address you. But, even if they are
right, people who can write cannot always talk, so if I fail in this
address, I shall hope, on the basis of their opinion, that you will
find in the reports I have written something worthy of reading. The
subject has been announced as the "Problems of Irrigation in the United
States." I should like very much to speak broadly on that subject, but
I am unable to do so, for the reasons I have given, and shall have to
speak rather of irrigation in California, trusting that something which
is said, may, perchance, be valuable in relation to the subject at
large. Irrigation in the far west, generally, is attracting a vast deal
of attention. This is particularly the case on the Pacific Coast--the
field with which I am specially acquainted. I apprehend that although
many gentlemen present have a far-reaching and definite appreciation of
the subject at large, many others do not appreciate the value and
importance of irrigation. In the arid parts of California (for we do
not admit that California is as a whole arid) it is a vital matter.
There it is a question of life, for the people. Not more than one-sixth
of the tillable area in the State can sustain a really dense
population, without irrigation; two thirds of it will not sustain even
a moderate population, without irrigation; while one third will not
sustain even a sparse population, without such artificial watering.
Think well over these facts. They are very significant. I doubt whether
they are generally appreciated in California itself.

I have no doubt many persons are familiar with the geography of the
State, but, doubtless, some are not. California has a coast line of 800
miles and a width of from 140 to 240 miles. It is traversed almost
throughout its length by a great mountain chain extending along near
the eastern boundary, which is called the Sierra Nevada, and by a
lesser range, more broken and less unified, running parallel to the
coast, called the Coast Range, the southern extension of which, after
joining the Sierra Nevada, is called the Sierra Madre, and at the
further extremity, the San Jacinto and San Diego mountains. Within the
interior of the State, looked down upon by the Sierra Nevada on the
east, and closed in by the Coast Range on the west, is the great
interior basin--the valley of the San Joaquin and Sacramento
rivers--forming a plain 450 miles long, with an average width of from
40 to 60 miles. Outside of the Sierra Madre in the southern part of the
State, and within the Coast Range, is another interior valley, nearly
100 miles in length and from 20 to 30 miles in width, and outside of
the Coast Range, and lying next to the ocean, is a plain whose length
is from 60 to 70 miles, and width 15 to 20 miles. These three
areas--the great interior valley, the southern interior valley, and the
coast plain of the south--are the principal irrigation regions of the
State. Numbers of smaller areas, as those in San Diego county, come in
as irrigation regions of less importance, and the scattering valleys
along the Coast Range farther north, as the Salinas, etc., will come
forward in the future as important irrigable districts of the State.
Still further north, in the interior, there are the great plains of
Lassen and Mono counties, and some scattering valleys in Shasta county,
where irrigation is also practiced or is being introduced, and these
are on a par with the districts of San Diego county, in the matter of
rank as irrigation regions. East of the Sierra Nevada, and at their
base, lies the Owen's river country, an area suitable for irrigation,
where irrigation is necessary and where it is being introduced. Upon
the great Mojave desert and the Colorado desert, there is at present no
irrigation. The water supply is very scanty. This is an irrigation
region of the future, but it is not regarded by Californians as a
practicable one at present.

With this general idea of the State, we will now look at the rainfall
and water supply. The State contains 157,440 square miles of territory,
of which 17,747 drain into the ocean north of the Golden Gate, 21,665
drain into the ocean south of the Golden Gate, 55,942 drain into the
interior basins, and 62,086 drain out at the Golden Gate. Of this
territory which drains out by the Golden Gate, 26,187 square miles
comprise the Sacramento valley, 31,895 square miles the San Joaquin
valley, and 4,004 the country draining directly to the bays, making the
62,086 given above as the whole area.

The necessity for irrigation in California, and the relative necessity
in different parts of the State, are shown by the distribution of
rainfall. The San Joaquin valley has an average of less than 10 inches
of rainfall, the Sacramento has an average of between 10 and 20 inches.
The great deserts of the Mojave and Colorado have an average of less
than 10 inches, and in certain localities only 3 to 6 inches. The
Salinas valley, a small portion of the coast above Los Angeles, and a
portion of the interior valley of the south, have also an average of
less than 10 inches.

So, we may say, that the great irrigation regions of California have
average amounts of rainfall varying from about 6 up to 20, but
generally less than 10 inches. This rain is distributed in four or five
months of each year, with some slight showers in one or two months
other than these; the remainder of the year being absolutely dry, with
no rainfall whatever. Hence, you will see at once, the necessity for
the artificial application of water in California. In the older
countries of Europe, where irrigation has been practiced for centuries,
for instance, in Spain, where water is used more extensively than in
California, the annual mean rainfall ranges between 10 and 25 inches.
In the irrigation regions of France, the mean rainfall ranges from 10
to 40 inches; in the irrigation regions of Italy, the rainfall is
between 20 and 35 inches--for instance, in the valley of the Po, the
classic land of irrigation, the annual precipitation is from 25 to 35
inches. There are none of these European irrigation regions where the
rainfall is less than 10, and generally it is over 20 inches. But you
will see that the most of the Californian irrigation regions have less
than 15 inches, some less than 10, and the greatest rainfall of any
large irrigable region in California is 18 inches, or, exceptionally,
for smaller regions, 25 inches; while in Europe, the maxima are from 25
to 40 inches in countries where irrigation has long been practiced. It
follows, then, that there is no place in Europe where it is so much
needed as over a large part of California. Another reason why the
necessity is felt in our Pacific Coast State, is found in the character
of our soils; and not alone the surface soils, but the base of the
soil--the deep subsoils. We have soils exceptionally deep; soils which
extend below the surface to 50 feet, underlaid by loose sand and open
gravels, so that the rainfall of winter is lost in them. The annual
rain seldom runs from the surface. It follows that these lands are
generally barren of vegetation without the artificial application of
water.

Considering now the sources of water-supply: we have in the southern
part of the State many streams which flow only for a few weeks after
rainfall, and other streams which run two or three months after the
rainy season. But there is not a stream in all California south of the
Sierra Madre (except the Colorado, which has it sources of supply
outside of the State) which flows during the summer with a greater
volume than about 70 to 80 cubic feet per second--a stream 15 feet in
width, 2 feet deep, and flowing at the rate of 2½ to 3 feet per
second--a little stream that, in the eastern part of the continent,
would be thought insignificant. The largest stream for six months in
the year, in all southern California, is the Los Angeles river. The
Santa Aña river, the next largest, flows from two sevenths to one third
as much; the San Gabriel, the next largest, has perhaps two thirds or
three fourths as much as the Santa Aña; and so, a stream which will
deliver as much water as will flow in a box 4 feet wide and 1½ feet
deep, at a moderate speed, during summer months, would be regarded as a
good-sized irrigation feeder in that southern country. In the greater
interior basin or central valley, we find other conditions. Here we
have a different class of streams. The great Sierra Nevada receives
snow upon its summits, which does not melt till May or June and July.
The melting of these snows is the source of supply of the streams; so
that, while in far southern California, with two or three exceptions,
the greater flow of water in the streams is almost gone by June, in
this central region it is the period of the height of irrigation, and
the streams are flowing at their maximum. Kern river presents about
2000 to 3000 cubic feet of water per second; King's river presents in
the maximum flow of the season about twice to three times as much as
Kern river; the Tuolumne river about as much as King's. As we go
farther north, the Sacramento river presents more than three times as
much as the Tuolumne, so that in the northern part of the great valley,
where the rainfall on the valley itself is greatest, and, consequently,
the necessity for irrigation is least, the irrigation supply increases;
and conversely, the greatest area of irrigation in the valley and the
greatest necessity for it, is, in general, where the water supply is
least.

About 100 years ago irrigation was commenced in California. The Roman
Catholic priests, coming from Mexico where irrigation had long been
practiced, introduced it. They established missions among the Indians,
started cultivation, and by the labor of these Indians built the
original irrigation works. The practice of irrigation was extended in
San Diego county, as far as we are able to trace, to several thousand
acres; in San Bernardino county in the southern interior valley, they
thus cultivated and watered, perhaps 2000 acres; and in Los Angeles
county there were possibly 3000 acres irrigated under Mexican rule.
Traces of the old mission works are found in San Diego, San Bernardino
and Los Angeles counties, and as far north as Monterey county.

Then came the gold fever, when canals were dug throughout the
foot-hills of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, for the supply of
water for the mining of gold; and these canals have since, in many
instances, been turned into feeders for irrigation. Several thousand
miles of irrigation ditches have thus been created from old mining
ditches. In 1852, a band of Mormons came from Salt Lake into the San
Bernardino valley; they bought a Mexican grant rancho there, took
possession of some old mission works, constructed others and started
irrigating. That was probably the first irrigation colony, on a large
scale, composed of others than Mexicans, in California. In 1856, some
Missouri settlers went into the valley of Kern river, diverted water
from that stream, and commenced irrigation upon a small scale. In 1858,
the waters of Cache creek, in the Sacramento valley, were taken out for
irrigation. In 1859, the waters of King's river were taken out and
utilized for irrigation. These instances represent in general outline
the commencement of irrigation in the State. Now we have in the
neighborhood of 750,000 or 800,000 acres actually irrigated each year,
and that represents what would ordinarily be called an irrigation area
of 1,200,000 acres; and there are commanded by the works--reasonably
within the reach of existing canals--an area of about 2,500,000 acres.

In the organization of irrigation enterprises there is great diversity.
Commencing with the simplest form, we have a ditch constructed by the
individual irrigator for his own use; we have then successively ditches
constructed by associated irrigators without a definite organization,
for the service of their own land only; ditches constructed by
regularly organized associations of farmers, with elected officers;
works constructed by farmers who have incorporated under the general
laws of the State and issued stock certificates of ownership in the
properties, for the service of the stockholders only; works where
incorporations have been formed for the purpose of attaching water
stock to lands that are to be sold, bringing in the element of
speculation; then works where the organization has been effected with a
view of selling water-rights; and finally, organizations that are
incorporated for the purpose of selling water. There is a great
difference between the principles of these methods of organization, and
the practical outcome is a great difference in the service of water and
in the duty of water furnished by them. In selling water, measurement
of volume is made by modules--the actual amount of water delivered is
measured--or it is sold by the acre served, or in proportional parts of
the total available flow of the season.

The general character of the irrigation works of the State varies very
much with the varying conditions under which it is practiced. In the
San Joaquin valley, King's river, for instance, comes out of the
mountains nearly on a level with the surface of the plain, cutting down
not more than a few feet below its banks; and hence but little labor is
required to divert its waters out upon the lands to be irrigated; but
farther north, the Tuolumne, as another example, comes out of the
mountains in a deep cañon, and the foot-hills extend far down the plain
on each side. It is easily seen, then, that it will require a million
or more dollars to divert from the latter stream the amount of water
diverted from King's river by the expenditure of a few months' work, by
a small force of the farmers themselves. On King's river, individual
and simple coöperative effort is sufficient to bring water enough upon
the plains to irrigate thousands of acres, while in the case of the
Tuolumne river it is absolutely necessary to have associated capital in
large amount--an entirely different principle of organization from that
which was originally applied on King's river and the Kern and other
rivers in the southern part of the great central valley. In discussions
on the subject of irrigation some people have advanced the idea that
the works should be undertaken by the farmers, and that capital should
have nothing to do with them. That may do very well where the physical
conditions will admit of such a course, and where nothing but the
farmers' own service depends upon it; but the great majority of the
streams of California are of such a character that the work of the
farmers can avail nothing. There must be strong associations and large
capital. For this purpose special laws are required. On the Santa Aña,
in San Bernardino county, water has been easily diverted, and such is
the case with every stream in the interior valley of San Bernardino and
Los Angeles counties.

Capital for the first works was not required. The water was procured by
primitive methods and the works were simple. But in San Diego, an
entirely different condition of affairs prevailed. There the waters are
back in the mountains, twenty or twenty-five miles from the coast, and
the irrigable lands are close along the coast, or within ten or twelve
miles of it. To bring the water out of these mountains requires the
construction of ditches following the mountain sides for 20 to 35
miles. But simple ditches do not answer, because of the great quantity
of water lost from them. So the companies have resorted to fluming, and
even to lining the ditches with cement. Thus in San Diego, individual
effort is out of the question. Farther north again, in the great
interior valley, King's river is a stream where coöperative and
individual effort have been efficient, although it requires a greater
amount of capital there than in the southern interior valley. In the
southern interior valley, perhaps, $10,000 would often build a ditch
and divert all the water that the supply would furnish. On King's river
the works have cost from $15,000 to $80,000 each; on Kern river the
works have cost from $15,000 to $250,000 each; and on the Tuolumne they
will cost from $1,000,000 to $1,200,000 apiece. On Merced river, the
cost has been $800,000 for one work. Taking the streams from San
Joaquin river north, that come out of the Sierra Nevada, up to the
northern end of the valley where the Sacramento river enters it, every
important stream comes into the valley within a deep gorge. The beds of
several of the northern streams are so filled up with mining debris
that diversion from them would be comparatively easy, but in their
natural state there is not an important stream north of the San Joaquin
which could be utilized for irrigation by any other means than through
the agency of capital in large amount. On the west side of this great
valley the tillable strip is comparatively narrow. It is on the lee
side of the coast range of mountains. Precipitation is made first on
the seaward face of the Coast Range, and then crosses the valley,
dropping upon the inland face of the outer range very little more than
upon the valley itself, where the precipitation is only about 10
inches. So that we have no streams coming out of the Coast Range into
the southern part of the interior valley specially noteworthy as
irrigation feeders. But as we go northward the Coast Range becomes
wider, and the big mountain basin containing Clear Lake furnishes a
large supply of water to Cache Creek, probably enough for 10,000 acres.
Stony Creek flows between two ridges of the Coast Range, and out on to
the plains, furnishing about the same amount of water; but still there
are no streams from the Coast Range into the valley that are comparable
with those of the Sierra Nevada. In the northeastern corner of the
State, on the great plains of Modoc, we have the Pitt river, a stream
of very considerable volume, but its waters are in comparatively deep
channels, not very well adapted to diversion, and the consequence is,
they have been utilized to a very small extent, only on small
bottom-land farms. The whole stream can be utilized, however, and the
country is thirsting for water.

