Note XXXIV-25 — Chapter XXXIV · INTEROCEANIC COMMUNICATION. 1801-1887.

The parties forming the company were William H. Aspinwall, Henry Chauncey, and John L. Stephens, all of New York, who on the 15th of April, 1850, made a contract with the New Granadan government, binding themselves to construct within a given time a railway between a point on the Atlantic and Panamá, for the transportation of travellers, cattle, merchandise, etc., under a fixed tariff of rates. Certain advantages were allowed New Granadan citizens. It is not necessary to state here all the terms of the contract. It was to be in force 49 years, and the New Granadan government was to receive three per centum of the net profits. It subsequently received $10,000 a year additional on the mails. Passengers, merchandise, and everything else passing in transitu over the railroad, were to be free of duties and imposts. The contract was amended July 5, 1867. Under the new arrangement the company was to own the railway for 99 years; and pay the Colombian government one million dollars in gold, and thereafter $250,000 a year in quarterly instalments, Colombian mails passing over the road free of expense. Large grants of land were made to the company, who further bound themselves to carry the railroad to the islands of Naos, Culebra, Perico, and Flamenco, or to some other suitable place on the bay. The prolongation has never been carried out. Bidwell's Isth. Pan., 299-308, 397-417; Pan., Boletin Ofic., Nov. 15, 1867; Id., Gaceta, Oct. 31, 1880; Arosemena, Pan. Prolong. Ferrocarril, 1-18; Pan. Star and Herald, Sept. 3, Oct. 5, 1867; Sept. 12, 13, 28, 1877; Rouhaud, Régions Nouv., 1878-9, p. 343-51; Pan. Mem. Sec. Jen., 1877, 21-2.