In 1876 the first Nicaraguan Canal Commission created by the American Congress made a unanimous report in favor of a canal across Nicaragua, after it had investigated all the proposed routes from eastern Mexico to western South America. It asserted that this route possessed, both for the construction and maintenance of the canal, greater advantages and fewer difficulties from engineering, commercial, and economic points of view than any one of the other routes shown to be practicable by surveys sufficient in detail to enable a judgment to be formed of their respective merits. When the first French Panama Canal Company began its work all other projects fell by the wayside for the time being, just as all other plans for interoceanic canals were abandoned when the United States undertook the construction of the present canal. After that company failed, however, the Maritime Canal Company of Nicaragua was organized in 1889 by A. G. Menocal, under concessions from the Government of that country and Costa Rica. The Atlantic end of this canal, as proposed by the Maritime Canal Company, was located on the lagoon west of Greytown. The Pacific end was located at Brito, a few miles from San Juan del Sur. This canal company built three-fourths of a mile of canal, constructed a temporary railway and a short telegraph line, but soon thereafter became involved in financial difficulties which led to a suspension of operations. Even to this day the visitor to Nicaragua may see many evidences of the wrecked hopes of that period for whatever town he visits he finds there Americans and Europeans who went to Nicaragua at the time of the opening of the work of building a canal by the Maritime Canal Company. They expected to find a land of opportunity. But, with failure of the canal project, they found themselves in the possession of properties whose value lay only in staying there and operating them. When the first Isthmian Canal Commission, in 1899, undertook to investigate all of the proposed routes across the connecting link between North and South America, it placed on the Nicaraguan route alone 20 working parties, made up of 159 civil engineers, their assistants, and 455 laborers. The entire work of exploring the Nicaraguan route was done with the greatest care. The depth of the canal, as adopted by the commission, was 35 feet and the minimum width 150 feet. The locks were to be 840 feet long and 84 feet wide, and of these there were to be eight on the Pacific and six on the Atlantic side. This canal was to be 184 miles long. At the Atlantic end there was to be a 46-mile sea-level section and at the Pacific end a 12-mile sea-level section, while the water in the middle 126-mile section was to be 145 feet above the water in the two oceans. It was estimated that it would cost $189,000,000 to build the Nicaraguan Canal.