The practice of irrigation in California is as diverse as it could well
be. California, as you know, covers a very large range in latitude, but
a greater range in the matter of climate and adaptability to the
cultivation of crops. In the southern portion of the State, the orange
and the banana and many other semi-tropical fruits flourish. In some
localities along the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada, also, those
fruits flourish, particularly the orange and the lemon. In the valley
of San Joaquin, wheat is grown by irrigation, and in some places
profitably, and in Kern county quite profitably (were it not for high
transportation charges), because the cost of distributing and applying
water has been reduced to a minimum. There the lands have been laid out
with as much care and precision as the architect would lay out the
stones in a building and the mason would place them. Irrigation is
conducted in some Kern river districts with the greatest ease, scarcely
requiring the use of the shovel. The lands are so laid off with the
check levels that by simply opening gates in the proper order, as the
irrigation superintendents know how, the waters flow out and cover the
successive plats or "checks" in their order, without leaving any
standing water, and finally flowing off without material waste. This is
the perfection of irrigation by the broad or submerging system,--a
method wherein the slope of the ground is first ascertained, platted by
contours, and the checks to hold the water, constructed with scrapers,
are then run out on slight grade contours--not perfectly level, but on
very gentle slopes.

There is no portion of the far southern part of the State where the
check method is applied as it is in Kern county. The practice in San
Bernardino is to irrigate entirely by running water in rills between
the rows of plants. Orange trees planted 24 to 30 feet apart are
irrigated by rills in plough furrows, 5 to 8 between rows, down the
slope of the orchard, which slope varies from about 1 foot in a hundred
to 4 or 5 in a hundred. In Los Angeles county they make banks about a
foot high around each individual tree, forming basins 5 or 6 to 10 or
12 feet in diameter according to the size of the tree. Into these the
water is conducted by a ditch, and the basin being filled, the water is
allowed to remain and soak away. The low, nearly flat valley lands,
when irrigated, are generally divided into square "checks," without
respect to the slope of the ground, and the surface is simply flooded
in water standing 6 inches to a foot in depth.

In the northern part of the State, in Placer and Yuba counties, clover
is grown on hills having side slopes of 10 to 15 feet in a hundred, and
irrigated in plough furrows cut around on contours--which furrows are
about 5 to 10 feet apart horizontally--and the water is allowed to soak
into the ground from each such furrow.

These are the five principal methods of applying water: by the check
system; by rills; by the basin method; by the basin method as applied
to low valleys; and by contour ditches on hill sides. The method
selected for any particular locality is determined not alone by the
crop to be cultivated, but also by the slope of the land and the
character of the soil. For instance, on lands where oranges are
cultivated, in the southern part of the State, where rills are most
generally used, water cannot be applied by the flooding system, for the
reason that irrigation would be followed by cracking of the soil, so
that the trees would be killed. It is necessary on such land to
cultivate immediately after irrigation, and the method of application
is governed more by the soil than by the character of the crop.

We find in California very marked and important effects following
irrigation. For instance, taking the great plains of Fresno, in the San
Joaquin valley: when irrigation commenced there twenty years ago, it
was 70 to 80 feet down to soil water--absolutely dry soil for nearly 80
feet--and it was the rule throughout the great plain, 20 miles in width
and 25 miles in length, that soil water was beyond the reach of the
suction pump; now, in places, water stands on the surface, rushes grow,
mosquitos breed, malarial fevers abound, and the people are crying for
drainage; and lands, whose owners paid from five to twenty dollars per
acre for the right to receive water, now need drainage, and irrigation
is considered unnecessary. The amount of water taken from King's river
which was, a few years ago, regarded as not more than sufficient for
one tenth of the land immediately commanded and that seemed to require
it, is now applied to a fourth of the whole area; so that if irrigation
keeps on, the time will come when the whole country will require
draining.

In a district, where water is applied by the broad method, I saw in
1877 enough water, by actual measurement of flow, put on 20 acres of
land to cover it 18 feet deep, in one season, could it all have been
retained upon it. It simply soaked into the ground, or flowed out under
the great plain. Taking cross sections of this country, north and south
and east and west, I found that where the depth to soil water had,
before irrigation, been about 80 feet, it was then 20, 30, 40 or 60 and
more feet down to it. The soil water stood under the plain in the form
of a mountain, the slope running down 40 to 50 feet in a few miles on
the west and north. On the south and southwest the surface of this
water-mountain was much more steep. In the Kern river country, we have
a somewhat similar phenomenon. Irrigation, in the upper portion of the
Kern delta, affects the water in the wells 6 or 8 miles away. As I
remember the effect is felt at the rate of about a mile a day, that is
to say, when water is used in irrigating the upper portion of the
delta, or of Kern island, as it is called, the wells commence to rise a
mile away in twenty-four hours, and five miles away in perhaps five
days.

In the southern portion of the State, in San Bernardino county, at
Riverside, we find no such effect at all. There it was 70 to 90 feet to
soil water before irrigation and it is, as a general rule, 70 to 90
feet still. Water applied on the surface in some places has never even
wet the soil all the way down, and wells dug there, after irrigation
had been practiced for years, have pierced dry ground for 25 or 30 feet
before getting down to where soil waters have wetted it from below. The
consequences of these phenomena are twofold. In the first place, in the
country that fills up with water, the duty of water--the quantity of
land which a given amount of water will irrigate--has increased.
Starting with a duty of not more than 25 acres to a cubic foot of water
per second, we now find that, in some localities, this amount irrigates
from 100 to 160 acres; and that some lands no longer require
irrigating. In the southern portion of the State, however, the cubic
foot of water irrigates no more than at first, and it is scarcely
possible that it will ever irrigate much more. The saving, as
irrigation goes on in the far southern portion of the State, will be
effected chiefly through the better construction of canals and
irrigation works of delivery and distribution. In Tulare valley, the
duty of water will increase as the ground fills up.

In Fresno, a county which was regarded as phenomenally healthy,
malarial fevers now are found, while in San Bernardino, at Riverside,
such a thing is rarely known. Coming to Bakersfield, a region which
before irrigation commenced was famed for its malarial fevers--known as
unhealthful throughout all the State--where soil water was originally
within 15 feet of the surface, irrigation has almost entirely rid it of
the malarial effects. Chills and fever are rare now, where before
irrigation they were prevalent. What is the reason that where chills
and fever prevailed, irrigation has made a healthful country, while
where chills and fevers were not known, irrigation has made it
unhealthful? I account for it in this way: in the Kern river country
before irrigation was extensively introduced, there were many old
abandoned river channels and sloughs, overgrown with swamp vegetation
and overhung by dense masses of rank-growing foliage. Adjacent lands
were in a more or less swampy condition; ground waters stood within 10
or 20 feet of the surface, and there was no hard-pan or impermeable
stratum between such surface and these waters. In other words, general
swampy conditions prevailed, and malarial influences followed by chills
and fevers were the result. Irrigation brought about the clearing out
of many of these old channel ways, and their use as irrigating canals.
The lands were cleared off and cultivated, fresh water was introduced
through these channels from the main river throughout the hot months,
and the swamp-like condition of the country was changed to one of a
well-tilled agricultural neighborhood with streams of fresh water
flowing through it; and the result, as I have said, was one happy in
its effect of making the climate salubrious and healthful.

Considering now the case of the King's river or the Fresno country, the
lands there were a rich alluvial deposit, abounding in vegetable matter
which for long ages perhaps had been, except as wetted by the rains of
winter, dry and desiccated. Soil water was deep below the surface. Then
irrigation came. Owing to the nature of the soil, the whole country
filled up with the water. Its absorptive qualities being great and its
natural drainage defective, the vegetable matter in the soil, subjected
to more or less continued excessive moisture, has decayed. The
fluctuation of the surface of the ground waters at different seasons of
the year--such surface being at times very near to the ground surface,
and at other times 5 or 6 feet lower--has contributed to the decaying
influences which the presence of the waters engendered. The result has
been, when taken with the general overgrowth of the country with
vegetation due to irrigation, a vitiation of the atmosphere by
malarious outpourings from the soil. The advantage of the pure
atmosphere of a wide and dry plain has been lost by the miasmatic
poisonings arising from an over-wet and ill-drained neighborhood, with
the results, as affecting human healthfulness, of which I have already
spoken. The remedy is of course to drain the country. The example is
but a repetition of experiences had in other countries. The energy and
pluck of Californians will soon correct the matter.

George P. Marsh, in his "Man and Nature," laid it down as a rule that
an effect of irrigation was to concentrate land holdings in a few
hands, and he wrote an article, which was published in one of our
Agricultural Department reports, in which he rather deprecates the
introduction of irrigation into the United States, or says that on this
account it should be surrounded by great safeguards. He cited instances
in Europe, as in the valley of the Po, where the tendency of irrigation
had been to wipe out small land holdings, and bring the lands into the
hands of a few of the nobility. He cited but one country where the
reverse had been the rule, which was in the south and east of Spain,
and pointed out the reason, as he conceived it, that in south and
southeastern Spain the ownership of the water went with the land and
was inseparable from it, under ancient Moorish rights. It is a fact,
that where the ownership of water goes with the land, it prevents
centering of land ownership into few hands, after that ownership is
once divided among many persons, in irrigated regions. But Mr. Marsh
overlooked one thing in predicting harm in our country; that is, that
it will be many years before we will get such a surplus of poor as to
bring about the result he feared. In California, the effect of
irrigation has not been to center the land in the hands of a few. On
the contrary, the tendency has been just the other way. When irrigation
was introduced it became possible for small land holders to live. In
Fresno county, there are many people making a living for a family, each
on 20 acres of irrigated land, and the country is divided into 20 and
40-acre tracts and owned in that way. In San Bernardino the same state
of things prevails. Before irrigation, these lands were owned in large
tracts, and it was not an uncommon thing for one owner to have 10,000
to 20,000 acres of land. So that the rule in California, which is the
effect of irrigation, is to divide land holdings into small tracts, and
in this respect, also, irrigation is a blessing to the country. It
enables large owners to cut up their lands and sell out to the many.
Land values have advanced from $1.25 in this great valley to $50, $150
and even $250 per acre, simply by attaching to the land the right to
take or use water, paying in addition an annual rental: in the southern
portion of the State, they have advanced from $5 and $10 to $500 and
even $1000 an acre, where the land has the right to water; and many
calculations have been made and examples cited by intelligent and
prominent people, to show that good orange land or good raisin-grape
land with sufficient water supply is well worth $1000 an acre. Water
rights run up proportionately in value. A little stream flowing an inch
of water--an amount that will flow through an inch square opening under
four inches of pressure--in the southern part of the State, is held at
values ranging from $500 to $5000. Such a little stream has changed
hands at $5000, and not at boom prices either. In the interior prices
are much less, being from about a quarter to a tenth of those in the
far southern part of the State.

Fully one fourth of the United States requires irrigation. When I say
that, I mean that fully one fourth the tillable area of our country
requires irrigation, in order to support such a population as, for
instance, Indiana has. The irrigated regions of Italy support
populations of from 250 to 300 people to the square mile; of south
France, from 150 to 250 people to the square mile; of southeast Spain,
from 200 to 300. When we have 50 to 100 to the square mile in an
agricultural region we think we have a great population.

The great interior valley of California will not support, without
irrigation, an average of more than 15 to 20 people per square mile.
Irrigate it and it will support as many as any other portion of the
country--reasonably it will support 200 to the square mile. I have no
doubt that the population will run up to ten or twelve millions in that
one valley, and there are regions over this country from the
Mississippi to the Pacific, millions of acres, that can be made to
support a teeming population by the artificial application of water.
And why has it not been done before? Simply for the reason that there
is a lack of knowledge of what can be done and a lack of organization
and capital to carry out the enterprises.

The government has recently placed at the disposal of the United States
Geological Survey an appropriation for the investigation of this
subject, to ascertain how irrigation can be secured, the cost of
irrigation works, and point out the means for irrigation, in the arid
regions. It is one of the wisest things Congress ever did; wise in the
time and in the subject. The time will soon come when the question
would have been forced upon the country, and the wisdom of preparing
for that time cannot be too highly commended.




ROUND ABOUT ASHEVILLE.

BY BAILEY WILLIS.


A broad amphitheatre lies in the heart of the North Carolina mountains
which form its encircling walls; its length is forty miles from north
to south and its width ten to twenty miles. At its southern gate the
French Broad river enters; through the northern gate the same river
flows out, augmented by the many streams of its extensive watershed.

[Illustration: GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. NORTH CAROLINA/TENNESSEE. ASHEVILLE
SHEET. Contour interval 100 feet. 1888.]

[Illustration: SECTION FROM THE CUMBERLAND PLATEAU TO THE BLUE RIDGE.
Natural profiles.]

From these water-courses the even arena once arose with gentle slope to
the surrounding heights and that surface, did it now exist, would make
this region a very garden, marked by its genial climate and adequate
rainfall. But that level floor exists no longer; in it the rivers first
sunk their channels, their tributaries followed, the gullies by which
the waters gathered deepened, and the old plain was thus dissected. It
is now only visible from those points of view from which remnants of
its surface fall into a common plane of vision. This is the case
whenever the observer stands upon the level of the old arena; he may
then sweep with a glance the profile of a geographic condition which
has long since passed away.

Asheville is built upon a bit of this plain between the ravines of the
French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, now flowing 380 feet below the
level, and at the foot of the Beau-catcher hills; toward which the
ground rises gently. The position is a commanding one, not only for the
far reaching view, but also as the meeting place of lines of travel
from north, south, east, and west. Thus Asheville became a town of
local importance long before railroads were projected along the lines
of the old turnpikes. The village was the center of western North
Carolina, as well of the county of Buncombe, and was therefore
appropriately the home of the district Federal court. A May session of
the court was in progress nine years ago when I rode up the muddy
street from the Swannanoa valley. Several well-known moonshiners were
on trial, and the town street was crowded with their sympathizers, lean
mountaineers in blue and butternut homespun. Horses were hitched at
every available rack and fence, and horse trading was active. Whiskey
was on trial at other bars than that of the court, and the long rifle,
powder-horn and pouch had not been left in the mountains. To a
"tenderfoot" (who had the day before been mistaken for a rabbit or a
revenue officer!) the attentions of the crowd were not reassuring.

