“As up to date the sum expended is 818,023,900 francs, it is evident that the cost per metre of work has been exorbitant. Were we to base our calculations on these figures, the total cost of the canal would become fabulous, and it would probably never be finished. But this is not the way to calculate. We have to look at the costly preliminary works, the purchase of the railroad, the immense amounts of materials which had to be collected, and the purchase and erection of buildings, all of which were expenses which had to be met in order that a work should progress which is perhaps the most important and colossal of modern or any times. Thus the expense of work per metre has diminished as the work has progressed, and only when it shall have been completed shall we be able to determine the cost of all the excavations.” About the close of 1887, the canal was _in extremis_. The funds in hand had sunk to a low point, and there appeared to be but little prospect of raising more. M. de Lesseps, however, again proved himself equal to the occasion. Instead of abandoning himself to despair, as the vast difficulties, past, present, and to come, would have warranted, he announced to his fellow-countrymen in a letter to the Premier that he would proceed with the work piecemeal, providing in the meantime a sufficient passage through the canal for the 7½ million tons of annual traffic then anticipated,[185] and looking forward to the completion of the canal, as originally designed, by means of small levies on the annual profits, as in the case of the Suez Canal. The Consultative Commission had, he added, declared the practicability both of constructing on the central mass an upper cutting which would allow of the continuance of the level works by dredging, and of opening the maritime transport between the two oceans as soon as these plans were completed. M. de Lesseps went on to say:— “This approval leaves for extraction only 40,000,000 cubic metres, 10,000,000 being hard soil, and 30,000,000 dredgable soil. The carrying out of these reduced extractions being materially ensured, we entrusted the task of submitting to us a contract for the execution of the works to M. Eiffel, whose reputation has been established by engineering skill equally exact and bold, and by his great metallurgic works; imposing on him the obligation of applying exclusively to French industry for the supply of materials, and for all other co-operation.