ften heard Captain Eads tell the
story.

Captain Eads afterward had a scheme which always seemed to
me very feasible for a ship-railway across the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec. His project was to construct a railway with
a sufficient number of tracks, and to raise ships of the largest
size on the principle applied in locks of ordinary canals.
He had a contrivance made of stout beams which would hold
and support a loaded vessel to which it was adjusted. The
beams were to operate something like the keys of a piano,
and the whole operation was something like that by which hatters
measure and record the shape of a man's head. This plan received
the hearty commendation of some very eminent engineers, including
Major Reed of England, the highest authority of such subjects,
the constructor of the dry docks at Malta. The scheme had
a good many supporters in Congress. I think it would have
been adopted but for Captain Eads's premature death.

Rather a singular coincidence took place when I was interesting
myself in this matter which possibly may be not too trivial
to record. One Thanksgiving morning I received by express
a beautiful copy of Wordsworth, which I had bought in Boston
the day before. Just as I was opening it the morning mail
was brought in. I opened the book at random and turned to
Wadsworth's poem, "The Highland Broach." My eye caught the
following lines:

Lo! Ships from seas by nature barred,
Mount along ways by man prepared;
Along far stretching vales, whose streams
Seek other seas, their canvas gleams,
And busy towns grow up on coasts
Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts.

I turned by eye from these verses to the mail in which was
a copy of a New York illustrated journal containing an account
of the Eads ship-railway.

The inscription in Eads's "History of the Jetties," above
referred to, is as follows:

To Hon. George F. Hoar, who, as a member of the House Committee
which matured the Jetty Act, prepared the _first report_ in
its favor, this book is presented; with the assurance that
his unfaltering support of the enterprise through all its
struggles, entitled him to a prominent place among the statesmen
to whom the producers in the Valley of the Mississippi are
most largely indebted.

JAS B. EADS
Washington, D. C.,
February
1881

I had the pleasure of receiving a telegram from New Orleans
shortly after the completion of the jetties saying that a
loaded steamer, drawing be