Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1889 — THE NICARAGUA CANAL [ARTICLE]

THE NICARAGUA CANAL

A Shipload* ot Supplies and Fifty Men Leave for Graytown Friday. The Nicaragua Canal Company announces that the steamship Alveno, which sailed for Grey town, Nicaragua, May 25, carried about fifty men and a quantity of implements and stores for the Nicaragua Canal Contruction Company, being the pioneer expedition for the commencement of the work of building the Nicaragua interoceanic canal. Similar consignments of men and materials for the prosecution of the work will follow one another at short intervals. Ten engineers of the surveying expedition of 1887 and 1888 have remained in Nicaragua in the service of the company, and will meet the construction party at Greytown. They have collected about 500 native laborers there, in readiness to begin operations at once, and in the meantime have constructed temporary quarters for themselves and those who are shortly to arrive. The first work to be done, and which will begin immediately.is railroad building, building a pier at Greytown, erecting permanent quarters, hospitals, warehouses and shops, running telegraph wires along the line of the projected canal, dredging in Greytown harbor, ani clearing and dredging the first twelve miles of the canal, from Greytown to the “divide.” Preparations will be made for the heavy work on the rock cut, embankments, etc. The company will send down with the expedition a locomotive, ten large steel canoes, a steam launch for the chief engineer, two diamond drills, fifty tons of previsions, clothing for 500 laborers, six large pile drivers, two large portable houses, four large rock drills, 150,000 feet of lumber foi houses, 1,000,000 feet of piles and timbers, 200 ham mocks, 200 cots, a large stock of engineers’ instruments. 20,000,000 feet of galvanized iron roofing, tools (railroad, carpenters’, blacksmiths’, engineers’, etc.), about sixty tons of iron, nails, steel, etc., telegraph and telephone materials, crockery, hardware, gunpowder, dynamite, oils, rope, 400 rubber blankets, furniture, drugs, etc.