Surveys for the railroad had also produced two pertinent pieces of information. The engineers had discovered a gap in the mountains twelve miles from Panama City, at a point called Culebra, where the elevation above sea level was only 275 feet. This was 200 feet less than what had been considered the lowest gap. Then, toward the close of their work, they had determined once and for all that there was no difference between the levels of the two oceans. The level of the Pacific was not twenty feet higher than that of the Atlantic, as had been the accepted view for centuries. Sea level was sea
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