The general opinion was, I felt, akin to that long afterward expressed
by Groundhog Cayce: "It air an awful thing ter kill a man by accident;"
and I staid but a very short time in Asheville.

Riding away toward the sunset, I traversed the old plain without seeing
that it had had a continuous surface. I noted the many gullies, and I
lost in the multitude of details the wide level from which they were
carved. That the broader fact should be obscured by the many lesser
ones is no rare experience, and perhaps there is no class of
observations of which this has been more generally true than of those
involved in landscape study. But when once the Asheville plain has been
recognized, it can never again be ignored. It enters into every view,
both as an element of beauty and as evidence of change in the
conditions which determine topographic forms. Seldom in the mountains
can one get that distance of wooded level, rarely is the foreground so
like a gem proportioned to its setting; all about Asheville one meets
with glimpses of river and valley, sunken in reach beyond reach of
woodland which stretch away to the blue mountains. The even ridges form
natural roadsites, and in driving one comes ever and anon upon a fresh
view down upon the stream far across the plain and up to the heights.
And to the student of Appalachian history, the dissected plain is a
significant contradiction of the time honored phrase, "the everlasting
hills." That plain was a fact, the result of definite conditions of
erosion; it exists no more in consequence of changes. What were the
original conditions? In what manner have they changed? Let us take
account of certain other facts before suggesting an answer. Of the
mountains which wall the Asheville amphitheatre, the Blue Ridge on the
east and the Unaka chain on the west are the two important ranges. The
Blue Ridge forms the divide between the tributaries of the Atlantic and
those of the Gulf of Mexico, and the streams which flow westward from
it all pass through the Unaka chain. It would be reasonable to suppose
that the rivers rose in the higher and flowed through the lower of the
two ranges, but they do not. The Blue Ridge is an irregular,
inconspicuous elevation but little over 4000 feet above the sea; the
Unaka mountains form a massive chain from 5000 to 6500 feet in height.
That streams should thus flow through mountains higher than their
source was once explained by the assumption that they found passage
through rents produced by earth convulsions; but that vague guess
marked the early and insufficient appreciation of the power of streams
as channel cutters, and it has passed discredited into the history of
our knowledge of valley-formation. That rivers carve out the deepest
cañons, as well as the broadest valleys, is now a truism which we must
accept in framing hypotheses to account for the courses of the French
Broad and other similar streams. Moreover, since waters from a lower
Blue Ridge could never of their own impulse have flowed over the higher
Unaka, we are brought to the question, was the Blue Ridge once the
higher, or have streams working on the western slope of the Unaka range
(when it was a main divide), worn it through from west to east,
capturing all that broad watershed between the two mountain ranges?
Either hypothesis is within the possibility of well established river
action, and both suggest the possibility of infinite change in mountain
forms and river systems. Without attempting here to discriminate
between these two hypotheses, for which a broader foundation of facts
is needed, let us look at the channel of the French Broad below
Asheville, in the river's course through the range that is higher than
its source. Descending from the old plain into the river's ravine, we
at once lose all extended views and are closely shut in by wooded
slopes and rocky bluffs. The river falls the more rapidly as we
descend, and its tributaries leap to join it, the railroad scarce
finding room between the rocks and the brawling current. The way is
into a rugged and inhospitable gorge whose walls rise at last on either
hand into mountains that culminate some thirty miles below Asheville.
At Mountain Island the waters dash beautifully over a ledge of
conglomerate and rush out from a long series of rapids into the deep
water above Hot Springs. Beyond the limestone cove in which the springs
occur, the valley, though narrow still, is wider and bottom lands
appear. Thus the water gap of the French Broad through the Unakas is
narrow and rugged, the river itself a tossing torrent; but had we
passed down other streams of similar course, we should have found them
even more turbulent, their channels even more sharply carved in the
hard rocks. On Pigeon river there are many cliffs of polished
quartzite, and on the Nolichucky river a V-shaped gorge some eight
miles long is terraced where the ledges of quartzite are horizontal and
is turreted with fantastic forms where the strata are vertical. Where
the river valleys are of this sharp cut character in high mountains,
the abrupt slopes, cliffs and rocky pinnacles are commonly still more
sharply accented in the heights. The Alpine tourist or the mountaineer
of the Sierras would expect to climb from these cañons to ragged combs
or to scarcely accessible needle-like peaks. But how different from the
heights of the Jungfrau are the "balds" of the Unakas! like the
ice-worn granite domes of New England, the massive balds present a
rounded profile against the sky. Although composed of the hardest rock,
they yet resemble in their contours, the low relief of a limestone
area. Broad, even surfaces, on which rocky outcrops are few and over
which a deep loam prevails, suggest rather that one is wandering over a
plain than on a great mountain; yet you may sweep the entire horizon
and find few higher peaks. The view is often very beautiful, it is
far-reaching, not grand. No crags tower skyward, but many domes rise
nearly to the same heights, and dome-like, their slopes are steepest
toward the base. The valleys and the mountains have exchanged the
characters they usually bear; the former are dark and forbidding, wild
and inaccessible, the latter are broad and sunlit of softened form,
habitable and inhabited. All roads and villages are on the heights,
only passing travelers and those who prey upon them frequent the
depths.

These facts of form are not local, they are general: all the streams of
the Unaka mountains share the features of the French Broad Cañon, while
peaks like Great Roan, Big Bald, Mt. Guyot, are but examples of a
massive mountain form common throughout the range.

Thus the Unaka chain presents two peculiar facts for our consideration;
it is cut through by streams rising in a lower range, and its profiles
of erosion are convex upward not downward.

If we follow our river's course beyond the Unaka chain into the valley
of East Tennessee we shall still find the channel deeply cut; here and
there bottomlands appear, now on one side, now on the other, but the
banks are more often steep slopes or vertical cliffs from fifty to one
hundred feet high. The creeks and brooks meander with moderate fall
through the undulating surface of the valley, but they all plunge by a
more or less abrupt cascade into the main rivers. It is thus evident
that the tributaries cannot keep pace with the rivers in
channel-cutting, and the latter will continue to sink below the surface
of general degradation until their diminished fall reduces their rate
of corrasion below that of the confluent streams.

If from topographic forms we turn to consider the materials, the rocks,
of which they are composed, we shall find a general rule of relation
between relative elevation and rock-hardness. Thus the great valley of
East Tennessee has a general surface 3000 feet below the mean height of
the Unakas: it is an area of easily soluble, often soft, calcareous
rocks, while the mountains, consist of the most insoluble, the hardest,
silicious rocks. East of the Unakas the surface is again lower,
including the irregular divide, the Blue Ridge; here also, the
feldspathic gneisses and mica schists are, relatively speaking, easily
soluble, and non-coherent. What is thus broadly true is true in detail,
also where a more silicious limestone or a sandstone bed occurs in the
valley it forms a greater or less elevation above the surface of the
soft rocks; where a more soluble, less coherent stratum crops out in
the mountain mass, a hollow, a cove, corresponds to it. Of valley
ridges, Clinch mountain is the most conspicuous example; of mountain
hollows the French Broad valley at Hot Springs, or Tuckaleechee Cove
beneath the Great Smoky mountain, is a fair illustration.

But impassive rock-hardness, mere ability to resist, is not adequate to
raise mountains, nor is rock-softness an active agent in the formation
of valleys. The passive attitude of the rocks implies a force, that is
resisted, and the very terms in which that attitude is expressed
suggest the agent which applies the force. Hardness, coherence,
insolubility,--these are terms suggestive of resistance to a force
applied to wear away, to dissolve, as flowing water wears by virtue of
the sediment it carries and as percolating waters take the soluble
constituent of rocks into solution. And it is by the slow mechanical
and chemical action of water that not only cañons are carved but even
mountain ranges reduced to gentle slopes.

If we designate this process by the word "degradation," it follows from
the relation of resistance to elevation in the region under discussion
that we may say: The Appalachians are mountains of differential
degradation; that is, heights remain where the rocks have been least
energetically acted on, valleys are carved where the action of water
has been most effective.

In order that the process of degradation may go on it is essential that
a land mass be somewhat raised above the sea, and, since the process is
a never-ceasing one while streams have sufficient fall to carry
sediment, it follows that, given time enough, every land surface must
be degraded to a sloping plain, to what has been called a base level.

With these ideas of mountain genesis and waste, let us consider some
phases of degradation in relation to topographic forms; and in doing so
I cannot do better than to use the terms employed by Prof. Wm. M.
Davis.

When a land surface rises from the ocean the stream systems which at
once develope, are set the task of carrying back to the sea all that
stands above it. According to the amount of this alloted work that
streams have accomplished, they may be said to be young, mature or
aged; and if, their task once nearly completed, another uplift raise
more material to be carried off, they may be said to be revived. These
terms apply equally to the land-surface, and each period of development
is characterized by certain topographic forms.

In youth simple stream systems sunk in steep walled cañons are
separated by broad areas of surface incompletely drained. In maturity
complex stream systems extend branches up to every part of the surface;
steep slopes, sharp divides, pyramidal peaks express the rapidity with
which every portion of the surface is attacked.

In old age the gently rolling surface is traversed by many quiet
flowing streams; the heights are gone, the profiles are rounded, the
contours subdued. In the first emergence from the sea the courses of
streams are determined by accidents of slope, it may be by folding of
the rising surface into troughs and arches. During maturity the process
of retrogressive erosion, by which a stream cuts back into the
watershed of a less powerful opponent stream, adjusts the channels to
the outcrops of soft rocks and leaves the harder strata as eminences.
In old age this process of differential degradation is complete and
only the hardest rocks maintain a slight relief.

Suppose that an aged surface of this character be revived: the rivers
hitherto flowing quietly in broad plains will find their fall increased
in their lower courses; their channels in soft rock will rapidly become
cañons, and the revived phase will retreat up stream in the same manner
that the cañons of youth extended back into the first uplifted mass. If
the area of soft rocks be bounded by a considerable mass of very hard
rocks, it is conceivable that a second phase of age, a base level,
might creep over the valley while yet the summits of the first old age
remained unattacked, and should perchance revival succeed revival the
record of the last uplift might be read in sharp cut channels of the
great rivers, while the forms of each preceding phase led like steps to
the still surviving domes of that earliest old age.

Is there aught in these speculations to fit our facts? I think there
is. We have seen that our mountains and valleys are the result of
differential degradation, and that this is not only broadly true but
true in detail also. This is evidence that streams have been long at
work adjusting their channels, they have passed through the period of
maturity.

We have climbed to the summits of the Unakas and found them composed of
rocks as hard as those from which the pinnacle of the Matterhorn is
chiseled; but we see them gently sloping, as a plain. These summits are
very, very old.

We have recognized that dissected plain, the level of the Asheville
amphitheatre, now 2,400 feet above the sea; it was a surface produced
by subaerial erosion, and as such it is evidence of the fact that the
French Broad River, and such of its tributaries as drain this area, at
one time completed their work upon it, reached a base level. That they
should have accomplished this the level of discharge of the sculpturing
streams must have been constant during a long period, a condition which
implies either that the fall from the Asheville plain to the ocean was
then much less than it now is, or that through local causes the French
Broad was held by a natural dam, where it cuts the Unaka chain.

If we should find that other rivers of this region have carved the
forms of age upon the surfaces of their intermontane valleys, and there
is now some evidence of this kind at hand, then we must appeal to the
more general cause of base-levelling and accept the conclusion that the
land stood lower in relation to the ocean than it now does.
Furthermore, we have traversed the ravines which the streams have cut
in this ancient plain and we may note on the accompanying atlas sheet
that the branches extend back into every part of it; the ravines
themselves prove that the level of discharge has been lowered, the
streams have been revived; and the wide ramification of the brooks is
the characteristic of approaching maturity.

We have also glanced at the topography of the valley and have found the
rivers flowing in deep-cut simple channels which are young, and the
smaller streams working on an undulating surface that is very sensitive
to processes of degradation.

The minor stream systems are very intricate and apparently mature, but
they have not yet destroyed the evidence of a general level to which
the whole limestone area was once reduced, but which now is represented
by many elevations that approach 1,600 feet above the sea. Here then in
the valley are young river channels, mature stream systems and faint
traces of an earlier base level, all of them more recent than the
Asheville level, which is in turn less ancient than the dome-like
summits of the Unakas.

What history can we read in these suggestive topographic forms and
their relations?

