The Panama Canal

in of Cortéz, who had been with Balboa at Panama. Cerón had been for twelve years engaged in the search for the strait, and had finally begun to doubt its existen

of a waterway there-almost precisely along the route chosen for the American canal ne

aguan lines. The reader may feel some surprise that at such an early date as this an engineering project should be seriously considered which was only accomplished in the end by the wealth and mechanical resources of one of the greatest of modern Powers. The explanation is that th

hared the royal enthusiasm. He may be supposed to have known the isthmus at these points very well, and his scepticism about the prospect of canal construction there in those days was not wholly groundless. The Spanish historian Gomara, who wrote a history of the Indies in 1551 and dedicated it to Charles V., declared a canal to be quite feasible along

much interruption. The rapidly growing power of the English at sea made Philip fear that, if a canal were built, he would be unable to control it, and would probably lose his existing monopoly of isthmian transit. So he issued a veto against all projects of canal construction. He even persuaded himself that it would be contrary to the Divine purp

sh argosies were compelled to sail homewards round the far Magellan Straits. But in 1579, as we have seen, Sir Francis Drake ("El Draque" as he was called by the terrified Spaniards) had suddenly a

and soon afterwards established themselves on the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. The old city of Panama, of which only a picturesque church-tower remains to-day, had been founded by a Spanish governor na

British colony on the isthmus at Darien, a little east of the Panama route. The pioneer was William Paterson, a Scotsman, who founded "

ities of Europe. In Paterson's enthusiastic words, "This door of the seas and key of the universe will enable its possessors to become the legislators of both worlds and the arbitrators of c

India Companies, who were alarmed on the score of their own exclusive rights, while Spaniards and Indians were a perpetual menace. Broken down by these adversities the original settlers left the place, but were succeeded at once by another company which, after some successful fighting with the Spaniards, were compelled by the superior forces of the enemy to evacuate the settlements in the year 1700. It is possible that if this attempt at colonization had been mad

ke and getting control of the interoceanic route in this region, but doing little more than injuring his own health. With the nineteenth century, however, events began to move at the isthmus. The great scientist, Alexander von Humboldt, spent the firs

far west, penetrated much further than Chicago or Manitoba. Population and industrial enterprise were concentrated in the east of Canada and the United States, and have only begun within modern times to move effectually westwards. England was indeed so indifferent about her territories along a far coast, which could be reached only round the Horn or by an almost impossible land-transit, that in the settlement of the Oregon boundary in the middle of last century she accepted a Canadian frontier-li

much as possible from European influences. Immigration has been naturally restricted, the population, especially that of Chile, kept free from negro adm

connection with the subject. There had arisen a general belief that the level of the Pacific was much higher than that of the Atlantic, and that a sea-level canal would therefore be impossible. Humboldt declared against this theory. But it

e scientist's great fellow-countryman, Goethe. A passage from Goethe's "Conversation

nds. We may expect this youthful Power, with its decided tendency westwards, in thirty or forty years to have also occupied and peopled the extensive tracts of land beyond the Rocky Mountains. We may further expect that along the whole Pacific coast, where Nature has already formed the largest and safest harbours, commercial cities of the utmost importance will gradually arise, to be the medium of trade between China, together with the East Indies, and the United States. Were this to happen, it would be not alone desirable but even almost necessary that merchantmen as well as men-of-war should maintain a more rapid connection between the west and east coasts of North America than has previously been possible by the wearis

government to co-operate in the canal enterprise with the states he represented. The result was that Henry Clay, the American Secretary of State, ordered an official survey at Nicaragua, and scheme followed scheme in quick succession. In 1829 the King of Holland was granted a canal concession by the Nicaraguan government. This enterprise was frustrated by the outbreak of the revolution in the Netherlands and Belgium. It would be tedious to enumerate the many projects started during the following years. But it is worth recallin

n the New World a state as admirably situated as Constantinople, and we must say, up to this time, as uselessly occupied. We allude to the State of Nicaragua. As Constantinople is the centre of the Ancient World, so is the town of Leon the centre of the New, and if the tongue of land which separates its two lakes from the Pacific Ocean were cut through, she would command by virtue of her central position the entire coast of North and South America. The State of Nicaragua can become, better than Constantinople, the necessary route of the great commerce of the world, and is destined to attain an e

an isthmian waterway. The United States were establishing themselves on the Pacific through their encroachments on Mexico. In 1846 they acquired the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, and naturally began to attach more importance to the canal project and to feel more sensitive as regards rival ambitions in Central America. Soon after they had acquired these Pacific territories, began the great rush for gold to California, and some shorter way from east to west beca

ip services to the southern and northern coasts of America from Panama were developed, and the railway succeeded so well that it paid down to 1895 an average dividend of 15 per cent. It was bought by the first French Panama Company for the outrageously high sum of ￡5,100,000. The existence of the railway really determined De Lesseps' choice of the Panama route, and the imm

when we may say that the Panama Canal question entered the domain of modern politics. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, so-called from Mr. John M. Clayton, the American Secretary of State, and

TNO

us, along which their Persian enemies could advance by land to attack them. The oracle said that if Zeus had wished the pla