Perhaps no strip of land in any country has for so long or so continuously fascinated the imagination of the world as that beautiful, but fateful, stretch of tropical jungle lying between two Oceans, and known to us in modern times as the Isthmus of Panama.

There is nothing new under the sun, and the idea of a commercial route, which should connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, goes back as far as we can trace it to the early days of the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese set to work to find a more convenient trade route to Calicut and the Moluccas than the one hitherto in use round the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1501 Christopher Columbus, amongst others, attempted to find this route, and the story of his unsuccessful expedition forms one of the most pathetic pages in his history. It was his fourth and last voyage; and although as yet he showed no lack of mental activity he was getting old, and his reason had partly lost its balance, owing to the hardships endured on former voyages. Hence it was that he based his chief hope of discovering such a route upon a supposed vision in which the Deity bade him seek it to the South. He depended also on physical phenomena, but phenomena, unfortunately, which he only partly understood. On a previous journey he had noted the strong currents which set westward through the Caribbean Sea, and it seemed to him clear that such currents must find an outlet in that direction. He imagined, therefore, that if such a passage existed it would lead him to the sea that washed the Golden Chersonesus. So on leaving Cuba, which he believed to be another main, a belief in which he died, he sailed West, and eventually reached the coast

of Honduras. Here, alas, the current upon which he had built his theory, and which was the Gulf Stream as we know it, deflected to the North. His vision, on the other hand, had told him to go South; and South he went, convinced that in that direction must be found the channel which he sought. Rounding Cape Honduras, for months he struggled against the fierce current in which he found himself. He wore out his ships and crawled with bewildered expectation along the Mosquito coast, Costa Rica, and Veragua. Wherever he landed he encountered the same startled natives, to be soothed by the same Spanish trinkets; and still he persevered, undaunted and unafraid, until one day at last he reached a harbor so beautiful and so spacious that he gave to it the poetic name of Puerto Bello, by which it is still known. Here, had he but guessed it, was the passage that he sought, only it was a land passage, not a waterway, as modern science has since designed to make it, for this was the approach to the narrow Isthmus of Panama, which, had he left his ships and crossed it, would have revealed to his astonished gaze on its further shore that great Western Ocean of which he was in search. Alas! he never reached it, and, worn out with fatigue and disappointment, his crews rebellious and his ships badly damaged after endless weeks of hopeless search, the great discoverer turned his face at last towards home.

This was but the first of many disappointments connected with this illfated Isthmus.

In 1513 Balboa and his companions made their way over mountain, and through jungle, swamp, and forest, from Atlantic to Pacific; and a hundred and fifty years later, across the same

track, Panama was reached and sacked by Sir John Morgan, that prince of buccaneers. The Spaniards, too, established a trail, a cobbled mule-track, which for two centuries was followed from Porto Bello east of Colon, to Santes on the Upper Chagres, and thence to Panama. The first petition for leave to make an interoceanic "waterway," however, was presented in 1520 to King Charles V. of Spain by Señor Don Angel Savedro, the general direction of the Canal he contemplated being from a point north of the Gulf of Darien, to the Pacific, following a south-westerly direction.

The

That need existed for such a Canal may be considered sufficiently demonstrated by these successive efforts to establish direct communication between the Atlantic and Pacific. maritime trade of the world has always desired the creation of a navigable zone, which would enable it to belt the globe, without the necessity of rounding Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. But the establishment of such a waterway was beyond the skill of the Middle Ages, and, having discovered the necessity of a Canal, they left to modern science the task of building it. The French were the first really to make the attempt.

In 1844 a French Company obtained a concession from the Columbian Government for the construction of a transIsthmian railway and Canal. The former was opened to traffic in 1855, but the latter was never even commenced.

The question of a Canal came up again in 1871 before a Geographical Congress which assembled at Antwerp, but no decision was arrived at.

In 1875 another Geographical Congress assembled in Paris, and a French explorer called Lachaume submitted a scheme for a lock-Canal, which was violently opposed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, a determined partisan of the sea

level type. hope that a trans-oceanic Canal might be built, without, however, pronouncing an opinion as to the type to be selected.

This Congress expressed a

In the following year, the "Société de Géographie Commerciale de Paris" appointed a Committee for the study of the whole Canal question, and of this Committee Lesseps was made chairman. A party of explorers was sent to the Isthmus under two young naval lieutenants, Réclus and Wyse, who on their return submitted an elaborate scheme for the proposed Canal, with a plan of the route it should follow.

In 1878 another concession for the building of a Canal was obtained by a French Company from the Columbian Government; and Lesseps, whose name had already been rendered famous by the successful building of the Suez Canal, was invited to place himself at the head of this gigantic enterprise.

Had he been wise he would have refused, both on the score of his seventynine years, and in view of the almost insuperable difficulties of a task to be carried on so far from home, in a deadly climate, and under conditions worse even than those which had prevailed at Suez. Only the personal supervision of a master mind resident on the spot could have carried it to a successful issue, and this at his time of life was out of the question. the offer was too tempting to one of his ambitious and sanguine disposition, and he tendered his acceptance in the following graceful little speech:

But

Je dois vous avouer que je suis passé par bien des perplexités pendant le temps qu'a duré ce Congrès; je ne pensais pas, il y a quinze jours, que je serais obligé de me mettre à le tête d'une entreprise nouvelle. Mes meilleurs amis ont voulu m'en dissuader, me disant qu' après Suez je devais me reposer. Eh bien! si on demande à un

général qui a gagné une première bataille s'i veut en gagner une seconde, il ne peut pas refuser.