The first step in the evolution of a continent is its elevation above
the sea. The geologist tells us that the earliest uplift of the
Appalachian region after the close of the Carboniferous period was
preceded or accompanied by a folding of the earth's crust into
mountainous wave-like arches; upon these erosion at once began and
these formed our first mountains. Where they were highest the geologist
may infer from geologic structure and the outcrops of the oldest rocks;
but the facts for that inference are not yet all gathered and it can
only be said that the heights of that ancient topography were probably
as great over the valley of Tennessee as over the Unaka chain. The
positions of rivers were determined by the relations of the arches to
each other and, as they were in a general way parallel, extending from
northeast to southwest, we know that the rivers too had
northeast-southwest courses. From that first drainage system the
Tennessee river, as far down as Chattanooga, is directly descended, and
when the geologic structure of North Carolina and East Tennessee is
known, we may be able to trace the steps of adjustment by which the
many waters have been concentrated to form that great river. At present
we cannot sketch the details, but we know that it was a long process
and that it was accompanied by a change in the _raison d'être_ of the
mountain ranges. The first mountains were high because they had been
relatively raised; they gave place to hills that survived because they
had not been worn down. A topography of differential uplift gave place
to one of differential degradation. And to the latter the dome-like
"balds" of the Unakas belong. Those massive summits of granite,
quartzite and conglomerate are not now cut by running waters; they are
covered with a mantel of residual soil, the product of excessively slow
disintegration, and they are the remnants of a surface all of which has
yielded to degradation, save them. In time the streams will cut back
and carve jagged peaks from their masses, but standing on their heights
my thought has turned to the condition they represent--the condition
that is past. And thus in thought I have looked from the Big Bald out
on a gently sloping plain which covered the many domes of nearly equal
height and stretched away to merge on the horizon in the level of the
sea. That, I conceive, was the first base level plain of which we have
any evidence in the Appalachians and from that plain our present
valleys have been eroded. The continental elevation must then have been
3,000 or 4,000 feet less than it is now, and the highest hills were
probably not more than 2,500 feet above the sea. This was perhaps a
period of constant relation between sea and land, but it was succeeded
by one during which the land slowly rose. The rivers, which had
probably assumed nearly their present courses, were revived; the
important channels soon sank in cañons, the tributaries leaped in
rapids and cut back into the old base level. The region continued to
rise during a period long enough to produce the essential features of
the mountain ranges of to-day; then it stood still in relation to the
sea or perhaps subsided somewhat, and the French Broad and probably
other rivers made record of the pause in plains like that about
Asheville. Again the land rose slowly; again it paused, and rivers,
working always from their mouths backward, carved a base-level in the
limestones of the great valley; but before that level could extend up
through the gorges in the Unakas, the continent was raised to its
present elevation, the streams responded to the increased fall given
them and the rivers in the valley began to cut their still incomplete
cañons.

Are we not led step by step from these latest sharply cut channels up
stream through the chapters of erosion to the still surviving domes of
an early old age? Let us sum up the history we have traced. There is
reason to believe that:

1st. The consequent topography of the earliest Appalachian uplift was
entirely removed during a prolonged period of erosion and was replaced
by a relief of differential degradation.

2d. The balds of the Unakas represent the heights of that first-known
approach to a base-level.

3d. The topography of the region has been revived by a general, though
not necessarily uniform, uplift of 3,000 feet or more, divided by two
intervals of rest; during the first of these the Asheville base-level
was formed; during the second, the valley alone was reduced.

4th. The latest movement of the uplift has been, geologically speaking,
quite recent, and the revived streams have accomplished but a small
part of their new task.

These conclusions are reached on the observation of a single class of
facts in one district; they must be compared with the record of
continental oscillation on the sea coasts, in the deposits of the
coastal plain, and in the topography of other districts.

The history of the Appalachians is written in every river system and on
every mountain range, but in characters determined for each locality by
the local conditions. Only when the knowledge, to which every tourist
may contribute, is extended over the entire region shall we know
conclusively the whole story.




A TRIP TO PANAMA AND DARIEN.

BY RICHARD U. GOODE.


The Government of the United States of Colombia in its act of
Concession to the Panama Canal Company provided that it should give to
the latter _"gratuitement et avec toutes les mines qu'ils pourront
contenir"_ 500,000 hectares of land.

Some of the conditions attached to this grant were, that the land
should be selected within certain limits and surveyed by the Canal
Company; that a topographical map should be made of the areas surveyed
and that an amount equal to that surveyed for the canal should also be
surveyed for the benefit of the Colombian Government. It was also
further agreed that it would not be necessary to complete the canal
before any of the land should be granted, but that it would be given at
different times in amounts proportional to the amount of work
accomplished.

Thus in 1887, the Government agreed to consider that one-half of the
work on the canal had been finished and that the canal was consequently
entitled to 250,000 hectares of land, upon the completion of the
necessary surveys, etc.

The land was eventually chosen partly in Darien and partly in Chiriqui
as follows:

In Darien three lots, one between the Paya and Mangle rivers, one
between the Maria and Pirri rivers, the two amounting to 100,000
hectares, and one lot of 25,000 hectares between the Yape and Pucro
rivers.

In Chiriqui, which is a Province of Panama just east of Costa Rica, two
lots were chosen amounting to 125,000 hectares, one between the Sigsola
and Rabalo rivers, and the other between the Catabella and San Pedro
rivers.

The Canal Company wanted the title to the land in order that it might
be used as collateral security in bolstering up the finances of the
corporation, and the Colombian Government was doubtless very willing to
let the Canal Company have this amount or as much more as was wanted,
both parties being equally aware of the valueless character of the land
for any practical purposes.

My services were engaged in 1888 in connection with the astronomical
work incident to the survey of these grants and it was intended that I
should visit both Darien and Chiriqui, but the contract term expired
about the time of the completion of the work in Darien, which was taken
up first, and it was deemed prudent for various reasons, the chief of
them being the unhealthiness of the locality at that season of the
year, about the middle of April, not to remain longer on the Isthmus.
If it had been possible to work as expeditiously as in this country
there would have been ample time to have completed the necessary
astronomical work for both surveys, and without understanding men and
methods peculiar to a tropical country I started out with this
expectation, but soon found out that any efforts looking towards
expediting any particular matter were not only useless but were
detrimentally reactive upon the person putting forward such efforts.
Thus it was nearly the first of March before I reached Darien, having
sailed from New York a month previously. Passage was had from Panama to
Darien in a steamer chartered for the purpose. Sailing across the Bay
of Panama and entering the Tuyra River at Boca Chica, we ascended the
river as far as the village Real de St. Marie. At this point the
steamer was abandoned and further transportation was had in canoes.

Darien is a province of the State of Panama and its boundaries as given
by Lieut. Sullivan in his comprehensive work on "Problem of
Interoceanic Communication," are as follows: "The Atlantic coast line
is included between Point San Blas and Cape Tiburon; that of the
Pacific extends from the mouth of the Bayano to Point Ardita. The
eastern boundary is determined by the main Cordillera in its sweep
across the Isthmus from a position of close proximity to the Pacific,
near Point Ardita, to a similar position near Tiburon, on the Atlantic.
The valleys of the Mandinga and Mamoni-Bayano determine its western
limit."

The Darien hills as seen from the Atlantic side present to the view an
apparently solid ridge of mountains, although there are in reality many
low passes which are concealed by projecting spurs.

The dividing ridge hugs close to the Atlantic, and the rivers, of which
there are a great many on this side, plunge abruptly to the sea. On the
Pacific side the rivers have a much longer distance to flow before
reaching the sea, and the territory bordering on the ocean is low and
swampy. The tidal limit of the Tuyra River is nearly fifty miles from
its mouth, and on this river and many of its tributaries one can travel
many miles inland before ground sufficiently solid to land upon can be
found. The vegetation within this low lying area is thick and closely
matted together, and this fact taken in connection with the swampy
character of the ground, makes travel on foot through any portion of it
exceedingly difficult. Therefore the various rivers, which form a very
complex system and penetrate everywhere are the natural highways of the
country. The chief rivers on the Pacific side are the Tuyra and Boyano
with their numerous tributaries and on the Atlantic watershed is the
Atrato.

A peculiarity noticed at Real de St. Marie, which is at the junction of
the Pyrrhi and Tuyra rivers and at which point the tide has a rise and
fall of twelve or fifteen feet, was that at low tide it was impossible
to enter the mouth of the Pyrrhi with a boat, while five or six miles
up the stream there was always a good supply of flowing water and at
double that distance it became a mountain torrent.

Outside of the swampy area the character of the country is rough and
mountainous. The valleys are narrow and the ridges exceedingly sharp,
the natural result of a great rain fall. The hills are able to resist
the continued wasting effect of the vast volumes of descending water
only by their thick mantle of accumulated vegetation, and were it not
for this protection the many months of continuous annual rain would
long ago have produced a leveling effect that would have made
unnecessary the various attempts of man to pierce the Isthmian
mountains and form an artificial strait.

The ridges are sometimes level for a short distance, but are generally
broken and are made up of a succession of well rounded peaks. These
peaks are always completely covered with trees and from the top of the
sharpest of them it is impossible to get a view of the surrounding
country. The highest point climbed was about 2,000 feet above sea level
and the highest peak in Darien is Mt. Pyrrhi which is between three and
four thousand.

Darien has been the scene of a great deal of surveying and exploration
from the time that Columbus, in 1503, coasted along its shores, hoping
to find a strait connecting the two oceans, up to the present time.
Balboa, in 1510, discovered the Pacific by crossing the Darien
mountains from Caledonia Bay. This discovery taken in connection with
the broad indentations of the land noted by Columbus, led the old world
to believe in the existence of a strait, and the entire coast on each
side of the new world was diligently searched. The Cabots, Ponce de
Leon and Cortez interested themselves in this search and it was not
until about 1532 that all expectations of finding the strait were
abandoned. The idea of a direct natural communication between the
oceans being thus dispelled, the question of an artificial junction
arose, and in 1551 a Spanish historian recommended to Philip II. of
Spain the desirability of an attempt to join the oceans by identically
the same routes to which the attention of the whole civilized portion
of the world is now being drawn, that is, Tehauntepec, Nicaragua and
Panama. From this time up to the commencement of the work of the
Isthmian expeditions sent out by the United States, and which lasted
from 1870 to 1875, but little geographical knowledge relative to Darien
was obtained. The United States expeditions undoubtedly did a great
amount of valuable exploration and surveying, and while the names of
Strain, Truxton, Selfridge and Lull will always be held in high esteem
for what they accomplished in this direction, still it is to be
regretted that with all the resources at their command they did not
make a complete map of the country. And just here I want to bring
forward the suggestion that all that has been accomplished and more,
could have been accomplished if the various explorers had known, or
practically utilized, a fact that my own experience and that of other
topographers, in this country and Darien, has impressed upon me; and
that is, that it is easier in a rough and mountainous country to travel
on the ridge than in the valley. In Darien they were looking for a low
pass in the Cordillera and this was what should have first been sought,
directly. Having found the low passes the valleys of the streams
draining therefrom could have then been examined, and thus all
necessary information could have been obtained and the subject
exhausted. The plan followed by the Isthmian expeditions was to ascend
a stream with the hope of finding a suitable pass. The pass might be
found or it might not, and if not, so much labor as far as the direct
solution of the problem was concerned was lost. A pass of low altitude
was of primary importance and should have been sought for in an
exhaustive way.

Humboldt said in substance, "Do not waste your time in running
experimental lines across. Send out a party fully equipped, which
keeping down the dividing ridge the whole length of the Isthmus, by
this means can obtain a complete knowledge of the hypsometrical and
geological conditions of the dam that obstructs the travel and commerce
of the world." But strange to say this plan suggested by such an
eminent authority as Humboldt and so strongly recommended by common
sense, has never been followed, and to-day after all the money that has
been spent and the lives lost in explorations in Darien, there is not
sufficient data collected to prove conclusively that there does not now
exist some route for an interoceanic canal that possesses merits
superior to any at present known. It is true the dividing ridge would
be difficult to follow on account of the great number of confusing
spurs, but I think I am safe in saying that starting from the summit of
the main ridge at Culebra pass on the Isthmus of Panama, the dividing
ridge extending to the pass at the head waters of the Atrato could be
exhaustively followed and studied with as much facility as could either
the Tuyra or Atrato rivers, embracing with each their respective
tributaries.

I traveled on some of the high dividing ridges in Darien, and did not
find that progress was at all difficult, and especially noted the fact
of the absence of tangled undergrowth and matted vines which is so
characteristic of the Darien forests generally.

Now a few words about the inhabitants of Panama and Darien, and in
referring to these I mean the native inhabitants and not the
indiscriminate gathering of all nationalities that were attracted by
the Panama Canal.

In Central and South America, as in North America, the aboriginal
inhabitant was the Indian. When the Spaniards first attempted to
colonize Darien they were met and resisted by the native Indian just as
our forefathers were in Virginia and Massachusetts, and as with us so
in Panama and Darien the Indians have been driven back by degrees from
the shores of both oceans until now they are found only in the far
interior.

They resemble our Indians in appearance, but are smaller. They are
averse to manual labor and live almost entirely by hunting and fishing,
although they sometimes have small plantations of plantains, bananas,
oranges and lemons. The Spaniards in settling in the new country
brought very few women with them and the Colombian of to-day is the
result of the admixture of the Indian and Spanish blood, and has many
of the characteristics of each race. In addition to the Indian and
Colombian there are in Panama and Darien a comparatively large number
of negroes, who were originally imported as slaves by the early
Spaniards, and who now constitute by far the larger portion of the
inhabitants of Darien, being found usually in villages along the
valleys of the larger streams. In contrast to the Colombian and Indian
they are large in stature and make excellent laborers.

The principal villages in Darien, as Yovisa, Pinagana and Real de St.
Marie, are inhabited exclusively by the negroes, with the exception of
a Spanish judge in each, who exercises great authority. Besides being a
judge in civil and criminal cases, he practically controls everything
in his particular village, as all contracts for labor are negotiated
with him and settlement for services made through him.

Upon reaching Darien the first work assigned me was the survey and
exploration of the Pyrrhi river. This survey was made for two purposes:
primarily, to determine if any of the country bordering upon it was of
a sufficiently desirable character to include it within the grant, and
secondly, to secure data for the general topographical map. My
instructions were to proceed as far south as latitude 7° 30'. The
ascent of the river was made in canoes until the frequency of rapids
made it necessary to abandon them, and then the journey was continued
on foot, generally wading in the middle of the stream, as the
undergrowth was too thick to admit of progress along the banks.
Sometimes the water was very shallow; at other times, where it had been
backed up by dams of porphyritic rock, it reached above the waist, and
near the end of the journey where the river ran between vertical walls
of great height it was necessary to swim in order to get beyond this
cañon.

The survey of this river was satisfactorily accomplished in about a
week. The method adopted for the survey was to take compass bearings
and to estimate distances. These courses and distances were plotted as
they were taken and thus the topographical and other features could be
readily sketched in connection with them. To check and control this
work, observations were taken every day at noon with a sextant, on the
sun, for latitude and time, and at night circum-meridian altitudes of
stars were obtained when possible.

