One of the most important and costly of isthmian canal projects that now looms on the horizon is that which is designed to afford a communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans _viâ_ the Lake of Nicaragua. This is a purely American project. It is put forward by American citizens, it has been drawn up by American engineers, and it is in favour with the American people. After the Nicaraguan Canal project had been before the world in one shape or another for many years, and after many different routes had been proposed and considered, the plans for a canal have now been definitively adopted, and the work of construction has, it is stated, actually begun. It has not yet been announced whether the capital required has been subscribed, but the United States, which approves the scheme, and has raised from first to last some 9000 millions of dollars for railway enterprise, is perhaps hardly likely to allow the canal to drop for want of the 20 millions sterling required to complete it. None of the many schemes for a canal across the American isthmus has obtained more extensive support, both in America and in Europe, than that _viâ_ the Lake of Nicaragua. It had the very earnest support of the Emperor Napoleon between 1845 and 1848. In 1846, the Emperor, then Prince Louis Napoleon, wrote a pamphlet on the subject,[203] in the course of which he pronounced against the Panama route, and he once declared, as regards the rival Nicaraguan scheme that, “from the embouchure of the river San Juan to the Pacific Ocean the canal would run in a straight line about 278 miles, enhancing the prosperity on either bank of more than a thousand miles of territory. The effect that would be produced by the annual passage through this fine country of two or three thousand ships, exchanging foreign produce with that of Central America, and spreading everywhere activity and wealth, would be almost miraculous.”[204] [Illustration: SECTION AND PLAN OF THE PROPOSED NICARAGUA CANAL.] The expense of the Nicaraguan Canal was estimated by Napoleon at only four millions sterling; but it is obvious, from the Prince’s own statements, that such a passage as he contemplated would only have afforded draught of water for vessels of 300 tons. Napoleon’s object was, however, quite as much to promote emigration, trade, and civilisation in the State of Nicaragua, as to open a communication between the two oceans.[205]