Hearing impaired
The term offended his new acquaintance because deaf people do not regard themselves hearing impaired. it certainly arouse feelings of inadequacy when applied to them.
Mostly because of the inexperience of the engineers who had been entrusted with the tasks as most of them were professional lawyers. the length of the canal also cast more shadow of doubt on the undertaking besides the lack of sophisticated equipment for the engineering works.
The answer is terracotta. Terracotta is a type of earth ware which is made of clay glaze or unglaze ceramic in where the fired body is being porous. The term is known as natural brown orange color yet would vary considerably.
Chile, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina are the territories that at one point or another had constituted the Viceroyalty of Peru.