Thus a number of rivers were surveyed--the Maria, Tucuti, Yovisa and
other tributaries of the Tuyra. When it was found that a sufficiently
correct idea of the country for topographical purposes could not be
obtained by simply meandering the water courses, lines or _trochas_
were cut through the forest from stream to stream, and where two
streams thus connected were tributaries of a common river, all of which
had been previously surveyed, a closed figure was obtained, an
adjustment for errors of closure made, and by putting together the
topographical data obtained by the four lines, there was generally
found to be sufficient information to give a satisfactory though of
course a crude delineation of the included area.

After a number of rivers had been examined with more or less accuracy
in this way, it was finally decided that the area for one portion of
the grant best suited for the purposes of the Canal Company lay on the
right bank of the Tuyra river, and that the portion of the river which
lay between the mouths of two of its tributaries, the Rio Yape and the
Rio Pucro, should be one of the boundaries of the grant. The Yape and
Pucro have courses approximately parallel to each other and at right
angles to the Rio Tuyra, and these streams were also chosen as boundary
lines, so that the grant would have the three rivers as natural
boundaries, and the fourth and closing boundary was to be a straight
line from a certain point on the Yape to the Pucro, so located as to
include within the four boundaries an area approximately equal to the
amount of the grant, which in this particular case was 25,000 hectares.
The problem then presented was: given three rivers for three boundaries
of a figure to establish a fourth and artificial line, completing the
figure in such a way that it should contain a given area, and also to
procure data for a topographical map of the country surveyed.

This survey was put under my direction and I was instructed to proceed
to a point overlooking the Tuyra river, between the Rio Yape and the
Rio Pucro, near the mouth of the Rio Capite, for the purpose of
establishing a base camp. Leaving Real de St. Marie on the evening of
March 15th, with a fleet of twelve canoes and about thirty native
laborers, we reached the site for the camp in two days. After landing
everything, the work of clearing away trees and underbrush over an area
sufficiently large for the camp was commenced. The men worked willingly
with axe and machéte, and soon the forest receded and left bare a
semi-circular space facing the river.

Two houses were needed and without saw, nail or hammer the construction
was commenced and prosecuted rapidly. Straight trees about six inches
in diameter and twenty feet long were cut and planted vertically in
holes dug out with the machéte, and horizontal pieces of a smaller
diameter were securely fastened on with long tough strips of bark, and
thus a square or oblong frame was fashioned. The horizontal pieces were
placed at a distance of about three feet from the ground, on which a
flooring was eventually laid, and at the top of the frame where the
slope of the roof began. On the top pieces other poles were laid and
fastened across and lengthwise, and on these the men stood while making
the skeleton of the roof. The latter was made very steep for better
protection against the rain. After the ridge pole was put in position
other smaller poles were fastened on parallel and perpendicular to it
so that the whole roof was divided up into squares, and it was finally
completed by weaving in thick bunches of palm and other leaves in such
a way as to make it thoroughly water-proof. For our purpose no
protection on the sides of the structures other than the projecting
eaves was considered necessary. A floor of poles laid very close
together was put in one house, the one used for sleeping purposes, and
in the other a table for eating, writing, draughting, etc., was made.
Thus in two or three days the place was made thoroughly habitable, and
men were detailed to see that the grounds, etc., were always kept
thoroughly clean and in a good sanitary condition, a very necessary
precaution in a tropical country. The forest afforded game, the river
an abundance of fish; bananas, oranges, lemons and pineapples were
easily procured from the natives, who also furnished material for a
poultry yard, and thus while located at camp Capite, situated as it was
on a picturesque spot overlooking two swiftly flowing rivers, with good
drinking water, a commissary department well stocked, a French cook who
would have done himself credit anywhere, I could not but think that
heretofore pictures of life in Darien had been too somberly drawn, and
that where so much suffering and sickness had prevailed among the early
explorers it was because they had gone there not properly outfitted,
and because carried away with ambitious enthusiasm their adventurous
spirit had caused them often to undertake that which their calmer
judgment would not have dictated; and that to these causes as much as
to the unhealthy condition of the locality was due their many
hardships. Several days were spent here getting time and latitude
observations and in mapping out plans for the work. It was decided that
the mouths of the Yape, Capite and Pucro and other points along these
rivers, such as mouths of tributary streams, etc., should be
astronomically located, that these points should be connected by
compass lines, and also that cross lines should be run at various
points from the Yape to the Capite and from the Capite to the Pucro. It
was further decided that as time was limited it would be impracticable
to run out the fourth side of the figure that would contain the grant,
as the country around the headwaters of the streams was known to be
exceedingly rough and mountainous, and to follow any straight line
would necessarily involve a great amount of laborious cutting and
climbing.

Furthermore, in order to know just what direction this line should
follow it would be first necessary to make a connected preliminary
survey of the three rivers; to plot this survey and then by inspection
of the map and consideration of various starting points to decide on
the most available location of the fourth side.

Instead of this it was considered best and sufficient to arbitrarily
adopt a certain waterfall on the Rio Yape, the location of which was
approximately known from a reconnoisance previously made, as the
initial point of the line connecting the upper Yape with the Pucro and
closing the figure. Thus it only became necessary, as far as the
boundaries were concerned, to run a line along the Tuyra, joining the
mouths of the Yape and Pucro; to run a line from the mouth of the Yape
to the waterfall above referred to; and to run up the Pucro
sufficiently far to be certain that when the work was completed and
plotted, a line drawn from the position of the waterfall on the map in
such a way as to include the desired area would intersect the Pucro at
some point within the limit of what had been surveyed. I have not time
to go into the details of the various trips by land and water necessary
to carry out these plans.

Before starting it was known exactly what was necessary to be done;
each assistant engineer had his work clearly mapped out before him, and
each one faithfully performed the task allotted to him, so that the
whole survey was brought to a successful completion. This brought to a
close all the work in Darien, the other tracts having been surveyed
before my arrival and consequently the whole expedition returned to
Panama, and soon afterwards I returned to this country.

In going to and returning from Darien, I passed twice over the Panama
railroad and along the line of the Panama canal, and I have thought
that a few facts relative to the canal and railroad might prove of
interest to the Geographical Society.

Published herewith is a sketch showing the location of the railroad,
canal and tributary drainage, and a profile along the axis of the
canal.

[Illustration: SKETCH SHOWING LOCATION OF PANAMA RAIL ROAD, PANAMA
CANAL AND TRIBUTARY DRAINAGE. N. Peters, Photo-Lithographer,
Washington, D. C.]

[Illustration: PROFILE OF THE PANAMA CANAL. Black indicates work
executed; stipple, work to be executed to complete a lock-canal; white,
additional work to be executed to complete a sea-level canal.]

The first surveys for the railroad were made in 1849, and it was
probably the excitement of the California gold fever that brought about
its construction at this particular time. Ground was broken in January,
1850, and the last rail was laid in January, 1855.

The length of the road is 47.6 miles and it crosses the dividing summit
at an elevation of 263 feet above the mean level of the Atlantic ocean.
The maximum grade is 60 feet to the mile. Soon after the road was built
accurate levels were run to determine the difference, if any, between
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and it was found that the mean levels
were about the same, although there are of course variations owing to
local causes, and considerable differences of height at times, owing to
differences of tides in the Atlantic and Pacific. At Aspinwall the
greatest rise is only 1.6 feet, while at Panama there is at times a
difference of over 21 feet between high and low water. The cost of the
railroad was $75,000,000.

The existence of the railroad was probably the deciding cause that led
Lesseps to the adoption of this location of the proposed canal.

Now that the scheme has practically failed it is very easy to see and
appreciate the difficulties that lay in the way of building a canal at
this particular place; and it certainly seems that if sound engineering
principles had been adopted at least some of these difficulties could
have been understood and properly combatted. The whole scheme, however,
from an engineering standpoint, seems to have been conducted in the
most blundering manner.

Lesseps is a diplomat and financier, but in no sense a great engineer.
In the construction of the Suez canal, the questions of diplomacy and
finance were the most difficult to settle, while the engineering
problems were comparatively simple. In Panama the opposite conditions
prevailed. Concessions were freely given him by the Colombian
government and money freely offered him by the French people, but he
never grasped or comprehended the difficulties that nature had planted
in his way, and these only seemed to occur to him when they blocked
progress in a certain direction. The Paris Conference, controlled by
Lesseps, decided on the 29th of May, 1879, that the construction of an
interoceanic canal was possible and that it should be built from the
Gulf of Limon to the Bay of Panama.

The tide-level scheme was adopted and the following dimensions decided
upon, viz: Length, 45.5 miles; depth, 28 feet; width at water line 164
feet, and width at bottom 72 feet.

The route determined upon was about the same as that of the railroad,
that is along the valleys of the Chagres and Obispo, crossing the
divide at the Culebra pass and then descending to the Pacific along the
course of the Rio Grande. The profile which is reproduced from
"Science," shows the state of progress on January 1st, 1888, and the
amount of excavation that has been done since that time would make but
a slight difference in the appearance of the profile. The portion shown
in black is what has been removed along the axis of the canal and
represents an expenditure of over $385,000,000 and seven years' labor.
The reasons that make the scheme impracticable are briefly these, some
of which were known before the work was commenced, and all of which
should have been understood.

The first great difficulty is in cutting through the ridge culminating
at Culebra where the original surface was 354 feet above the bed of the
proposed canal. It was never known what the geological formation of
this ridge was until the different strata were laid bare by the
workman's pick, and the slope adopted, 1½ to 1, was found to be
insufficient in the less compact formations, even at the comparatively
shallow depth that was reached, and many and serious landslides were of
frequent occurrence.

Another serious difficulty was the disposition of the excavated
material, for upon the completion of a sea-level course this channel
would naturally drain all the country hitherto tributary to the Chagres
and Rio Grande, and any substance not removed to a great distance would
eventually be washed back again into the canal. But perhaps the
greatest difficulty was in the control of the immense surface drainage.
The Chagres river during the dry season is, where it crosses the line
of the canal near Gamboa, only about two feet deep and 250 feet wide,
but during a flood the depth becomes as much as forty feet, the width
1,500 feet, and the volume of water discharged 160,000 cubic feet per
second. The bed of the river is here 42 feet above sea level, or 70
feet above what the bottom of canal would have been. Now add to this a
40-foot flood and we have a water surface one hundred and ten feet
above the bed of the canal.

In order to keep this immense volume of water from the canal it was
proposed to build a large dam at Gamboa, and to convey the water by an
entirely different and artificial route to the Atlantic. It is
impossible to show on the map the whole drainage area of the Chagres,
but a rough calculation shows it to be about 500 square miles. This
seems a small total drainage area, but when it is considered that the
annual rainfall is about 12 FEET, that this rainfall is confined to
about one half the year, and that in six consecutive hours there has
been a precipitation of over six inches of rain, some idea of the
amount of water that finds its way through the Chagres river during the
wet season may be formed.

As I said before it was proposed to protect the canal from the waters
of the upper Chagres by an immense dam at Gamboa, and for the purpose
of controlling the water tributary to the lower Chagres two additional
canals or channels were to be constructed on either side of the main
canal. Thus, as the river is very tortuous and the axis of the canal
crossed it twenty-five or thirty times, many deviations of the former
became necessary. In some places the canal was to occupy the bed of the
river and in others it cut across bends leaving the river for its
original natural purpose of drainage. The difficulty in retaining the
floods in these constructed channels would of course be immense,
especially in some of the cases where the water rushing along its
natural channel is suddenly turned at right angles into an artificial
one. Thus it is clear that aside from the enormous expense incident to
the removal of the immense amount of earth and rock necessary to
complete the canal, that granting all this accomplished, it would be
practically impossible to maintain a sea-level canal by reason of the
difficulty in controlling the Chagres and preventing the canal from
filling up.

The canal company finally came to the conclusion that the sea-level
scheme was impracticable and it was abandoned, and plans were prepared
for a lock system. As seen on the profile there were ten locks
proposed, five on each side of the summit level. The summit level was
to be 150 feet above sea level and consequently each lock would have a
lift of thirty feet. The profile was constructed especially to show the
amount remaining to be executed to complete the lock system, and a mere
inspection will show the relative amount of completed and uncompleted
area along the axis of the canal. To complete the summit cut it is
still necessary to excavate 111 feet, 93 feet having already been
excavated, through a horizontal distance of 3300 feet. The width of cut
at top surface for the required depth at a slope of 1½ to 1 would be
750 feet, but as I said before, at this slope landslides were of
frequent occurrence and the slope would probably have to be increased
to at least 2 to 1.

Granting the necessary excavations made, there would be still the
problem of the control of the Chagres river and the water supply for
the summit level to provide for. At first it was thought that the water
supply could be obtained from the storage of the waters of the Chagres
and Obispo, but this idea was eventually abandoned, either from a
belief in the insufficiency of the water supply during the dry season,
or from difficulties in the way of conveying the water to the summit
level.

Then it was that the advice of Mr. Eiffel, a noted French engineer, was
sought, and after a visit to the Isthmus he proposed that the summit
level should be supplied by pumping from the Pacific. A contract was
immediately made with Eiffel, who was heralded all over the world as
the man who would save the canal, and immediately a positive day, the
seventh that had been announced, was fixed for the opening of the great
canal.

I do not know just how much work was done towards perfecting the system
for pumping, but probably very little was ever accomplished in this
direction, as soon after this scheme was thought of the available funds
of the canal company began to be very scarce, and there has been since
then a general collapse of work all along the line until now it is
entirely suspended. From what I have said and from what can be seen
from the profile, it will be readily understood that as far as the
sea-level project is concerned the amount done is not much more than a
scraping of the surface, relatively speaking, and that what has been
done is in places where the obstacles were fewest.

In regard to the lock canal about one third of the necessary excavation
has been made along the axis of the canal, but taking into
consideration other requirements necessary for the completion of the
scheme, I should estimate, roughly, that probably only one sixth of the
whole amount of work had been accomplished. The question now naturally
arises as to what will be the probable future of this great enterprise.

