The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

THE PANAMA CANAL 139
San Juan River. The total length of this route was 170 miles
from Greytown, on the Caribbean Sea, to Brito, on the Pacific.
Of this distance, about 65 miles would consist of free naviga-
tion on the San Juan River, and 56 miles of free navigation on
Lake Nicaragua, a total of 121 miles.
THE NICARAGUA ROUTE
The Nicaragua route, according to the official report made
to President Grant in 1876, possessed, both for the construc-
tion and maintenance of a canal, greater advantages and
offered fewer difficulties from engineering, commercial and eco-
nomic points of view, than any of the other routes shown to be
practical by surveys sufficiently in detail to enable a judgment
to be formed by their relative merits. The question of the
construction of the Nicaragua Canal by the government of the
United States, or if by private capital with the guarantee of
the government, received the very serious attention of Con-
gress. The necessity of the isthmian canal was made obvious
when the Oregon, during the Spanish-American War, had to
travel 13,000 miles from San Francisco to Key West to join
Admiral Sampson's squadron. In all the investigation under-
taken both by officials and private individuals, the part taken
by the United States was most prominent. The American
government, from time to time, dispatched to the isthmus
many exploring expeditions, and President McKinley, in his
message to Congress, in 1898, recommended that the United
States government either purchase or make some arrange-
ment for the control of this proposed waterway.
There was one difficulty in the way, however, and that was
the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, the first article of which provided
that neither Great Britain nor the United States should obtain
or maintain exclusive control over the canal; and, as the