As a result of the enthusiasm that had been aroused, a syndicate at once sprang into existence for the purpose of carrying on exploration in Central America, ostensibly with the view of discovering the most suitable route, but no doubt with the prime object of making as much profit as possible from any concessions it might acquire there. Lieutenant Lucien Napoleon Bonaparte Wyse (whose name was surely enough to ruin any enterprise) was despatched to the isthmus, and landed there in 1876. He was brother-in-law to General Turr, who controlled the syndicate, and seems to have thoroughly understood the object of his mission, for he not only made a survey, but also an estimate of the cost of a canal. Whether the survey was in any way a reliable one is open to question, but there can be no doubt that the estimate was very wide of the mark, although he confidently claimed that his figures would be found to be within ten per cent of the actual cost, which alas! has not yet been ascertained. But most important of all doubtless from the syndicate’s standpoint, he succeeded in obtaining, from the Government of what had by this time become the United States of Colombia, a concession granting the exclusive privilege of constructing a canal between the two oceans through the territory of that republic; reserving always the neutrality of such canal and its terminal ports, and respecting the rights of the Panama Railroad Company. Thus did the “giving of facilities,” urged by the resolution of the Congress of 1875, degenerate into the “granting of an exclusive monopoly” to a speculative syndicate three years later. In the following year the International Congress again met in Paris to consider proposals for an interoceanic canal. M. de Lesseps presided at this Congress, and five different schemes were discussed; these being the proposals for canals at Tehuantepec, Nicaragua, Panama, San Blas and Atrato, already described. The three last-named all fell within the scope of the “exclusive rights” granted to the Turr Syndicate, and from the first the Congress favoured the scheme of Lieutenant Wyse, which, at their request, he modified so as to substitute a cutting for the proposed tunnel at the divide. The Panama scheme was now the only one before the Congress which provided for a canal without a tunnel and without locks, and by a majority of seventy-eight votes against eight (twelve delegates abstaining from voting) it was affirmed that: “The cutting of an interoceanic canal of uniform level, a work so desirable in the interest of commerce and navigation, is practicable, and the maritime canal, in order to meet the indispensable facilities of access and utilisation which ought to be offered by a passage of this kind, should be made from the Gulf of Limon to the Bay of Panama.”