The French people have seen the scheme fail under Lesseps in whom they
had the most unbounded confidence, and it is not likely that they will
raise any more money to be put in it as a business enterprise under any
other management. Saddled as it is with a debt of nearly four hundred
millions of dollars, it would be difficult to convince any one that it
could ever prove to be a paying investment. Nor do I think that any
American or English corporation can be organized that could obtain such
concessions from Lesseps as would make the scheme an inviting field for
capitalists, and thus my opinion is that the _"Compagnie Universelle du
Canal Interocéanique de Panama"_ has irretrievably collapsed, and that
the canal will remain, as it is now, the most gigantic failure of the
age.




ACROSS NICARAGUA WITH TRANSIT AND MACHÉTE.

BY R. E. PEARY.


The action of this National Society, with its array of distinguished
members, in turning its attention for an hour to a region which has
interested the thinking world for more than three centuries gives me
peculiar pleasure and satisfaction.

I propose this evening to touch lightly and briefly upon the natural
features of Nicaragua, to note the reasons for the interest which has
always centered upon her, to trace the growth of the great project with
which her name is inseparably linked; to show you somewhat in detail,
the life, work, and surroundings of an engineer within her borders; and
finally to show you the result that is to crown the engineer's work in
her wide spreading forests and fertile valleys.

That portion of Central America now included within the boundaries of
our sister republic Nicaragua, has almost from the moment that European
eyes looked upon it attracted and charmed the attention of explorers,
geographers, great rulers, students, and men of sagacious and far
reaching intellect.

From Gomara the long list of famous names which have linked themselves
with Nicaragua reaches down through Humboldt, Napoleon III., Ammen,
Lull, Menocal and Taylor.

The shores were first seen by Europeans in 1502, when Columbus in his
fourth voyage rounded the cape which forms the northeast angle of the
state, and called it "Gracias á Dios," which name it bears to-day.
Columbus then coasted southward along the eastern shore.

In 1522, Avila, penetrated from the Pacific coast of the country to the
lakes and the cities of the Indian inhabitants. Previous to this the
country was occupied by a numerous population of Aztecs, or nearly
allied people, as the quantities of specimens of pottery, gold images,
and other articles found upon the islands and along the shores of the
lakes, prove conclusively.

In 1529 the connection of the lakes with the Caribbean sea was
discovered, and during the last half of the eighteenth century a
considerable commerce was carried on by this route between Granada on
Lake Nicaragua and the cities of Nombre de Dios, Cartagena, Havana and
Cadiz.

In 1821 Nicaragua threw off the rule of the mother country and in 1823
formed with her sister Spanish colonies, a confederation. This
confederation was dissolved in 1838, and since then Nicaragua has
conducted her own affairs. In point of advancement, financial solidity
and stability of government she stands to-day nearly, if not quite, at
the head of the Central American republics.

Nicaragua extends over a little more than four degrees each of latitude
and longitude, from about N. 11° to N. 15° and from 83° 20' W. to 87°
40' W.

Its longest side is the northern border from the Gulf of Fonseca
northeasterly to Cape Gracias á Dios, two hundred and ninety miles.
From that cape south to the mouth of the Rio San Juan, the Caribbean
coast line, is two hundred and fifty miles. Nearly due west across the
Isthmus to Salinas Bay on the Pacific, is one hundred and twenty miles.
The Pacific coast line extends thence northwest one hundred and sixty
miles.

In point of size Nicaragua stands first among the Central American
republics having an area of 51,600 square miles. It is larger than
either the State of New York or Pennsylvania, about the size of
Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined, and is
one-fourth as large as France or Germany. Its population numbers about
300,000.

The Gulf of Fonseca, at the northern, and Salinas Bay at the southern
extremity of the coast line are two of the finest and largest harbors
on the Pacific coast of Central America. About midway between them is
the fine harbor of Corinto, and there are also several other ports
along the coast, at San Juan del Sur, Brito and Tamarindito. On the
Caribbean coast no harbors suitable for large vessels exist, but
numerous lagoons and bights afford the best of shelter for coasting
vessels.

The central portion of Nicaragua is traversed, from north to south, by
the main _cordillera_ of the isthmus, which, here greatly reduced in
altitude, consists merely of a confused mass of peaks and ridges with
an average elevation scarcely exceeding 1,000 feet.

Between this mountainous region and the Caribbean shore stretches a low
level country, covered with a dense forest, rich in rubber, cedar,
mahogany and dye woods. It is drained by several large rivers whose
fertile intervales will yield almost incredible harvests of plantains,
bananas, oranges, limes, and other tropical fruits.

West of the mountain zone is a broad valley, about one hundred and
twenty-five feet above the level of the sea, extending from the Gulf of
Fonseca, southeasterly to the frontier of Costa Rica. The greater
portion of this valley is occupied by two lakes, Managua and Nicaragua.
The latter one hundred and ten miles long by fifty or sixty miles wide
is really an inland sea, being one-half as large as Lake Ontario and
twice as large as Long Island Sound. These lakes, with the rainfall of
the adjacent valleys, drain through the noble San Juan river, which
discharges into the Caribbean at Greytown, at the southeast angle of
the country.

Between the Pacific and these lakes is a narrow strip of land, from
twelve to thirty miles in width, stretching from the magnificent plain
of Leon with its cathedral city, in the north, to the rolling indigo
fields and the cacao plantations which surround the garden city of
Rivas, in the south.

[Illustration: LEON CATHEDRAL. _Julius Bien & Co._]

The lowest pass across the backbone of the New World, from Behring's
Strait to the Straits of Magellan, extends along the San Juan valley
and across the Lajas--Rio Grande "divide," between Lake Nicaragua and
the Pacific; the summit of this divide is only one hundred and
fifty-two feet above the sea and forty-two feet above the lake.

Nicaragua presents yet another unique physical feature. Lying between
the elevated mountain masses of Costa Rica on the south and Honduras on
the north, the average elevation of its own mountain backbone hardly
one thousand feet, it is the natural thoroughfare of the beneficent
northeast Trades. These winds sweep in from the Caribbean across the
Atlantic slopes, break the surface of the lakes into sparkling waves,
and then disappear over the Pacific, aerating, cooling and purifying
the country, destroying the germs of disease and making Nicaragua the
healthiest region in Central America.

The scenery of the eastern portion of the country is of the luxuriant
sameness peculiar to all tropical countries.

In the vicinity of the lakes and between them and the Pacific, the
isolated mountain peaks which bound the plain of Leon on the northeast;
the mountain islands of Madera and Ometepe; the towering turquoise
masses of the Costa Rican volcanoes; and the distant blue mountains of
Segovia and Matagalpa, visible beyond the sparkling waters of the
lakes, feast the eye with scenic beauties, unsurpassed elsewhere in
grandeur, variety and richness of coloring.

The products of the country are numerous despite the fact that its
resources are as yet almost entirely undeveloped.

Maize, plantains, bananas, oranges, limes, and indeed every tropical
fruit, thrive in abundance. Coffee is grown in large quantities in the
hilly region in the northwest; sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo and
cacao plantations abound between the lakes and the Pacific; potatoes
and wheat thrive in the uplands of Segovia; the Chontales region east
of Lake Nicaragua, a great grazing section, supports thousands of head
of cattle; and back of this are the gold and silver districts of La
Libertad, Javali and others.

Numerous trees and plants of medicinal and commercial value are found
in the forests. Game is plentiful and of numerous varieties; deer, wild
hog, wild turkey, manatee and tapir; and fish abound in the streams and
rivers. The temperature of Nicaragua is equable. The extreme variation,
recorded by Childs, was 23° observed near the head of the San Juan in
May, 1851.

The southeast wind predominates during the rainy season. Occasionally,
in June or October as a rule, the wind hauls round to southwest and a
_temporal_ results, heavy rain sometimes falling for a week or ten
days.

The equatorial cloud-belt, following the sun north in the spring, is
late reaching Nicaragua, and the wet season is shorter than in regions
farther south. The average rainfall, based on the records of nine
years, is 64.42 inches. The "trades" blow almost throughout the year.
Strong during the dry season and freshening during the day; the wind
comes from the east-northeast, and blows usually for four to five days,
when, hauling to the east or southeast for a day or two, it calms down,
then goes back to northeast and rises again.

The Spanish discoverers of the great Lake Nicaragua, coming upon it
from the Pacific, and noting the fluctuations of level caused by the
action of the wind upon its broad surface, mistook these fluctuations
for tides and felt assured that some broad strait connected it with the
North Sea. Later, when Machuca had discovered the grand river outlet of
the lake, and the restless searching of other explorers in every bay
and inlet along both sides of the American isthmus had extinguished
forever the ignis fatuus "Secret of the Strait," Gomara pointed this
out as one of the most favorable localities for an artificial
communication between the North and South Seas.

[Illustration: THE NICARAGUA CANAL. _Julius Bien & Co._]

It was not until 1851, however, that an accurate and scientific survey
of a ship canal route was made by Col. O. W. Childs.

This survey which showed the lake of Nicaragua to be only one hundred
and seven feet above the sea, and the maximum elevation between the
lake and the Pacific to be only forty-one feet, exhibited the
advantages of this route so clearly and in such an unanswerable manner
that it has never since been possible to ignore it.

In 1870, under the administration of General Grant and largely through
the unceasing efforts of Admiral Ammen, the United States began a
series of systematic surveys of all the routes across the American
isthmus from Tehuantepec to the head waters of the Rio Atrato; and six
years later, with the plans and results of all these surveys before it,
a commission composed of General Humphreys, Chief of Engineers, U. S.
Army; Hon. Carlile Patterson, Superintendent U. S. Coast Survey; and
Rear-Admiral Daniel Ammen, Chief of Bureau of Navigation, U. S. Navy;
gave its verdict in favor of the Nicaragua route.

The International Canal Congress at Paris, in 1879, had such convincing
information placed before it that it was forced, in spite of its
prejudices, to admit that in the advantages it offered for the
construction of a lock canal, the Nicaragua route was superior to any
other across the American isthmus.

In 1876, and again in 1880 Civil Engineer A. G. Menocal, U. S. N., the
chief engineer of previous governmental surveys, resurveyed and revised
portions of the route, and in 1885 the same engineer, assisted by
myself, surveyed an entirely new line on the Caribbean side, from
Greytown to the San Juan river, near the mouth of the San Carlos.

On the eastern side of Nicaragua, all these surveys (except the last),
were confined almost entirely to the San Juan river, and its immediate
banks; and the country on either side beyond these narrow limits was,
up to 1885, almost entirely unknown. Between Lake Nicaragua and the
Pacific, however, every pass from the Bay of Salinas to the Gulf of
Fonseca had been examined.

In 1885 the party of which I was a member pushed a nearly direct line
across the country from a point on the San Juan, about three miles
below the mouth of the Rio San Carlos, to Greytown, a distance of
thirty-one miles by our line, as compared with fifty-six miles by the
river and forty-two miles by the former proposed canal route.

In December, 1887, I went out in charge of a final surveying
expedition, consisting of some forty engineers and assistants and one
hundred and fifty laborers, to resurvey and stake out the line of the
canal preparatory to the work of construction.

The information and personal experience gained in previous surveys made
it possible, without loss of time, to locate the various sections of
the expedition in the most advantageous manner, and push the work with
the greatest speed consistent with accuracy.

The location lines of the previous surveys were taken as a preliminary
line and carefully re-measured and re-levelled. Preliminary offsets
were run; the location made, and staked off upon the ground; offsets
run in from three hundred to one hundred feet apart, extending beyond
the slope limits of the canal; borings made at frequent intervals; and
all streams gauged.

The result of this work was a series of detail charts and profiles,
based upon rigidly checked instrumental data, and covering the entire
line from Greytown to Brito, from which to estimate quantities and
cost.

As may be imagined by those familiar with tropical countries, the
prosecution of a survey in these regions is an arduous and difficult
work, and one demanding special qualifications in the engineer. His
days are filled with a succession of surprises, usually disagreeable,
and constant happenings of the unexpected. Probably in no other country
will the traveler, explorer, or engineer, find such an endless variety
of obstacles to his progress.

Every topographical feature of the country is shrouded and hidden under
a tropical growth of huge trees and tangled underbrush, so dense that
it is impossible for even a strong, active man, burdened with nothing
but a rifle, to force himself through it without a short, heavy sword
or _machéte_, with which to cut his way.

Under these circumstances the most observant engineer and expert
woodsman may pass within a hundred feet of the base of a considerable
hill and not have a suspicion of its existence, or he may be entirely
unaware of the proximity of a stream until he is on the point of
stepping over the edge of its precipitous banks.

The topography of the country has to be laboriously felt out, much as a
blind man familiarizes himself with his surroundings. In doing this
work the indispensable instrument, without which the transit, the
level, and indeed the engineer himself is of no use, is the national
weapon of Nicaragua, the _machéte_, a short, heavy sword.

As soon as he is able to walk, the son of the Nicaraguan _mozo_ or
_huléro_ takes as a plaything a piece of iron hoop or an old knife, and
imitates his father with his _machéte_. As he gets older a broken or
worn-down weapon is given him, and when he is able to handle it, a full
size _machéte_ is entrusted to him and he then considers himself a man.
From that day on, waking or sleeping, our Nicaraguan's _machéte_ is
always at his side. With it he cuts his way through the woods; with it
he builds his camp and his bed; with it he kills his game and fish;
with it at a pinch he shaves himself, or extracts the thorns from his
feet; with it he fights his duels, and with it, when he dies, his
comrades dig his grave.

When in the field the chief of a party, equipped with a pocket compass
and an aneroid barometer, is always skirmishing ahead of the line with
a _machétero_, or axeman, to cut a path for him. A pushing chief,
however, speedily dispenses with the _machétero_ and slashes a way for
himself much more rapidly.

As soon as he decides where the line is to go the engineer calls to the
_machéteros_ and the two best ones immediately begin cutting toward the
sound of his voice. They soon slash a narrow path to him, drive a stake
where he was standing and then turn back toward the other _machéteros_,
who have been following them, cutting a wider path and clearing away
all trees, vines and branches, so that the transit man can see the flag
at the stake. The moment the leading _machéteros_ reach him the chief
starts off again and by the time the main body of axemen have reached
his former position the head _machéteros_ are cutting toward the sound
of his voice in a new position.

