The Panama Canal

t plenty of money was forthcoming from the French people. A great deal of it was subscribed by small investors who could ill afford to lose their savings, and no fewer than 16,000 wom

ations-warehouses, hospitals, hotels, etc.-were carried on "regardless." Mr. W. F. Johnson tells of a man who owned thirty acres of land useful mainly as a breeding-place for mosquitoes, but lying right across the route of the canal. It was worth perhaps 300 dollars. The man demanded just a thousand times that sum; the Colombian courts awarded it, and the French paid it. For one great mistake the French made was

of affairs. He lived in Paris, and had probably little notion of what was happening at Panama. He furnished an example of the proverbial effects of too much success and prosperity. He seems to have become a superstitious believer in his own star, and to have thought that nothing could fail with which he was associated. Still less can the French nation be blamed for the wild doings of their representatives at the isthmus. And there is at least one red

it has always fixed the attention of surveyors looking out for a canal site. If the isthmus had been a rainless desert like that of Suez, a canal could have been constructed by a further preparation of this river valley and some heavy excavations along the nine-mile reach from Obispo to the Pacific. The sea would then have been admitted, the ebb and flow of the Pacific (the Atlantic shore is almost tideless) being regulated by a tidal lock. But the problem is not nearly so simple. The isthmus is one of the rainiest places in the world, enjoying on the Atlantic side 140 inches of rain a year. At Panama the rate is much smaller, not more than 60 inches. In the central hills the rainfall averages 90 to 95 inches. The average number of rainy days in the year is 246 at Bohio (inland on the Atlantic side), 196 at Colon, and 141 at Panama. The reader

st be pardoned if they regard the harnessing of the Chagres to the canal as something much like the harnessing of a mad elephant to a family carriage." The only course open to the French with their sea-level project was to divert the Chagres with its twenty-six tributaries, chief of which are the Gatun and the Trinidad, from its old valley into another channel, along which it could rage as it pleased on its short journey to the Caribbean. This would have been a tremendous,

ith the Sierras of North America. For eight or nine miles the canal must run through this central barrier on its way to the Pacific. The earliest French notion was for a ship tunnel-a project perhaps never seriously contemplated. The only other course was to cut right down through this hilly country. That was a tremendous undertaking, which required, even for its inception, a good deal of the

e that level. Considering the difficulty the United States engineers have had with "slides" and "breaks" along the sides of their cutting, one suspects that the much deeper and narrower channel of the French would have proved impracticable. The French scheme gave

roduced nominally ￡78,701,020, but actually only ￡40,309,348, the loss in discounts, etc., amounting to ￡38,391,672. The collapse of the company was followed by investigations and trials in France. Ten senators and deputies, together with the directors, were brought to trial. Ferdinand and his son Charles de Lesseps were, among others, condemned to fines and imprisonme

ably have brought the French operations to an end even if greater economy and honesty had prevailed in the administration. It must not be supposed that the French made no provision for the victims of these endemic diseases. Excellent hospitals were built at Ancon, near Panama, at a cost of over a million of money; while those at Colon cost more than a quarter of a million-in both cases about three times a fair and honest price. At the time of the French occupation of the isthmus nothing was known of the real

this was included a large consignment of snow-shovels (for use at sea-level less than 10 degrees from the Equator!), and a quantity of petroleum torches for the festivities which were one day to celebrate the completion of the canal. But a great deal of the plant w