Without some protection the entrance to the canal would have been exposed to the extremely violent storms which occur in the Caribbean during the winter months. During these storms vessels cannot lie safely in Colon harbour, and could not safely enter or issue from the canal. So a breakwater two miles long has been run out from Toro point in an easterly direction, covering the extremity of the canal. A glance at the map will suggest a thought that this barrier will not provide sufficient protection, and that another breakwater will have to be run out from the eastern shore. Such a further protection will be provided if the need should arise. At this point then, west of Colon and at the mouth of Limon Bay, our vessel enters the buoyed submarine channel of the canal and speeds onwards along the first section of the waterway, 500 feet in bottom-width and 41 feet deep, towards the locks at Gatun. But the locks are not yet visible. It is not until the fifth mile--that is, at Mindi--that a bend of the canal opens that gigantic structure to view, and by that time the vessel has left the broad waters and is enclosed within banks. The experience which awaits the traveller who has looked forward with some excitement to see the world's greatest wonder of to-day has been vividly imagined by Mr. Bryce. Our late American Ambassador writes:-- The voyager of the future, in the ten or twelve hours of his passage from ocean to ocean, will have much variety. The level light of the fiery tropic dawn will fall on the houses of Colon as he approaches it in the morning, when vessels usually arrive. When his ship has mounted the majestic staircase of the three Gatun locks from the Atlantic level, he will glide slowly and softly along the waters of a broad lake which gradually narrows toward its head--a lake enclosed by rich forests of that velvety softness one sees in the tropics, with vistas of forest-girt islets stretching far off to right and left among the hills; a welcome change from the restless Caribbean Sea which he has left. Then the mountains will close in upon him, steep slopes of grass or brushwood rising two hundred feet above him as he passes through the great Cut. From the level of the Miguel lock he will look southward down the broad vale that opens on the ocean flooded with the light of the declining sun, and see the rocky islets rising, between which in the twilight his course will lie out into the vast Pacific. At Suez the passage from sea to sea is through a dreary and monotonous waste of shifting sand and barren clay. Here one is for a few hours in the centre of a verdant continent, floating on smooth waters, shut off from sight of the ocean behind and the ocean before--a short sweet present of tranquillity between a stormy past and a stormy future.