A long telegram received at the executive mansion in Washington to-day was given to the country by the orders of the President, after unavailing remonstrances from the members of the cabinet, who wanted the news withheld until confirmatory despatches were received. It is believed that these _were_ received, and that the President ordered the distribution of the news. In a word it announces the destruction of the Canal, and the submergence of the Canal zone, through a series of progressive changes in the earth’s surface at that section, accompanied by severe earthquake phenomena. The confluent waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will mingle over the buried structures of the Canal, and one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, representing the labor of three years, and nearly fifty thousand men, with an enormous accumulation of material, will have been spent in vain. The Nation’s credit remains unimpeached and unimpeachable, but the moral effects of this stupendous calamity can scarcely be over-estimated. THE STORY IN DETAIL. A series of quickly succeeding earthquakes shook the City of Panama on the evening of May 27th. They were slight in character, though distinguished by peculiar rotatory effects, turning natural objects half way round, and producing curious effects upon pedestrians who became dizzy under their influence. These seemed to have passed inland and to have accumulated in one severe shock at Miraflores, just as a number of waves in water, chasing each other, may combine to form a resultant wave higher than its components, and generally, if the confluence takes place in the right phase, of a height which is the sum of the heights of the smaller elements.