The French Canal Company was glad to sell to the American Government its concessions on the Isthmus, and as much of the Canal as it had dug, for $40,000,000. It had originally bought its concession from the Government of Colombia, which owned the State of Panama: At first the Colombian rulers seemed glad, and they sent an accredited agent, Dr. Herran, to Washington, who framed with Secretary Hay a treaty satisfactory to both, and believed, by Mr. Hay, to represent the sincere intentions of the Colombian Government at Bogota. The Colombian politicians, however, who were banditti of the Tammany stripe, but as much cruder as Bogota was than New York City, suddenly discovered that the transaction might be much more profitable for themselves than they had at first suspected. They put off ratifying the treaty, therefore, and warned the French Company that they should charge it an additional $10,000,000 for the privilege of transferring its concession to the Americans. The French demurred; the Americans waited. Secretary Hay reminded Dr. Herran that the treaty must be signed within a reasonable time, and intimated that the reasonable time would soon be up. The Bogotan blackmailers indulged in still wilder dreams of avarice; like the hasheesh-eater, they completely lost contact with reality and truth. In one of their earlier compacts with the French Company they stipulated that, if the Canal were not completed by a certain day in 1904, the entire concession and undertaking should revert to the Colombian Government. As it was now September, 1903, it did not require the wits of a political bandit to see that, by staving off an agreement with the United States for a few months, Colombia could get possession of property and privileges which the French were selling to the Americans for $40,000,000. So the Colombian Parliament adjourned in October, 1903, without even taking up the Hay-Herran Treaty.