The director general at the expense of the stockholders built himself a house costing $100,000. His summer home at La Boca cost $150,000. It came to be known as "Dingler's Folly," for Dingler lost his wife and children of yellow fever and never was able to live in his sumptuous summer home. He drew $50,000 a year salary, and $50 a day for each day he traveled a mile over the line in his splendid $42,000 Pullman. The hospitals at Ancon and Colon cost $7,000,000, and the office buildings over $5,000,000. Where a $50,000 building was needed, a $100,000 building was erected, and the canal stockholders were charged $200,000 for it. Supplies were bought almost wholly without reference to actual needs. Ten thousand snow shovels were brought to the Isthmus where no snow ever has fallen. Some 15,000 torchlights were carried there to be used in the great celebration upon the completion of the canal. Steam-boats, dredges, launches, and whatnot were brought to the Isthmus, knocked down, and taken into the interior to await the opening of the waterway. The stationery bill of the canal company with one firm alone amounted to $180,000 a year. When the Americans took possession they found among other things a ton of rusty and useless pen points, not one of which had ever been used. Two years' service entitled employees to five months' leave of absence and traveling expenses both ways. There was no adequate system of accounting and any employee could have his requisition for household articles honored almost as often as he liked. In a multitude of cases this laxity was taken advantage of and quite a business was carried on secretly in buying and selling furniture belonging to the company. One official built a bath house costing $40,000. A son of de Lesseps became a silent partner of nearly every large contractor on the Isthmus, getting a large "rake-off" from every contract let. Near the summit of the Great Divide the Americans who took possession in 1904 found a small iron steamer. It is said to have been the purpose of the canal promoters to put this little steamer on a small pond in Culebra Cut, and by the aid of a skillful photographer to get a picture showing navigation across the Isthmus. This steamer was hauled by the Americans to Panama, where during the years of the American construction work it did service in carrying the sick to the sanitarium at Taboga.