Progress

Invention and Discovery

* * * * *

THE NICARAGUA CANAL.

The Nicaragua Canal has been so often referred to lately that it will
prove interesting to our readers to know more about this project and
what its successful completion will mean to the maritime nations of the
world, and especially to the United States.

After Columbus had discovered America and it was known that the Indies
had not been reached, but that a new continent barred the way, the early
discoverers sought a short route past this continent. Hudson, Baffin,
and others sought this route in the North, and others tried every
available opening in both North and South America, but of course
unsuccessfully, as it was soon known that no such route existed.

It must be remembered that the expeditions sailing to the new continent
had no knowledge of it geographically. It is hard to understand now,
maps are so familiar to all of us now, and we can in a moment call up
the shape of the continents, that then they had no knowledge of the
Western hemisphere except what could be obtained by their ships slowly
crawling along the coasts.

It was not unnatural, therefore, when they sailed into what we now call
the Gulf of Mexico and observed how far west they went before coming to
land, that they should expect to find the passage there.