Mr. Blair to Mr. Fish
Sir: I have the honor to inform the Department that on the 20th of July last the government of Costa Rica executed a contract with Mr. Henry Meiggs, an American citizen whose fame as the great railroad contractor of South America is not confined to the limits of Chili and Peru, the scenes of his many stupendous operations to construct a railroad from the port of Limon, on the Atlantic Ocean, to the city of Alajuela, about fifty miles distant from the Pacific, via Castago, San José [Page 253] and Heredia; the estimated distance being one hundred and twenty miles.
Mr. Meiggs undertakes to construct this road within three years, to furnish it with all necessary rolling-stock, erect suitable buildings for ticket-offices, &c., or, in other words, to construct and equip it complete for the sum of one million six hundred thousand pounds sterling, one hundred and seventy thousand pounds of which was paid on signing the contract; the residue is to be paid in monthly installments as the work progresses.
The government has already obtained a loan in London for five hundred thousand pounds sterling, out of which the first payment to Mr. Meiggs was made. I learn it is the purpose of the government to put on the London market another loan at an early day for a sufficient amount to cover the entire cost of the construction of the road.
That this long-talked-of and much-desired enterprise will now be carried successfully through there can be no reasonable doubt. The name of Henry Meiggs to the contract is a sufficient guarantee that the road will be constructed against, if not before, the time fixed in the contract. So far as the trade of Costa Rica is desirable is the construction of this road of interest to the people of the United States. At present almost the entire coffee crop of the country, which seldom falls below two hundred thousand quintals per annum, is hauled in ox-carts to the port of Punta Arenas, on the Pacific, at a cost of one dollar and twenty-five cents per quintal; from thence it is shipped in sailing-vessels “around the Horn,” and finds a market in London and Hamburg, after a four months’ voyage. Construct this road and the trade of Costa Rica will take a new departure. It will not cost more than forty or fifty cents at most to take a quintal of coffee to the port of Limon, on the Atlantic, and then in nine days by steamer it is in New York, at much less expense than by sailing-vessels to the markets above mentioned, or to New York by way of Aspinwall, over the Panama Railroad.
I will advise the Department from time to time of the progress made in the construction of the road.
I have, &c.,