JUNCTURE OF FRENCH AND AMERICAN CANALS The American Canal is the wider, and affords the more direct route to the sea] Later, the same party assembled to witness the first blast at Culebra--for the French made the first attack on that redoubtable fortress, which after the lapse of thirty-five years is stubbornly resisting our American sappers and miners. But after due preparations, including wine, the fair hand of Mlle. Ferdinande De Lesseps pressed the button--and nothing happened. Some fault in the connections made the electric spark impotent, and the chroniclers of the time do not record exactly when the blast was actually fired. But in the official canal paper the ceremony was described as “perfectly successful,” and the reporter added that picturesque detail which Koko said “imparts an artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uninteresting statement of fact,” by saying that the rocks were “much less resistant than we had expected.” [Illustration: PART OF THE TOLL OF LIFE This cemetery on the westerly slope of Ancon Hill is one of the Zone’s pathetic spots] These needless ceremonies and the false reports which attended them were merely what in our cynical age and nation are called press-agent “stunts,” and were necessitated by the need for interesting the French people in the work, lest they let the market for the shares slump. They were early symptoms of the evil that culminated in the revelations of blackmail and forced tribute paid the French press when the final collapse was impending and inevitable. De Lesseps indeed was a master in the art of “working the press,” and had he confined his activities to that, without interfering with his engineers, history might have told a different story of his canal management. But lest doubt should seize upon would-be investors, he continually cut down the estimates of his engineers, and issued flamboyant proclamations announcing triumphs that had not been won and prophesying a rate of progress that never could be attained. When his very capable Technical Commission, headed by Col. George M. Totten, the builder of the Panama Railroad, estimated the total cost of the canal at $168,600,000, he took the report to his cabin on shipboard and there arbitrarily, with no possible new data, lopped off about $37,000,000. Even at that, he calmly capitalized his company at 600,000,000 francs or $120,000,000, though his own estimate of the cost of the canal exceeded that amount by more than $12,000,000. One-half of his capital stock or $60,000,000 the Count had reserved for the United States, but sold not a dollar’s worth. The $60,000,000 first offered in France was, however, eagerly subscribed. Of course it was wholly insufficient.