Over this route, on the shoulders of slaves and the back of mules, were transported the wares in trade of Spain with its colonies not only on the west coasts of the Americas, but with the Philippines. Not far from Colon was the site of the colony of New Caledonia, the disastrous undertaking of the Scotchman, Patterson, who founded the Bank of England, to duplicate in America the enormous financial success of the East India Company in Asia. Here in the ancient city of Panama in the early part of the nineteenth century assembled the first Pan American conference that gave life to the Monroe doctrine and ended the era of European colonization in America. Here was built with infinite labor and terrific toll of life the first railroad connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans--a railroad less than 50 miles in length, but with perhaps the most interesting story in the annals of railroading. Across this barrier in '49 clambered the American argonauts, seeking the newly discovered golden fleeces of California. This was the theater of the failure of Count de Lesseps, the most stupendous financial fiasco in the history of the world. And this, now, is the site of the most expensive and most successful engineering project ever undertaken by human beings. It cost the French $300,000,000 to fail at Panama where the Americans, at the expenditure of $375,000,000, succeeded. And, of the excavation done by the French, only $30,000,000 worth was available for the purpose of the Americans. That the Americans succeeded where the French had failed is not to be assigned to the superiority of the American over the French nation. The reasons are to be sought, rather, in the underlying purposes of the two undertakings, and in the scientific and engineering progress made in the double decade intervening between the time when the French failure became apparent and the Americans began their work.