The different uses to which this steamer was put during the French and American régimes illustrates the different aims of the Americans and the French in connection with the Panama Canal. There was little concern about the health of the canal workers under the French, in spite of great liberality in the construction of hospitals. The construction work was let out to contractors, who were charged a dollar a day by the French Company for maintaining the sick members of their force in the hospital. Of course, the contractors were not over anxious to put their employees into the hospitals. The result was that the death rate at Panama reached almost unprecedented proportions. [Illustration: THE MAN OF BRAWN] [Illustration: FERDINAND DE LESSEPS PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA AN OLD FRENCH EXCAVATOR NEAR TABERNILLA] This was aided to a very large degree by the manner of living obtaining there at that time. In 1887 Lieutenant Rogers, of the United States Navy, inspected the canal work and reported that the laborers were paid every Saturday, that they spent Sunday in drinking and Monday in recuperating, returning to work on Tuesday. A prominent English writer declared after a visit to Panama that in all the world there was not, perhaps, concentrated in any single spot so much swindling and villainy, so much vile disease, and such a hideous mass of moral and physical abominations. Add to these things the fact that no one then knew of the responsibility of the stegomyia mosquito for the existence of yellow fever, nor that the anopheles mosquito was the disseminator of malaria, and it is little wonder that the French failed. The hospitals, instead of aiding in the elimination of yellow fever, became its greatest allies. The bedposts were set in cups of water, and here the yellow-fever mosquitoes could breed uninterruptedly and carry infection to every patient. Wards were shut up tight at night to keep out the "terrible miasma," and the nurses went to their own quarters. When morning came there were among those thus left alone always some ready for the tomb. The history of the French attempt to construct the Panama Canal begins, in reality, with the Suez Canal. In 1854 Ferdinand de Lesseps, a Frenchman connected with the diplomatic service, saw an opportunity to revive the plans for a Suez Canal that had been urged by Napoleon in 1798. His friend, Said Pasha, had just succeeded to the khediviate of Egypt, and his proposals were warmly received. The building of the canal, which presented no serious engineering problems, was begun in 1859 and completed 10 years later. There was a sordid side to its story, too; but as the losses were borne chiefly by the Egyptians, Europe ignored them and looked only to the great success of the canal itself.