Except for the bubbling of the water under our bow there was not a sound to disturb the silence that hung above the narrow canal and the green bushes that rose from a bed of water. I thought of the entrance of the Suez Canal, as I had seen it at Port Said and at Ismaïlia, with great P. & O. steamers passing down its length, and troop-ships showing hundreds of white helmets above the sides, and tramp steamers and sailing-vessels flying every flag, and compared it and its scenes of life and movement with this dreary waste before us, with the idle dredges rearing their iron girders to the sky, the engineers’ sign-posts half smothered in the water and the mud, and with a naked fisherman paddling noiselessly down the canal with his eyes fixed on the water, his hollowed log canoe the only floating vessel in what should have been the highway of the world. There were about eight hundred men in all working along the whole length of the canal while we were there, instead of the twelve thousand that once made the place hum with activity. But the work the twelve thousand accomplished remains, and the stranger is surprised to find that there is so much of it and that it is so well done. It looks to his ignorant eyes as though only a little more energy and a greater amount of honesty would be necessary to open the canal to traffic; but experts will tell him that one hundred million dollars will have to be expended and seven or eight years of honest work done before that ditch can be dug and France hold a Kiel celebration of her own. But before that happens every citizen of the United States should help to open the Nicaragua Canal to the world under the protection and the virtual ownership of his own country. Our stay in Panama was shortened somewhat on account of our having taken too great an interest in the freedom of a young lawyer and diplomat, who was arrested while we were there, charged with being one of the leaders of the revolution. [Illustration: STREET SCENE IN PANAMA]