"A man likes to know the ins and outs of the whole affair," he observed slowly, as they trundled along on the car. "There's thousands, I should say, who don't even know why we have decided to build this canal, and thousands more who don't rightly guess what we're going to do with it when it's finished. But Columbus, when he discovered the Bay of Limon round about the year 1497, thought that he had found a short cut across to the East Indies. He didn't cotton to the fact that the isthmus stretches unbroken between the two Americas, and only came to believe that fact when his boats came to a dead end in the bay he had discovered. Cortés sought for a waterway at Mexico, while others hunted round for a channel along the River St. Lawrence, and all with the one idea of making a short passage to the East Indies. "Then the Straits of Magellan were discovered, while some of those bold Spaniards clambered across the isthmus and set eyes upon the Pacific Ocean. You know what happened? Guess they built and launched ships at Panama, and the conquest of Peru was undertaken, and following it gold and jewels in plenty were brought by mule train from the Pacific to the Atlantic, across from Panama to Colon. So great was the traffic that even in the days of Charles V of Spain the question of an isthmian canal was mooted; for, recollect, Spain drew riches from the Indies as well as from Peru. And now we come to the nineteenth century. America badly wanted an isthmian crossing which would bring her western ports closer to those on the east, and vice versa. A railway seemed to be the only feasible method, and we tackled the job splendidly. That railway was completed in 1855, in spite of an awful climate, and guess it filled the purpose nicely. Just hereabouts came our war, North against South, and, as you can readily understand, there wasn't much chance of canal building.