The isthmus rapidly degenerated into a moral as well as a climatic pest-house. Froude described the condition of things at Panama in one terrible sentence: "In all the world there is perhaps not now concentrated in any single spot so much swindling and villainy, so much foul disease, such a hideous dung-heap of moral and physical abomination." In fairness, however, it must be said that Lesseps himself cannot be held directly responsible for this state of affairs. He lived in Paris, and had probably little notion of what was happening at Panama. He furnished an example of the proverbial effects of too much success and prosperity. He seems to have become a superstitious believer in his own star, and to have thought that nothing could fail with which he was associated. Still less can the French nation be blamed for the wild doings of their representatives at the isthmus. And there is at least one redeeming feature in the conduct of this enterprise. In the midst of the moral and physical abominations that infested the isthmus during the French occupation, the engineering work went on steadily and conscientiously. Much of the French work was available for the Americans when they took over the task, and the engineers of the United States have always testified generously to the excellence of the French excavation and construction along the Canal route. It must be carefully noted that the French canal was to be sea-level like the Suez, Corinth, and Kiel Canals. The construction of such a waterway differed in many important ways from that of the high-level lock canal which the United States have completed. To understand this we must consider briefly the character of the country which lies between Panama and Colon. The dominant and decisive features of the isthmus at this point are the Chagres River and the Culebra Mountains. The Chagres enters the Caribbean a little west of Colon. Its valley runs right across the isthmus south-south-eastwardly towards Panama for about twenty-six miles, then, at a place called Bas Opisbo, suddenly swerves away to the north-east into the trackless and jungle-clad hill country. This valley is the only transverse trench which the isthmus affords at this stretch, and it has always fixed the attention of surveyors looking out for a canal site. If the isthmus had been a rainless desert like that of Suez, a canal could have been constructed by a further preparation of this river valley and some heavy excavations along the nine-mile reach from Obispo to the Pacific. The sea would then have been admitted, the ebb and flow of the Pacific (the Atlantic shore is almost tideless) being regulated by a tidal lock. But the problem is not nearly so simple. The isthmus is one of the rainiest places in the world, enjoying on the Atlantic side 140 inches of rain a year. At Panama the rate is much smaller, not more than 60 inches. In the central hills the rainfall averages 90 to 95 inches. The average number of rainy days in