The deterioration of the harbor of San Juan de Nicaragua, or Greytown, has been minutely discussed by a board of scientific officers of the United States Corps of Engineers, and of the Coast Survey Department. Their conclusions were unfavorable to the improvement of the harbor.
Where the Cyane lay during the bombardment of Greytown a luxuriant grass marsh is now growing. It has not been many years since this harbor afforded refuge for shipping of ordinary draught, but it is not unusual, at the present time, to find the harbor so completely closed during a storm that a pedestrian may walk dry-footed across the former entrance. Upon such occasion the harbor of Greytown is converted into a lagoon until after the storm, when the accumulating water of the San Juan erodes for itself a new outlet to the ocean.
It is apparent some other initial point must be found before this route can be seriously considered as a suitable terminus for interoceanic communication. Monkey Point is said to supply a good anchorage, and has been suggested for this purpose. Monkey Point affords anchorage for ships drawing rather more than three fathoms. By joining the island with a breakwater of _pierre perdu_, of the length of about twelve hundred feet, a good harbor, affording five fathoms water, can be obtained.
The writer is not aware that any surveys have ever been made for connecting this point with the San Juan river, or with the lakes. It is therefore unnecessary to mention other reports upon the same route, or to do more than to refer to the plans, profiles, and details of the “Interoceanic Canal of Nicaragua,” submitted at the Paris exhibition by L. J. Thome de Gamond. The report of M. de Gamond is not at hand.
A healthy and productive country; two lakes affording an inexhaustible supply for a summit level; a divide easily overcome at an altitude represented as 174 feet, and the convenient channel of the San Juan, through which the waters of Lakes Managua and Nicaragua find their way from an amphitheater of hills to the Atlantic ocean, are advantages which engineers and capitalists are loath to abandon, and which the reader relinquishes with regret. We may expect, therefore, to find the question continually revived. But its advantages have been overestimated.