Excerpt from Ancient and Modern Engineering and the Isthmian Canal This book is the outcome of a course of six lectures delivered at the Cooper Union in the city of New York in February and March, 1902, under the auspices of Columbia University. It seemed desirable by the President of the University that the subject-matter of the lectures should be prepared for ultimate publication. The six Parts of the book, therefore, comprise the substance of the six lectures, suitably expanded for the purposes of publication. It may be interesting to state that the half-tone illustrations have, with scarcely an exception, been prepared from photographs of the actual subjects illustrated. All such illustrations in Parts V and VI devoted to the Nicaragua and Panama Canal routes are made from photographs at the various locations by members of the force of the Isthmian Canal Commission; they are, therefore, absolutely true representations of the actual localities to which they apply. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.