In Nicaragua the rainy season ends in November, and the winters are dry and pleasant, and far less capricious than in Florida, where sultry Gulf winds so often alternate with very perceptible polar waves. Nicaragua will become the winter rendezvous of American tourists. An international highway, built by American engineers and American capital, would soon aggregate North American settlements that would add to the charms of a tropical garden-land a feeling of security which the traveler in other parts of Spanish America must generally forego; villas, watering places, and hotels for the accommodation of winter guests will spring up by scores, and the canal will soon become something more than a thoroughfare of international travel. The stockholders of such an investment could well dispense with a formal protectorate, and the obstacle of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty[C] is precisely analogous to the scruple which no politician would blame Prince Bismarck for setting aside in the Congo affair. In both cases England had for years the refusal of an opportunity which she failed to improve, and in the unwritten by-laws of international ethics the _iners non obstet_ is a rule which held good even in the Black Sea controversy. Besides, the alternative of a French monopoly and eventual protectorate in Panama may help to moderate the opponents of the Monroe Doctrine.[D] While Nicaragua will be visited for its own sake, Panama, like Vera Cruz and Cayenne, will be shunned by northern travelers, though considerations of proximity will secure it the inter-oceanic traffic of South America. Vessels carrying tobacco from Brazil to Peru, or guano from Peru to Caracas, will prefer the risk of the Chagres fever swamps to the certain disadvantages of a voyage around the distant south cape of the continent. Nicaragua will compete with Switzerland, Italy, and the winter resorts of southern California, as well as with our transcontinental railways. Panama will compete with Cape Horn. [A] The Panama _Star and Herald_ reports that $68,000,000 of the total appropriation of $120,000,000 have already been expended. The preliminary surveys alone cost 7,000,000 francs. After the plan of Monsieur de Lesseps the canal will be thirty feet deep, one hundred and twenty feet wide, and about forty-six miles long. [B] Panama (the city), too, is one of the unhealthiest spots on earth. Two months ago (January 2, 1885) the wife of Monsieur Jules Dingler, the Director-General of the Canal Company, succumbed to the same fever that had cost the lives of all her children. Dr. Ferdinand Lahr, the Sanitary Superintendent, died on the same day. [C] Captain Bedford Pim, of the British navy, states various reasons that would insure the tolerance, or even the coöperation of Great Britain. He estimates the aggregate cost at $200,000,000, and believes that England, under certain conditions, would assume one half of the demanded guarantee of three per cent. interest.