As soon as the line is cleared the transit man takes his sight and
moves ahead to the stake, the chainmen follow and drive stakes every
hundred feet, and the leveller follows putting in elevations and cross
sections. In this way the work goes on from early morning until nearly
dark, stopping about an hour for lunch.

After the day's work comes the dinner, the table graced with wild hog,
or turkey, or venison, or all. After dinner the smoke, then the day's
notes are worked up and duplicated and all hands get into their nets.
For a moment the countless nocturnal noises of the great forest,
enlivened perhaps by the scream of a tiger, or the deep, muffled roar
of a puma, fall upon drowsy ears, then follows the sleep that always
accompanies hard work and good health, till the bull-voiced howling
monkeys set the forest echoing with their announcement of the breaking
dawn.

In reconnoissance and preliminary work the experienced engineer, is
able, in many cases, to avoid obstacles without vitiating the results
of his work, but in the final location, in staking out absolute curves
and driving tangents thousands of feet long across country, no dodging
is possible.

On the hills and elevated ground the engineer can, comparatively
speaking, get along quite comfortably, his principal annoyances being
the uneven character of the ground, which compels him to set his
instrument very frequently, and the necessity of felling some gigantic
tree every now and then.

In the valleys and lowlands there is an unceasing round of obstacles.
The line may run for some distance over level ground covered with a
comparatively open growth, then without warning it encounters the wreck
of a fallen tree, and hours are consumed hewing a passage through the
mass of broken limbs and shattered trunk, all matted and bound together
with vines and shrubbery. A little farther on a stream is crossed, and
the line may cross and recross four or five times in the next thousand
feet. The engineer must either climb down the steep banks, for the
streams burrow deep in the stiff clay of these valleys, ford the stream
and climb the opposite bank, or he must fall a tree from bank to bank
and cross on its slippery trunk twenty or twenty-five feet above the
water.

Either on the immediate bank or in its vicinity is almost certain to be
encountered a _"saccate"_ clearing. This may be only one or two hundred
feet across or it may be a half a mile. In the former case the
_"saccate"_ grass will be ten or fifteen feet in height and so matted
and interwoven with vines and briars that a tunnel may be cut through
it as through a hedge. If the clearing be large, the tough, wiry grass
is no higher than a man's head, and a path has to be mowed through it,
while the sun beats down into the furnace-like enclosure till the blade
of the _machéte_ becomes almost too hot to touch.

But worse than anything thus far mentioned are the _Silico_ or black
palm swamps. Some of these in the larger valleys and near the coast are
miles in extent.

Occupied exclusively by the low, thick _Silico_ palms, these swamps are
in the wet season absolutely impassable except for monkeys and
alligators, and even at the end of the dry season the engineer enters
upon one with sinking heart as well as feet, and emerges from it tired
and used up in every portion of his anatomy. It is with the utmost
difficulty that he finds a practicable place to locate his instrument,
generally utilizing the little hummocks formed by the trunks of the
clusters of palms, and in moving from point to point he is compelled to
wade from knee to shoulder deep in the black mud and water.

General reconnaissances from high trees in elevated localities, simple
enough in theory, are by no means easy in a country so miserly with its
secrets as this, nor are their results reliable without a great
expenditure of time, labor, and patience.

On level, undulating and moderately broken ground, the tops of the
trees, though they may be one hundred and fifty feet from the ground,
are level as the top of a hedge. Even an isolated hill if it be rounded
in shape presents hardly better facilities, the trees at the base and
on the sides, in their effort to reach the sunlight grow taller than
those on the summit, and there is no one tree that commands all the
others.

If however an isolated hill of several hundred feet in height be found,
its steep sides culminating in a sharp peak, one day's work by three or
four good axmen, in cutting neighboring trees, will prepare the way for
a study of the general relief and topography of the adjacent country.
If after these preliminaries have been completed the engineer imagines
that he has only to climb the tree and sketch what he sees, to obtain
reliable knowledge of the country, he is doomed to serious surprises in
the future. If he makes the ascent during the middle of the day, he
will, after he has cooled off and rested from his exhausting efforts,
see spread out before him a shimmering landscape in which the uniform
green carpet and the vertical sun combined, have obliterated all
outlines except the more prominent irregularities of the terrene, and
have blended different mountain ranges, one of which may be several
miles beyond the other, into one, of which only the sky profile is
distinct. Naturally under these conditions estimates of distance may be
half or double the truth.

There are two ways of extracting reliable information from these
tree-top reconnaissances. If it be in the rainy season the observer
must be prepared to make a day of it, and when he ascends the tree in
the morning he takes with him a long light line with which to pull up
his coffee and lunch.

Then aided by the successive showers which sweep across the landscape,
leaving fragments of mists in the ravines, and hanging grey screens
between the different ranges and mountains, bringing out the relief
first of this and then of that section, an accurate sketch may
gradually be made. The time of passage of a shower from one peak to
another, or to the observer, may also be utilized as a by no means to
be despised check upon distance estimates.

If it be the dry season, the observer may take his choice between
remaining on his perch in the tree from before sunrise to after sunset,
or making two ascents, one early in the morning and the other late in
the afternoon. In this case the slowly dispersing clouds of morning,
and the gradually gathering mists at sunset, together with the reversed
lights and shadows at dawn and sunset, bring out very clearly the
relief of the terrene, the overlapping of distant ranges, and the
course of the larger streams.

This kind of work cannot be delegated to anyone, and besides the
arduous labor involved in climbing the huge trees, there are other
serious annoyances connected with it. The climber is almost certain to
disturb some venomous insect which revenges itself by a savage sting
which has to be endured; or he may rend clothes and skin also, on some
thorny vine, or another, crushed by his efforts, may exude a juice
which will leave him tattooed for days; then, though there may not be a
mosquito or fly at the base of the tree, the top will be infested with
myriads of minute black flies, which cover hands and face, and with
extremely annoying results. On the other hand the explorer may as a
compensation have his nostrils filled with the perfume of some
brilliant orchid on a neighboring branch; and there is a breezy
enjoyment in watching the showers as they rush across the green carpet,
and in listening to the roar with which the big drops beat upon the
tree tops.

The special phase of field work which fell to my personal lot was
entirely reconnaissance, consisting of canoe examinations of all
streams in the vicinity of the line of the canal, to determine their
sources, character of valley, and approximate water shed; of rapid
air-line compass and aneroid trails, to connect one stream, or valley
head with another, or furnish a base line for a general sketch plan of
a valley; and of studies of the larger features of the terrene, from
elevated tree tops.

The last has been already described; in the second the experience was
very similar to that of the parties in running main lines. On these
occasions three or at most four hardy _huléros_ (rubber hunters)
comprised the party, two carrying the blankets, mosquito bars and
provisions for several days, and one or two cutting the lightest
possible practicable trail and marking prominent trees.

In a day's march of from five to eight miles, and this was the utmost
that even such a light, active and experienced party could cover in one
day, every possible and some almost impossible kinds of traveling was
encountered, and thoroughly exhausted men crept into their bars every
night.

The canoe reconnaissances were more agreeable, though some most
unpleasant as well as most enjoyable memories are connected with them.

The innumerable large fallen trees which obstruct the streams and over
or through which the canoe must be hauled bodily, the almost inevitable
capsizing of the canoe, the monotonous red clay banks on either side
and the frequent necessity of lying down at night in a bed of mud into
which the droves of wild pigs which inhabit these valleys have trampled
the clayey soil, are among the disagreeable incidents.

From the head of canoe navigation to their sources the character of
these streams is entirely different, and both in 1888 and in 1885 I
have followed them far up into mountain gorges, the beauty of which is
as fresh in my memory as if I had been there but yesterday.

The crew of the canoe on these reconnaissances usually consisted of
three picked men, and when the canoe had been pushed as far up stream
as it was possible for it to go, two of the men were left with it while
the third and best, slinging the blankets, bars, and a little coffee,
sugar, and milk, upon his back pushed on with me. Wading through the
shallow water up the bed of the stream, taking bearings and estimating
distances, while my _huléro_ followed, ever alert to strike some drowsy
beauty of a fish in the clear water; the source of the stream was
generally reached in a day, and never did we make preparations to sleep
on some bed of clean, yellow sand washed down by the stream in flood
times, but what I had a plump turkey hanging from my belt, and my
_huléro_ several fine fish.

Much has been written about the climate of Nicaragua and its effect
upon the inhabitants of more northerly countries when exposed to it.

It would seem that the experience of the numerous expeditions sent out
by the United States, and the reports of the surgeons attached to those
expeditions would have long since settled the matter. To those who
cannot understand how there can be such a difference in climate between
two localities so slightly removed as Panama and Nicaragua, and the
former possessing a notoriously deadly climate, the experience of the
recent surveying expedition must be conclusive.

Only five members of that expedition had ever been in tropical climates
before, and the rodmen and chainmen of the party were young men just
out of college who had never done a day's manual labor, nor slept on
the ground a night in their lives. Arriving at Greytown during the
rainy season, the first work that they encountered was the transporting
of their supplies and camp equipage to the sites of the various camps.
This had to be done by means of canoes along streams obstructed with
logs and fallen trees. Some parties were a week in reaching their
destination, wading and swimming by day, lifting and pushing their
canoes along, and at night lying down on the ground to sleep.

One party worked for six months in the swamps and lagoon region
directly back of Greytown, and several other parties worked for an
equal length of time in the equally disagreeable swamps of the valley
of the San Francisco. Several of these officers are down there yet, as
fresh as ever. In making tours of inspection of the different sections
I have repeatedly, for several days and nights in succession, passed
the days traveling in the woods through swamps and rain, and the nights
sleeping as best I could, curled up under a blanket in a small canoe,
while my men paddled from one camp to the next.

In spite of all this exposure not only were there no deaths in the
expedition but there was not a single case of serious illness, and the
officers who have returned up to this time, were in better health and
weight than when they went away.

Of course the men had the best of food that money could obtain and
previous experience suggest, and the chiefs of all parties were
required to strictly enforce certain sanitary regulations in regard to
coffee in the morning, a thorough bath and dose of spirits on returning
from work, and mosquito bars and dry sleeping suits at night; yet the
climate must be held principally responsible for a sanitary result
which I believe could not be excelled in any temperate zone city, with
the same number of men, doing the same arduous work under conditions of
equal exposure.

The forests everywhere abound in game and every party which included in
its personnel a good rifle-shot was sure of a constant supply of wild
pig, turkey, quail and grouse, varied by an occasional deer, all
obtained in the ordinary work of reconnoissance and surveying. For the
men's table there was abundance of monkey, iguana and macaw.

Parties in the lower valleys of the various streams had no trouble in
adding two or three varieties of very toothsome fish to their bill of
fare, though these fish were rarely caught with the hook, but usually
shot, or knifed by an alert native, as they basked in the shallows.
These parties also obtained occasionally a _danta_ (tapir) or a
manatee.

On the river it was possible to obtain a fine string of fish with hook
and line, then there was the huge tarpon to be had for the spearing,
and fish pots sunk in suitable places were sure to yield a mess of
fresh water lobsters. Ducks were also occasionally shot.

The forms of life are even more numerous in the vegetable than in the
animal kingdom. The effect of these wonderful forests is indescribable,
and though many writers have essayed a description, I have yet to see
one that does the subject justice. Only a simple enumeration of
component parts will be attempted here. First comes the grand body of
the forest, huge almendro, havilan, guachipilin, cortez, cedar,
cottonwood, palo de leche trees, and others rising one hundred and
fifty or two hundred feet into the scintillant sunshine. The entire
foliage of these trees is at the top and their great trunks reaching up
for a hundred feet or more without a branch offer a wonderful variety
of studies in types of column. Some rise straight and smooth, and true,
others send out thin deep buttresses, and others look like the
muscle-knotted fore-arm of a Titan, with gnarled fingers griping the
ground in their wide grasp.

But whatever the form of the tree trunks may be, the shallow soil upon
the hills and the marshy soil in the lowlands, has taught them that
there is greater safety and stability in a broad foundation than in a
deeply penetrating one, and so almost without exception the tree roots
spread out widely, on, or near, the surface. Beneath the protecting
shelter of these patriarchs, as completely protected from scorching sun
and rushing wind as if in a conservatory, grow innumerable varieties of
palms, young trees destined some day to be giants themselves, and
others which never attain great size. Still lower down, luxuriate
smaller palms, tree ferns, and dense underbrush, and countless vines.
These latter, however, are by no means confined to the underbrush, many
of them climb to the very tops of the tallest trees, cling about their
trunks and bind them to other trees and to the ground with the toughest
of ropes. With one or two exceptions these vines are an unmitigated
nuisance. To them more than to anything else is due the
impenetrableness of the tropical thicket. Of all sizes and all as tough
as hemp lines, they creep along the ground, catching the traveler's
feet in a mesh from which release is possible only by cutting. They
bind the underbrush together in a tough, elastic mat, which catches and
holds on to every projection about the clothes, jerking revolvers from
belts, and wrenching the rifle from the hand, or, hanging in trap-like
loops from the trees, catch one about the neck, or constantly drag
one's hat from the head. The one exception noted above is the _bejuco
de agua_ or water vine. This vine, which looks like an old worn manilla
rope, is to be found hanging from or twined about almost every large
tree upon elevated ground, and to the hot and thirsty explorer it
furnishes a most deliciously cool and clear draught.

Seizing the vine in the left hand, a stroke of the _machéte_ severs it
a foot or two below the hand, and another quick stroke severs it again
above the hand; immediately a stream of clear, tasteless water issues
from the lower end and may be caught in a dipper or _á la native_
directly in the mouth. A three-foot length of vine two inches in
diameter will furnish at least a pint of water. The order of cutting
mentioned above must invariably be adhered to, otherwise, if the upper
cut be made first, the thirsty novice will find he has in his hand only
a piece of dry cork-like rope.

