In 1903, after the United States had decided to build an Isthmian Canal, preferably at Panama, but if that route were not available at Nicaragua, a treaty was entered into at Washington between the Governments of the United States and Colombia. This Hay-Herran treaty, as it was known, in simple terms provided that the United States would pay Colombia $10,000,000 in cash, and $250,000 a year after the completion of the canal, if the Republic of Colombia would agree to permit the New Panama Canal Company to sell its concession and property to the United States. This treaty, according to President Roosevelt, was entered into under negotiations initiated by the Republic of Colombia. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate, and was then sent to Colombia for its ratification. At the time the treaty was pending in the Colombian Congress, the President of the Republic was a man who had been elected Vice President, but who had kidnapped the President with a troop of cavalry and shut him up in an insanitary dungeon where he soon died. The Vice President thus became the head of the Government. Anyone who knows conditions in such countries as Colombia, understands that a President has no use for a Congress except to have it register his own will. The President of Colombia at first advocated the negotiation of the treaty, but he repudiated it after it had been signed, and then declared that if the Colombian minister to Washington were to return to Colombia he would be hanged for signing it. The result of this change of front was that the treaty was rejected by the Colombian Congress. All sorts of stories were put abroad in Colombia to arouse opposition to it. One was that the United States would make $180,000,000 out of the canal deal the minute the treaty was ratified by Colombia. It was claimed by the Colombian Government that the constitutional prohibition of the cession of territory to a foreign state would have to be changed by amending the Constitution before the Congress could legally ratify the treaty. [Illustration: S. B. WILLIAMSON THE LOWER GATES, MIRAFLORES LOCKS] [Illustration: H. O. COLE MIDDLE GATES, MIRAFLORES LOCKS] How little the President of Colombia respected the laws of his country is shown by a dispatch received by the Government at Washington after the secession of Panama, in which it was promised that if the United States would assist Colombia in putting down the Panama revolution, the next Colombian Congress would ratify the rejected treaty. Or, failing that, the President would declare martial law, by virtue of vested constitutional authority when public order is disturbed, and ratify the canal treaty by presidential decree. If the Washington Government did not like such a proposal, the President of Colombia would call an extra session of Congress and immediately ratify the treaty.