The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

We know far less about the Nicaragua line than we do about the Panama line. It is impossible to know as much. The Nicaragua line is in comparatively wild country which has not been explored to anything like the same extent that the Panama line has. The Panama line has been a great thoroughfare, traveled for two or three hundred years. It has been examined with reference to a canal for many years past . . . and the country along the line is cleared up so that one can see what he is doing. In the wild parts of Nicaragua it is a jungle, where often we could not see fifty feet, and we would be much more likely to meet disagreeable surprises by the Nicaragua line than by the Panama line.”