Ocean to Ocean navigation route across Nicaragua

[itmaiden]

Before Panama, but how realistic was this route for major trade ?

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/...100319453.html

http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/201...nicaragua.html


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7025756.ece

Here's an old map showing the river and lake.

http://www.leejacksonmaps.com/bertyuca.htm


itmaiden

[sphillips]

Looked on Google Earth and could make out a river at the south end of the lake headed east toward the Caribbean. Couldnt really make out a waterway west of the lake towards the Pacific.

[itmaiden]

There are allegedly other river connections and the important detail is it needs to be flood season.
Supposedly the flooded areas become 2 meters deep. Good for reed boats I guess.

itmaiden

Looked on Google Earth and could make out a river at the south end of the lake headed east toward the Caribbean. Couldnt really make out a waterway west of the lake towards the Pacific.

[Panfilo]

Definitely Mr. Blashford-Snell looks the part with his Indiana Jones outfit but one is left to wonder after reading all those newspaper articles in anybody has done any historical research on the ancient concept of the Nicaraguan canal. As early as 1811 Alexander von Humboldt, the German born explorer and naturalist, proposed the Nicaraguan canal in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, the result of a five year journey through Spanish America. Later on this alternative was called “Humboldt’s route” when the Baron spent two weeks as a guest in the White House with President Thomas Jefferson. At this exact same time Lewis and Clark were setting out in search of the Northwest Passage under Jefferson’s orders. Thirty years later, John Lloyd Stephens in his book Incidents of Travel in Central America, states that the building of this Nicaraguan canal should cost no more than $25,000,000, a ridiculously high figure for the time. Then the Nicaraguan Canal Construction Company is created and the US senate forms a Commission to study this alternative. I see nothing new in this story and one is only left with the doubt if the ancient history of this canal has all been forgotten.
Panfilo