On New Year's Day, 1880, de Lesseps formally inaugurated the work of building the canal. A large party of ladies and gentlemen visited the mouth of the Rio Grande where the first shovelful of sod was to be turned. An address was made by Count de Lesseps, and a benediction upon the enterprise was bestowed by the Bishop of Panama. Champagne flowed like water, and it is said that the speechmaking continued so long that the party did not have time to go ashore to turn the sod, so it was brought on board and Miss Fernanda de Lesseps there made the initial stroke in the digging of the big waterway. Some days later the work at Culebra Cut was inaugurated. Tracy Robinson thus described the scene: "The blessing had been pronounced by the Bishop of Panama and the champagne, duly iced, was waiting to quell the swelter of the tropical sun as soon as the explosion went off. There the crowd stood breathless, ears stopped, eyes blinking, half in terror lest this artificial earthquake might involve general destruction. But there was no explosion! It would not go! Then a humorous sense of relief stole upon the crowd. With one accord everybody exclaimed, 'Good Gracious!' and hurried away for fear that after all the dynamite should see fit to explode. That was Fiasco No. 1." After de Lesseps left the Isthmus he toured the United States where he was everywhere welcomed although he did not find a market in this country for his stock. The scientific congress estimated the cost of building the canal, whose construction de Lesseps had inaugurated, at $214,000,000. M. de Lesseps himself later arbitrarily cut this estimate to $131,000,000, and announced that he believed that vessels would be able to go from ocean to ocean after the expenditure of $120,000,000. He declared that if the committee had decided to build a lock canal, he would have put on his hat and gone home, since he believed it would be much more expensive to build a lock canal with twin chambers than to build a sea-level waterway. There were those who declared that six years was the utmost limit that would be required for building the big ditch. Others asserted with confidence that it could be done in four years.