which is produced on this side of the lake by the trade wind.

The western division extends from the lake to the Pacific and covers 17.04 miles. The greatest elevation crossed here is forty-two feet above the level of the lake. The canal leaves the lake at the mouth of a little stream called the Lajas, about midway between La Virgen and St. Jorge, and passes through the depression pointed out by Colonel Childs in 1854. For the first 1 miles from the lake it will have a surface width of 210 feet, and a bottom width of 120 feet. Through the succeeding five miles of deepest cutting, it will have a bottom width of eighty feet. Between the divide and the Tola basin it will have a bottom width of eighty feet and a surface width of 184 feet. The excavation will be chiefly through rock. The Tola basin will be 51⁄2 miles long, one mile wide, and have a depth of water of from thirty to seventy feet. For 4 miles it will require no work at all.

To create this basin, a dam 1,800 feet long and seventy feet high, will be constructed at a place called La Flor. The three locks on the

Pacific side will be situated close together near the La Flor Dam. The two upper locks will each have a lift of 42 feet, while the lowest will have a variable lift of twenty-one to twentynine feet, according to the state of the tide. This last lock is situated 1 miles from the Pacific, and the intervening section of the canal will be 288 feet wide at the surface, and 120 feet wide at the bottom. The location of Brito is marked at the present time merely by a bight in the shore, formed by a rocky promontory which juts into the ocean at the north side of the mouth of a small stream, called the Rio Grande. From the extremity of this promontory a breakwater 900 feet long will be extended to the seven-fathom limit. Another breakwater 830 feet long will be built out from the beach to a point 800 feet distant from the sea end of the first, so as to inclose a considerable area of deep water. A broad, deep basin will also be excavated inland for 3,000 feet from the shore line, to give ample harbor room.

The estimated time for the transit of the canal by steam vessels is twenty-eight hours. The chief engineer's final estimate of the cost

of the canal is $65,084,176, but a board of consulting engineers, to whom the plans and official data were submitted in 1889, estimated that the cost would be $87,799,570. According to Mr. Menocal's calculations the canal will be able to carry annually 11,680 vessels, with an aggregate of 20,440,000 tons, which is more than double the present traffic through the Suez Canal. As the canal will save 10,753 miles for sailing vessels, and 8,267 for steamers, between New York and San Francisco, and 7,993 and 5,867, respectively, for the same craft between Liverpool and San Francisco, there can be no doubt that it will command a traffic equal to if not greater than that of Suez.

Work on the canal was stopped for lack of money in 1892, and in the summer of 1893 the Construction Company went into the hands of a receiver. It was subsequently reorganized, and an unsuccessful effort was made to raise the money needed abroad. Concurrently a movement was inaugurated to secure government aid, but the measure failed to go through Congress. However, in the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill, passed in 1895, provision was