The first and the most serious difficulty to be encountered was that of controlling the waters of a torrential stream, almost equal to that of some of the chief rivers of Italy, through which the canal was to run. This stream, which crosses and recrosses the line of the canal twenty-seven times, as shown in the drawing attached hereto, has several different levels, and would, if left to itself, be certain to destroy the canal in a very short time. It had therefore to be dealt with by constructing an enormous embankment raised 45 feet above the waters of the Chagres, so as to allow of their gradual escape. In this dam there are 26 millions of cubic yards of cutting; in the Culebra Col, a channel cut right through a mountain more than 300 feet above sea level, there were estimated to be 37 millions more; and in the entire line of the canal there were calculated to be about 75 to 100 millions of cubic yards of excavation, to accomplish which a serious writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ maintained that it would require the labour of 20,000 men for forty-two years. Worse than all, however, was the dreadful and deadly climate. Five months of the year are continually wet. There are few fine days in the other seven months. The annual rainfall is twelve to fifteen times that of Europe. The mortality is excessive. The cost of labour is consequently high,[190] but pay what they may, the company could not command the amount of labour it was anxious to employ. For the most part the labour has had to be imported from Europe and the West Indies. The men were brought to Panama at the expense of the Company, but a very large proportion of them left again immediately, for various reasons, so that the company has not been able to keep up the proper quotas of men with which they undertook to provide their contractors, who were left at liberty to throw up their contracts when they ceased to be remunerative. The cost of the undertaking was thus enormously increased beyond the original estimates. The difficulty of procuring ways and means, and the high prices that had to be paid for borrowed money, have also seriously added to the expenditure. Another serious element of cost has been the outlay incurred in providing hospital and other facilities, and the maintenance of the usually very considerable numbers who were stricken with illness, induced by their unhealthy surroundings. These and other difficulties have so seriously weighed upon the undertaking that its accomplishment has been pronounced impossible, and M. de Lesseps and his colleagues have been denounced for following a “will-o’-the-wisp.” They have, however, persevered with their task for about eight years, and have made heroic, and almost superhuman efforts to keep the enterprise on its legs. In this effort they have had to depend absolutely upon their own countrymen, although they have much less maritime interest in the matter than the people of England and the United States of North America.