At end of the first year $ 3,403,477 “ “ second “ 3,712,884 “ “ third “ 4,022,291 “ “ fourth “ 4,331,698 “ “ fifth “ 4,641,105 “ “ sixth “ 4,950,512 “ “ seventh “ 5,259,919 “ “ eighth “ 5,569,326 “ “ ninth “ 5,878,733 “ “ tenth “ 6,188,140 ——————————— Gross receipts for tolls during ten years $47,958,085 This estimate is undoubtedly less than the revenue which will be received. No conjectural estimate is made of the probable development of the agricultural and mineral wealth of the valleys of the Mississippi and the Amazon, of the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and Pacific coast of America. And yet, in attempting to form an idea of the probable revenue and actual value of this canal, all the industrial resources called into being by its influence should be taken into consideration. It is like opening the gate to commerce, which, for centuries, man has struggled to unlock. No event in history has been followed by more marvelous consequences than the discovery of Columbus. So closely is man bound up with matter, that every conquest of nature not only adds to his material comfort, but opens new fields for the moral and intellectual progress of the race. America not only opened new industrial resources, but afforded the population of Europe an opportunity to escape from the social, moral, and physical oppression of caste, bigotry, and capital, which had become intolerable. If we could lift the veil which conceals the future, and could see “the vision of the world and the wonder that will be,” it is not improbable that we should see the vast elements of progress latent in the American continents, working out their legitimate and logical results, as wonderful as those which have transpired since the colonization of America.