above all the enormous amount of money absorbed for apparently so little return, all tended to prevent the public from further financial venture in the scheme. By the aid of special legislation, and by dint of dexterous compromise, most of the lawsuits which had been instigated against the company were settled, and the claims of a number of its creditors and bondholders successfully resisted. But none of the persons shown to have made large pickings out of Panama money evinced any inclination to refund, although an ex-Minister of the French Government is understood to have shed tears in confessing to a bribe of 375,000 francs. The Republic of Colombia granted an extension of time for the purpose of the organisation of a new company and the completion of the canal, and, although on a very reduced scale, the work was still carried on. Towards the close of the year 1894 a new company was formed upon entirely commercial lines and having no connection, alliance, or relation whatever with any Government except such as were established by the concession held from the Republic of Colombia. The board of directors was an entirely new one and was composed of gentlemen having no official relation with the old Panama Company. Pursuant to judicial sale authorised by the French Court, the new company became the sole owner of all the canal works, plant, material, concessions and other property of the old company. Deciding not to be bound by the conclusions arrived at from the surveys of the old company, the new board of directors resolved to examine and study anew all the questions involved, the most recent improvements in material and the advances made in engineering. They therefore appointed an International Technical Commission, composed of fourteen members, seven of whom were eminent French engineers, and of the other seven (experts of different nationalities) four had been particularly connected with well-known canal undertakings. The investigations of this Commission were carried on during many months, and the question was studied in all its details--technical, climatic, physical, geological and economic. It was not till 1898 that their report was issued, and in it they suggested a canal of forty-six miles in length from ocean to ocean, with a system of locks, four on each slope of the divide. All the locks were to have a rock foundation and double lock-chambers, and the time of passage from ocean to ocean was to be less than a day. They maintained that nothing in the physical conditions on the isthmus would prevent a change to a sea-level canal should such be deemed desirable in the future. They found that two-fifths of the work on the canal had been actually constructed, and that the remaining three-fifths was in a fair way to completion, as, during the last few years, three or four thousand workmen on an average had been employed in working on the canal.