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INTERNATTONAL AMERICAN CONPERENCE. 119
:States in perfect politic::ü and social nnity, it accomplishes their perfect commenial
annexation to the Uni.ted States. Puerto Barrios is within fifty hours or less of
Dauphiu's Island wharves at Mouile, and only sixty honrs would be required to t.raus–
fer a traveler or bale of goo<ls from Mobile to the Pacific coast harbar of La Union.
Uuited States au<l other steamers now pay fi·om $20 to $:30 a ton at La Union for En–
glish or Australian coa!. It may be delivered tbere from Alabama, over tho trans–
isthmian railway, for from $5 to $i a ton. Therefore, the Govel'nment of the United
States as well as the people must confesa keen interest in this short, easily-built rail–
way, which surely must accomplish most beneficent political aud commercial resnlts.
A.t'\1ERICANS PRE1i'ERRED.
After the plan of the transisthmian railway was conceived aud the details pub–
lished, and after applications were made for charters in Salvador aud Guatemala,
English and French baukers and capitalista sought much the same concessions ; but
the governments of Salvador and Guatemala both gave preference to the American
applicant for these franchises. The Salvador charter conceded a monopoly for :fifty
years of the right of excess to Lhe matchless harbor of La Union. The cost of a
double-track road from La Union to Port Izaba!, or Port Barrios, it is stated by en–
gineers who have snrveyed part an<l traversed the whole route of about 300 miles,
will uot exceed $35,000 a mile; there will not be a tunnel on the whole line, ora grade
greater tban 70 feet ou mile, and t.bis ouly at e~ch terminus, whence locomotives
must climb, within 30 or 40 miles, to the mesa 2,000 feet above the sea.
The rapid multi.plication of foundries, fnroaces, antl forges in Alabama aud other
outhern States imluced tbe writer to seek, for the beboof of the commonwealth
which is home, an insatial>le market for its product'l, to be found alone along the
western sbores of the three Americas. From every tmding place of as many as two
or three inhabitauts along this iutenniuable coast a railway will soon lead
to farms and villages of tbe interior. Twelve snch railways are now building between
tbe southern confines of Cbili and California. Iftbe transisthmian railway be speed–
ily finished, the iron aud coa.l and steel of England and Australia may be supplanted
everywbere on tbe Pacific by that produced in the Uuited States. (Report by L. J.
Du Pre, U. S. Consul, Salvador, December 13, 1887.)
BRITISH HONDURAS.
A road has been projected from Belize west.ward 90 miles to the frontier; from
there it will probably go to P eten.