There was no longer any necessity for holding the “Oregon” in Pacific waters, and so quickly followed the order from the Secretary of the Navy that she should at once take her departure to the coasts of Cuba and join the American squadron operating there. The citizens of San Francisco swarmed the hilltops to see the departure of their favorite battleship. She sailed majestically out through the Golden Gate and turned her prow southward. The patriotic hearts of the men and women of California followed her course as they read each morning in the newspapers the description of her successful voyage down the western coasts of Mexico and Central America, on past Panama and along the coasts of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, then to the northward to her station on the coast of Cuba. But they noted that this voyage consumed sixty-five days of time. [Illustration: THE CULEBRA CUT, LOOKING NORTH.] Then the President, the American Congress, and the American people awoke to the fact that if the safety of the cities of the seaboards of the Atlantic and the Pacific depended upon naval protection, and that if such a long voyage would have to be taken by ships stationed upon the opposite coast, it might mean the destruction of incalculable wealth. The entire Nation began to realize that if the “Oregon” could have sailed from San Francisco to Panama and passed through the isthmus by means of a canal such as we are now constructing, she could have made the voyage from San Francisco to the coasts of Cuba, consuming three days at Colon or Panama to take on stores and ammunition, and still could have been at her station on the coasts of Cuba in sixteen days’ time. The people of the country began to realize that the difference between sixteen and sixty-five days might mean the safety of the Nation, and especially so if we were at war with a maritime power such as Great Britain, Germany and Japan. This startling demonstration of the absolute necessity for a Panama Canal from the standpoint of American national safety, at once swept aside all opposition at Washington to canal construction. Immediately a universal wave of sentiment in favor of a national American Isthmian Canal swept over the land and found its expression in instructions by every constituency in the Union to Congressmen and to Senators to do all in their power to assist in bringing canal legislation to a successful termination. The Canal Commission Immediately thereafter President William McKinley was authorized by Congress to send a commission to Panama and Nicaragua to examine those two routes and to receive offers from the different companies as to the amounts the different projects could be purchased for.