er
of the Engineers Club of Saint Louis, and for two years president of
the Academy of Science there; he was also a member of the American
Geographical Society, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great
Britain, and of the British Association, and of the Society for the
Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a member,
fellow, and for a year vice-president of the American Society of Civil
Engineers.

He was now a person whose return from Europe, with plans for river
improvement, and news about a fresh engineering scheme, was an item in
the small as well as the large newspapers. For, since the Jetties were
finished, he had a new scheme,--a decidedly new one it seemed to most
people,--though, as formerly, he made no pretense of having originated
the idea. Instead of resting content, now that he was almost
sixty,--rich, and honored, and frail,--instead of resting content on
his laurels of the gunboats, the Bridge, the Jetties, he was as active
as ever, with the hope of opening more roads to commerce and
prosperity. The publication of the proceedings of De Lesseps's
Interoceanic Canal Congress in 1879 gave Eads an opportunity to
propose, in a letter to the New York "Tribune," his own project for
spanning the isthmus. The Tehuantepec route from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Pacific would be, in the general lines of travel, about 2000 miles
shorter than the Panama route, or 1500 miles shorter than the
Nicaragua. And it was at Tehuantepec that Eads proposed building, not a
canal, but a ship-railway. The proposition was astounding. It certainly
suggested very picturesque visions of transportation; but at first
sight it did not sound very practicable. However, Eads held that it
presented six great and purely practical advantages: First, it could be
built for much less than the cost of a canal. Secondly, it could be
built in one quarter of the time. Thirdly, it could, with absolute
safety, transport ships more rapidly. Fourthly, its actual cost could
be more accurately foretold. Fifthly, the expense of maintaining it
would be less than for a canal. Sixthly, its capacity could be easily
increased to meet future requirements.

In 1880 he appeared before a committee of the House, and in reply to De
Lesseps, who was advocating the Panama Canal, he stated his plan for
the ship-railway. A few months later he went to Mexico, where the
government gave h