pth.

The annual rain-fall in the river region between Lake Nicaragua and the
Caribbean Sea is twenty feet; annual evaporation, three feet. These
points must be considered in the construction and feeding of the canal,
even though it is to vary in width. The dimensions of the proposed
canal, as recommended by the Walker Government Commission, are as
follows: total length, one hundred and eighty-nine miles; minimum depth
of water at all stages, thirty feet; width, one hundred feet in
rock-cuts, elsewhere varying from one hundred and fifty to three hundred
feet--except in Lake Nicaragua, where one end of the channel will be
made six hundred feet wide.

Nearly fifty years ago, when a canal was projected, the Childs survey
set the cost at thirty-seven million dollars. Now the commissioners
differ on the question of total cost, the several estimates ranging from
one hundred and eighteen million to one hundred and thirty-five million
dollars. The United States Congress at its last session authorized the
expenditure of one million by a new commission "to investigate the
merits of all suggested locations and develop a project for an Isthmus
Canal."

And so we left the land of the lizard. What wonders they are! From an
inch to two feet in length, slim, slippery, and of many and changeful
colors, they literally inhabit the land, and are as much at home in a
house as out of it; indeed, the houses are never free of them. They
sailed up the river with us, and crossed the lake in our company, and
sat by the mountain wayside awaiting our arrival; for they are curious
and sociable little beasts. As for the San Juan river, 'tis like the
Ocklawaha of Florida many times multiplied, and with all its original
attractions in a state of perfect preservation.

All the way up the coast we literally hugged the shore; only during the
hours when we were crossing the yawning mouth of the Gulf of California
were we for a single moment out of sight of land. I know not if this was
a saving in time and distance, and therefore a saving in fuel and
provender; or if our ship, the John L. Stevens, was thought to be
overloaded and unsafe, and was kept within easy reach of shore for fear
of accident. We steamed for two weeks between a landscape and a seascape
that afforded constant diversion. At night we sometimes saw flame-tipped
volcanoes; there was ever the undulating outline of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains through Central America, Mexico, and Californi