The United States Government became deeply interested in Isthmian Canal projects during the Forties of the last century. The extension of the national domain to the Pacific coast made the building of an Isthmian Canal a consideration of prime importance to the United States, and made it a dangerous policy to allow any other country to acquire a dominating hand over an Isthmian waterway. The result was that the American Government advised the British Government that it would not tolerate the control of any Isthmian Canal by any foreign power. This later brought about the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which made neutral the proposed Nicaraguan Canal. In 1849 Elijah Hise, representing the United States, negotiated a treaty with Nicaragua, by the terms of which that country gave to the United States, or its citizens, exclusive right to construct and operate roads, railways, canals, or any other medium of transportation across its territory between the two oceans. The consideration exacted by Nicaragua was that the United States should guarantee the independence of that country--a consideration that was then paramount because of the effort being made by Great Britain to gobble up the "Mosquito Coast" as far east as the San Juan River. The United States was not ready to give such a guarantee--although a half century later it did give it to the Republic of Panama--and the Hise treaty failed of ratification in the Senate. A little later Cornelius Vanderbilt became interested in a canal and road across Nicaragua under an exclusive concession running for 85 years. Modifications of this concession permitted the Vanderbilt Company to exercise exclusive navigation rights on the lakes of Nicaragua. As a result the Accessory Transit Company established a transportation line from the Atlantic through the San Juan River and across Lake Nicaragua, thence by stage coach over a 13-mile stretch of road to San Juan del Sur on the Pacific. In 1852 Col. Orville Childs made a report to President Fillmore upon the results of his surveys for a Nicaraguan Canal; and, if the United States, in 1902, had elected to build the Nicaraguan Canal, the route laid out by Childs would have been followed for all but a few miles of the entire distance. In 1858 a French citizen obtained from Nicaragua and Costa Rica a joint concession for a canal, which contained a provision that the French Government should have the right to keep two warships on Lake Nicaragua as long as the canal was in operation. The United States politely informed Nicaragua and Costa Rica that it would not permit any such agreement--that it would be a menace to the United States as long as the agreement was in force. Upon these representations the concession was canceled.