It is practically impossible to judge of the age of the huge trees in
these forests. Mighty with inherent strength, stayed to the ground and
to their fellows by the numerous vines, sheltered and protected also by
their fellows from the shock of storms, their huge trunks have little
to do except support the direct weight of the tops, and they rarely
fall until they have reached the last stages of decay. Then some day
the sudden impact of a ton or two of water dropped from some furious
tropical shower, or the vibrations from a hurrying troop of monkeys, or
the spring of a tiger, is too much for one of the giant branches heavy
with its load of vines and parasites, and it gives way, breaking the
vines in every direction and splitting a huge strip from the main
trunk. With its supports thus broken and the whole weight of the
remaining branches on one side, the weakened trunk sways for a moment
then bows to its fate. The remaining vines break with the resistless
strain, and the old giant gathering velocity as he falls and dragging
with him everything in his reach, crashes to the earth with a roar
which elicits cries of terror from bird and beast, and goes booming
through the quivering forest like the report of a heavy cannon. A patch
of blue sky overhead and a pile of impenetrable debris below, mark for
years the grave of the old hero.

As regards the insect and reptile pests of the country it has been my
experience that both their numbers and capacity for torment have been
greatly exaggerated. Mosquitoes, flies of various sizes, wasps and
stinging ants exist, and the first in some places in large numbers; yet
to a person who has any of the woodsman's craft of taking care of
himself, and whose blood is not abnormally sensitive to insect poisons,
they present no terrors and but slight annoyances. At our headquarters
camp on San Francisco island, we had no mosquitoes from sunrise to
sunset, and even after sunset they were not especially numerous. At
another camp only a few miles away there were black flies only and no
mosquitoes, at another both, while at the camps up in the hills there
were neither. It was only at camps in the wet lowlands and near swamps,
that they became an almost unendurable annoyance. Even here it was
those who remained in camp that suffered most. Men out in the thick
brush were but little annoyed by them, and when on their return to camp
they had finished their dinner and gotten into their mosquito bars they
were out of their reach. As to snakes, the danger from them even to a
European, is practically nothing. Not a man of the several hundred that
have been engaged in the various expeditions in that country has ever
been bitten, and in hundreds of miles of tramping through the worst
forests of the country, either entirely alone or if accompanied by
natives, with them some distance in the rear, I have never fancied
myself in danger. The poisonous snakes are invariably sluggish, and
unless actually struck or stepped upon are apt to try to get out of the
way, if they make any move. The only snake that is at all aggressive,
as far as my observations go, is a long, black, non-poisonous snake.
This will sometimes advance upon the intruder with head raised a couple
of feet from the ground, or if coiled about a tree will lash at him
with its tail.

The floral exhibit of these forests is apt to be disappointing to one
whose ideas have been formed by a perusal of books. An occasional
scarlet passion flower; now and then the fragrant cluster of the _flor
del toro_; a few insignificant though fragrant flowering shrubs; and in
muddy sloughs near the streams, patches of wild callas; are about all
that meet the eye of the non-botanical wanderer in the deep forest.

There is not light enough for flowers beneath the dense canopy of
trees, and they, like the smaller birds, seek the tree tops and the
banks of the river where sunlight and air are abundant. In the tree
tops the orchids and other flowering parasites run riot. Many of the
trees are themselves flowering, and if one can look down upon the tree
tops of a valley in March or April, he sees the green expanse enlivened
by blazing patches of crimson, yellow, purple, pink, and white.

The river banks are the favorite home of the flowering vines, and there
they form great curtains swaying from the trees in bright patterns of
yellow, pink, red and white. The grassy banks and islands, and the
shallow sand spits also bring forth innumerable varieties of aquatic
plants.

So much for the Atlantic slope of the country.

On the west side between the Lake and the Pacific the work is very
different. There it is possible to ride mule-back to the top of a
commanding hill, sit down and make the reconnaissance sketch at
leisure. The secondary reconnaissances may also be made mule-back, and
everywhere the rolling country and the cleared and cultivated fields,
permit the engineer to see where he is going and how he is going.

His surroundings are also different. He moves camp in an oxcart instead
of a canoe. His eyes instead of being confined by the impenetrable veil
of the tropical thicket, feast upon views of the distant mountains, the
crisp waves of the Lake, and the blue expanse of the Pacific. During
the day he meets black-eyed and brown-limbed señoritas, instead of wild
hogs and turkeys, and at night as he turns in, he hears, not the scream
of tigers, but the songs of the _lavandera's_ ecru daughters floating
across the stream which supplies their wash-tubs and his camp.

The first grand natural feature which arrests attention in the most
cursory examination of the map of Nicaragua is the Great Lake. This
lake with an area of some three thousand square miles and a water-shed
of about eight thousand square miles, is unique in the large proportion
of its own area to that of its water-shed. A result of this large
proportion of water surface to drainage area, at once evident, is the
very gradual changes of level of the lake and their confinement within
very narrow limits. The difference between the level of the lake at the
close of an abnormally dry season and its level at the close of an
abnormally wet season is not more than ten feet, and the usual annual
fluctuation is about five feet.

The next features that arrest attention are, first, the very narrow
ribbon of land intervening between the western shore of the Lake and
the Pacific, and second, the entire absence of lateral tributaries of
any size to the upper half of the San Juan River. The river is in fact,
as it was originally most aptly named, simply the "Desaguadero" or
drain of the Lake.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO HIGHLANDS--RIVER SAN JUAN. _Julius Bien &
Co._]

The length of this river is one hundred and twenty miles, from the Lake
to the Caribbean Sea, and its total fall from one hundred to one
hundred and ten feet. Nature has separated the river into two nearly
equal divisions, presenting distinct and opposite characteristics.

From Lake Nicaragua to the mouth of the Rio San Carlos, a distance of
sixty-one miles, in which occur several rapids, the total descent is
fifty feet, quite irregularly distributed however. The surface slopes
of the river vary from as much as 83.38 inches per mile for a short
distance at Castillo rapids, to only .90 inch per mile through the Agua
Muerte, the dead water below the Machuca rapids.

The average width of the river through this upper section is seven
hundred feet, the minimum four hundred and twenty. In some parts of the
Agua Muerte the depth varies from fifty to seventy-five feet.

There are very few islands in this section of the river, the banks are
covered with huge trees matted with vines, and throughout the lower
half of the division, from Toro rapids to the mouth of the San Carlos,
the river is confined between steep hills and mountains.

[Illustration: UPPER CASTILLO--RIVER SAN JUAN. _Julius Bien & Co._]

As a result of the absence of considerable tributaries already noted,
the fluctuations of this portion of the river conform closely to those
of the Lake, and consequently take place gradually and are limited in
range.

Below the Rio San Carlos the San Juan changes its character entirely.
Its average width is twelve hundred and fifty feet, its bottom is
sandy, there are numerous islands, and the slope of the river is almost
uniformly one foot per mile.

The discharge into this section of two large tributaries, the San
Carlos and the Sarapiqui, descending from the steep slopes of the Costa
Rican volcanoes, causes much more sudden and considerable fluctuations
of level than in the upper river.

While the lower portion of the river and especially the delta section
presents very interesting features, yet the peculiar charm of the river
is in the upper section, and the exceptional advantages it offers for
obtaining miles of slack water navigation. This portion of the river
with the lake and the narrow isthmus between it and the Pacific forms a
trio of natural advantages for the construction of a canal, the
importance of which it would be difficult to over estimate.

About three miles below the mouth of the San Carlos, the Caño Machado
enters the San Juan on the north bank. This stream, about one hundred
feet wide and from eight to ten feet deep, is the last of the mountain
or torrential tributaries of the San Juan. It can scarcely be said to
have a valley, but occupies the bed of a rugged ravine extending for
several miles northerly and northwesterly up into the easterly flank of
the cordillera. Every variety of igneous rock, from light porous pumice
to dense metallic green-black hypersthene andesite, may be picked up in
the bed of this stream. Agates also are common and there are occasional
masses of jasper. Farther up, frequent outcrops of trap in situ occur,
interspersed in some localities with numerous veins of agate.

Twelve miles below the Machado the San Francisco enters the San Juan.
This stream, with its several tributaries, drains a large swampy valley
sprinkled with irregular hummocks and hills. For several miles from the
San Juan it is a sluggish, muddy stream between steep slippery banks;
higher up, flowing over a gravelly and then a rocky bed, it finally
disappears in steep ravines filled with huge bowlders. The main San
Francisco comes from the northwest, but a large tributary has its
source to the eastward in a range of hills which separates the San
Francisco basin from the immediate Caribbean water-shed. This range,
unlike the ones already noted, is at heart an uninterrupted mass of
homogeneous hypersthene andesite, and with one exception nothing but
fragments of trap or trap _in situ_, is to be found in any of the
streams descending from either its western or eastern slopes. The one
exception is the Cañito Maria, a tributary of the San Francisco,
entering it but little more than a mile from the San Juan. In the bed
of this stream were abundant specimens of agates, jasper, and petrified
woods of several varieties in a wonderfully good state of preservation.

This range of hills ends at the Tamborcito bend of the San Juan, four
miles below the mouth of the San Francisco, and is the last easterly
projecting spur from the mountain backbone of the interior. Between it
and the coast there are, however, mountain masses of equal or greater
elevation, notably "El Gigante" and the Silico hills, the former some
fifteen hundred feet high, but these are simply isolated mountain
ganglia, their innumerable radiating spurs speedily giving way to
swamps or river valleys.

The streams that flow down the eastern slope of the Silico hills are,
from their sources to the lowlands, of almost idyllic beauty. Beginning
as noisy little brooks tumbling over black rocks in a V-shaped ravine
near the summit of the hills, they rapidly gather volume and slide
along in a polished channel of trap, tumbling every now and then as
sheets of white spray over vertical ledges forming here and there deep
green pools, and then after they have passed down among the foot-hills,
rippling in broad shallow reaches over sunlit beds of bright yellow
gravel. The water of these streams is clear and sparkling as that of an
Alpine stream and apparently almost as cool. The insect pests of the
tropics are unknown in the elevated portions of their valleys, and I
have slept more than once beside one of these streams, several hundred
feet above sea level, without a mosquito bar, while the delightful
"trades," rustling through the trees above me, brought the murmur of
the Caribbean surf miles away, to mingle with that of the stream.

The soil of this range consists, to a depth of ten to forty feet, of
clay of various grades and colors, red prevailing. In the valleys this
clay is almost invariably of a very dense consistency, and deep, dark
red in color.

From the foot-hills of the range to the coast, is a low level stretch
of country, a dozen miles wide, interspersed with lagoons and swamps.
Near the hills, where the elevation of the ground will average about
fifteen feet above sea level, the soil is composed almost entirely of
the before mentioned red clay, which occasionally assumes the form of
hummocks. Within about six miles of the coast this stratum of clay
gradually disappears under a layer of sand, which is in turn covered,
by a vegetable mould, to a depth of a few feet. From this point to the
sea the average elevation is barely five feet above the sea level, and
the sand and mould above mentioned are the only materials met. A short
distance from the ocean the vegetable earth-covering disappears and
only the sand is left, extending to an unknown depth and reaching out
into the sea.

West of Lake Nicaragua, from the Rio Lajas to Brito, as we leave the
lake shore, the ground rises almost imperceptibly to the "Divide" among
cleared and gently undulating fields. Then we drop into the sinuous
gorge of the Rio Grande only to emerge, a few miles farther on, into
the upper end of the Rio Grande and Tola basin.

To the right the Tola valley stretches to the northward, and all around
high and wooded hills encircle the valleys except directly in front
where a narrow gateway in the coast hills opens to the Pacific. In the
bottom of this valley are a few farms and through it wander devious
roads. Beyond the narrow gateway in the hills, less than three miles of
level swampy _salinas_ reach to the surf of the Pacific.

The views from the hills which flank the gateway of the Rio Grande, at
La Flor, are wonderfully attractive. I well remember one camp on the
hillside, from which in one direction the eye takes in the fertile
valley of the Tola and Rio Grande, backed by the rolling hills of the
"Divide" and over them the symmetrical peak of Ometepe, its base washed
by the waves of the great lake. In the other direction the Pacific lies
apparently but a stone's throw below, the little port of Brito at one's
very feet.

This same camp inspired one young engineer and enthusiast to express
himself something as follows:

"What if, in this camp, we should, like Rip Van Winkle, sleep for ten
years, and then awakening look about us? We are still at Brito, but
instead of being in the wilderness, we look down upon a thriving city.
In the harbor are ships from all ports of the world. Ships from San
Francisco, bound for New York, about to pass through the canal and
shorten their journey by 10,000 miles. Ships from Valparaiso, headed
for New York, which will take the short cut and save 5000 miles and the
dread storms of Cape Horn. At many a masthead floats the British flag,
and vessels from Liverpool, with their bows turned towards San
Francisco, have shortened their journey by 7000 miles."

"We go aboard one of the many steamers flying the 'stars and stripes'
and start eastward. All along the line the face of the country has
changed; the fertile shores of the Tola basin are occupied by cacao
plantations, fields have replaced forests, villages have grown to
towns, and factories driven by the exhaustless water power furnished by
the canal have sprung up on every available site."

"Along the shore of the lake are immense dry docks, and vessels are
resting in this huge fresh water harbor before setting out again on
their long voyages. The broad bosom of the noble San Juan is quivering
with the strokes of tireless propellors. The roar of the great dam at
Ochoa is heard for a moment and then the eastern section of the canal
is entered. Here the country is scarcely recognizable so greatly has it
changed. Wilderness and marsh have disappeared, and only great fields
of plantains and bananas and dark green orange groves are to be seen. A
day from Brito and the steamer's bow is rising to the long blue swell
of the Caribbean at Greytown."

Well is this picture calculated to excite enthusiasm, for it means the
dream of centuries realized, the cry of commerce answered, and our
imperial Orient and Occident-facing Republic resting content with
coasts united from Eastport to the Strait of Fuca.








*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, VOL. I., NO. 4, OCTOBER, 1889 ***


    

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