Lesseps' first care was to summon a Congress of international savants, to discuss the Canal scheme in all its different bearings. This Congress he subdivided into five Committees, each of which undertook to investigate one division of the very complex subject before it. It has never been denied that this Congress comprised the names of the world's leading representatives in the science, politics and industry of that day; and it may therefore be interesting to note that the so-called "technical" sub-Committee decided by a large majority against the system of locks, and declared strongly in favor of an open Canal on the level, the feasibility of which seemed to them quite clear. Without any pre-arranged understanding the four other sub-Committees came to the same opinion, and expressed the same objection to a Canal with locks.

On May 29, 1879, the following resolution was put to the vote, and adopted by 78 out of the total of 98 on the five Committees:

The Congress is of opinion that the cutting of an inter-oceanic Canal with one level, so desirable in the interests of trade and navigation, is possible; and that this maritime Canal, in order to give the indispensable facilities of access and use which a passage of the kind must be supposed to give, should go from the Gulf of Limon to the Bay of Panama.

The route then selected is, with slight variations, the one which will probably be followed by the United States to-day.

Having decided to build the Canal in accordance with the views of the scientific and expert Commission above mentioned, the next consideration was that of finance. Lesseps tells us that

in his opinion "the best course for the Panama, as it had been for the Suez Canal, would be to prosecute the work by means of public money, and ask for nothing from any of the Governments, leaving the enterprise its purely industrial character, and avoiding anything like dabbling in politics."

The successful builder of the Suez Canal was hardly likely to remain long in need of funds for an undertaking which he guaranteed. Immense sums of money poured into the Company's exchequer from England, America and France; and soon the world witnessed the commencement of an undertaking the necessity of which had been first recognized more than three centuries before.

To the Isthmus at Lesseps' call flocked all the loose negro labor-population of Jamaica and the Antilles. Lured by the high wages offered, they left their homes in thousands, and swarmed to Panama only to die like flies in that pestiferous climate. Some work was done-and good work, too, as the Americans admit who profit by it to-day; for the Company, as we have seen, had the advice of the best engineering talent in the world, and its pecuniary resources were, for a time at least, unlimited. But adverse influences were at work to undermine its success, influences with which its aged chairman was powerless to cope. Rank extravagance in every department characterized the undertaking. It has become the fashion now to heap abuse on Ferdinand de Lesseps, and to call in question the personal honesty of a man whose name has been made famous by a lifetime of good work. Into the controversy of how much he knew of the nefarious practices conducted in his name, there is no need to enter here; suffice it to say that eight short years this Company lasted, and that when the crash came which destroyed so many reputations, thousands

were beggared who had put their all in Lesseps' hands.

The first Panama Company was dissolved in 1889, as the result of the scandals connected with it, and a second one was formed on condition of raising a capital of £2,500,000 to proceed with the work. The record of this second Company was as good as that of the first had been the reverse; unfortunately, however, public confidence was lost, and in 1902 want of funds compelled it to sell its interests outright to the United States.

It was a bitter mortification to the French being thus compelled to relinquish the execution of an enterprise which, if successfully carried through, must have redounded so greatly to the credit of their country; and it has been told me that when the United States sent their agents in 1904 to take over the Canal property on the Isthmus, feeling on this question ran so high that the French on the spot could hardly bring themselves to offer the usurpers the ordinary courtesies of life.

And when all is said and done, the fact remains that, in spite of the dishonesty of individuals, the French Canal Company did great work on the Isthmus. To them belongs the credit of having mapped out the best route to follow. Several miles of Canal are in use to-day which they dug out, and already they had made considerable progress with the herculean task of cutting through the great Culebra Cut. We did not find the Americans out there ungrateful to their predecessors. They are the first to admit how much they owe, not only to the manual labor which was put by them into the Canal, but also to the scientific researches of their geographers and engineers, and to the fact that a fortune was sacrificed by them in experimenting as to the most suitable labor to be employed in that deadly climate. Until it was definitely ascertained that white men can

not work as laborers under the tropical conditions prevailing on the Isthmus, the French spent large sums annually in transporting them thither to dig the Canal. Americans are profiting by this experience. Now they practically only employ them as clerks, police, and

Overseers.

In fairness to the French, who have been accused of culpable negligence as regards precautions for preserving the health of their employees, it must also be conceded that it was not altogether owing to their neglect that their deathroll was so much higher in proportion than that of the Americans to-day, for in the last few years immeasurable strides have been made in the scientific application of the discovery connecting mosquitoes with the transmittal of malaria and yellow fever-a discovery which more than anything has contributed to the present diminution of mortality on the Isthmus.

But to return to the history of the Canal.

On June 28, 1902, the Congress of the United States of America passed the so-called "Spooner Act," by which the President was authorized to acquire for, and on behalf of, the United States, at a cost not exceeding $40,000,000 (£8,000,000), all the property, real, personal and mixed, of every name and nature, owned by the New Panama Canal Company of France, on the Isthmus of Panama, for the purpose of constructing a Canal connecting the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By the same Act the President was authorized to acquire from the Republic of Colombia, for and on behalf of the United States, perpetual control of a strip of land, the territory of the Republic of Colombia, not less than six miles in width, extending from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, upon certain conditions mentioned in the Act.

The next event of importance in the