In the eighteen nineties, an American company tried to build a canal across Nicaragua. It made little progress. After three years, it gave up the attempt. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in the early nineteen hundreds, he was ready to try again.
KAY GALLANT: A study was made to decide which would be a better place for the canal -- Panama or Nicaragua. Engineers said it would cost less to complete the canal De Lesseps had started twenty years earlier in Panama. But De Lesseps' company still owned the land on which the canal would be built. The United States would have to buy the land, as well as the rights to build the waterway.
The study decided it would be less costly, overall, to build the canal in Nicaragua. The proposal went to the United States Congress for approval.
That will be our story next week.
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BOB DOUGHTY: Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. You can find our series online with transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.
Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.
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