The French company began work on the isthmus in February, and such a rake's progress set in as the world has seldom seen. The name of Ferdinand de Lesseps inspired such confidence that plenty of money was forthcoming from the French people. A great deal of it was subscribed by small investors who could ill afford to lose their savings, and no fewer than 16,000 women took shares in their own names. The beginning of the excavations was celebrated with a "gala" performance in the little theatre at Panama, among the artistes being Sarah Bernhardt. Then began a drama or a melodrama of extravagance and profligacy lasting seven years. Money was poured out like the torrential flood-waters down the river Chagres. I have mentioned the exorbitant sum which the company paid for the Panama Railway. All the expenditure was on the same scale. Princely salaries were paid to the managers and directors, and elegant mansions erected for their accommodation. Building operations--warehouses, hospitals, hotels, etc.--were carried on "regardless." Mr. W. F. Johnson tells of a man who owned thirty acres of land useful mainly as a breeding-place for mosquitoes, but lying right across the route of the canal. It was worth perhaps 300 dollars. The man demanded just a thousand times that sum; the Colombian courts awarded it, and the French paid it. For one great mistake the French made was that they failed to secure a canal zone in which they would have exercised full powers of administration. They began to build their canal on Colombian territory, under Colombian control, and the consequence was that they were fleeced on every side. Probably this mistake was inevitable, as the United States would have vetoed any territorial concession by Colombia to France as a transgression of the Monroe doctrine.