dwelling upon the idea of making a waterway through the narrow neck of land that connects two great continents and divides two vast seas. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, plans have been put forward for the accomplishment of this task; but it was not until the railway across the isthmus was completed in 1854 that any serious thought was given by responsible persons to such projects. The building of the Panama Railway was brought about by the discovery of gold in California in 1849, when hundreds of adventurers from every part of the globe found this the shortest and quickest route to the western El Dorado. The history of how Aspinwall and Stevens accomplished their task of completing this short railway across a fetid tropical country, is one of the finest records of human endurance and perseverance. Sickness and disease thinned the ranks of their labourers, and the graves of hundreds of workers who perished in this enterprise are scattered profusely across the isthmus. There is a legend current in Panama that every tie on the railroad represents a human life. (That this is an exaggeration, anyone who reflects will readily perceive; for it would mean that 150,000 deaths had occurred in the five years, a number ten times greater than the whole population of the isthmus at that period.) Trains carrying thousands of passengers, and tons of goods across the forty-seven miles of track, have never been able to cope with the enormous and increasing traffic. That a canal, through which the largest ships might pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would eventually be constructed, few people doubted; and when De Lesseps, fresh from winning his laurels at Suez, undertook to construct a waterway, his enthusiasm quickly spread to thousands of his countrymen, and a French company was formed to carry out his schemes. The history of the French Canal Company is sad reading, and is now almost forgotten. The Panama scandals and the trial of the De Lesseps, father and son, with many others connected with the affair, are things of the past: the United States Government have taken over the assets of the derelict company, and innumerable American citizens are carried annually to the scene of the great undertaking. From the moment the ship leaves New York, all the talk on board is of the isthmus and the canal, and those who have never visited the narrow belt of land look forward eagerly to catching their first glimpse of this much-talked-of country. But the unfamiliar light that is frequently diffused over all, producing ever-changing and delicate tints of grey, purple, and blue, veils the landscape in indistinctness, so that expectations of beholding a land on which the sun pours down its burning rays, are unrealised, for a deluge of rain almost invariably welcomes the visitor.