It is true the cost of the Suez Canal had been more than double his original estimate, even up to the time when it was first opened, and many millions sterling had been expended since; it was likewise the fact that his great idea had taken fully ten years to realise in the shape of a completed enterprise. But this was the larger tribute to his foresight and power of overcoming obstacles due either to natural causes or to the malignity of enemies. Thus Ferdinand de Lesseps, ten years after the Suez Canal had been made available for shipping between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, held an unequalled position in the eyes of French engineers, French bankers and, what was more important, French investors. Early in the year 1879 M. de Lesseps, following the course adopted by him in the case of the isthmus of Suez, called a Congress of the nations to consider the entire project of a Panama Canal. There was nothing new in the matter. The line of the canal had been surveyed by a capable French engineer nearly forty years before. The Congress estimated the actual cost of the construction of the canal at about £25,000,000, or a little more than the highest sum thought sufficient by the English engineer of the Panama Railroad. But the mere figures are of little importance. That they were quite insufficient, as the business was managed, has since been abundantly proved. But at first there is no reason to believe that de Lesseps was other than quite straightforward. He had bought the concession for the canal from Mr. Buonaparte Wyse, who had acquired it from the United States of Colombia, through whose territory the canal as surveyed ran. That this concession itself had previously been found very difficult to finance in any shape was a matter of common knowledge; that also the canal, when constructed, might prove far less valuable in every way than was calculated for world commerce was the opinion of many skilled engineers. But then the same things had been said about Suez. So the French public rushed in to subscribe the money required for the French Company immediately formed by M. de Lesseps to exploit the concession.