of the human machines which have broken down there, picked clean by the vultures. Everything which imagination can conceive that is ghastly and loathsome seems to be gathered into that locality just now. I was pressed to go on and look at the moral surroundings of ‘the greatest undertaking of our age,’ but my curiosity was less strong than my disgust.” [Illustration: PROPOSED SLUICE OF 11 METRES ON THE PANAMA CANAL, SHOWING THE ROLLING GATE OPEN.] [Illustration: DINGLE’S DREDGER AT WORK AT GATUN, ON THE EXCAVATION OF THE PANAMA CANAL.] The time has not yet come when the true history of the Panama Canal Scheme can be written. It may have been an ill-judged project, or it may not. It has, however, had enormous difficulties to contend with. Those difficulties began with the climate, continued with the administration and finances, and concluded with the open hostility of very many individuals and interests that were never very friendly to its success. The enterprise was essentially French, alike in its conception, initiation, engineering, and finances. The phenomenal success that attended the Suez Canal probably led the majority of the unfortunate people who put money into the Panama Canal to suppose that it was to be another Egyptian Canal “writ large;” but there has also been a strong feeling of _esprit de corps_, which we cannot fail to admire, however disastrously it may have turned out for themselves, which the French have put into this matter. The truth is that the French people have come to regard themselves as a royal race in canal construction. The Languedoc Canal, which they constructed in the reign of Louis XIV. cost 14,000,000 livres, and marked a new epoch in the history of canal construction.[202] Of the Suez Canal, the leading features of which are so well known, it is unnecessary to say more than that its success has not only been phenomenal, but has been achieved in the face of the most discouraging attitude on the part of the engineers of other countries, including England. At the time that the Panama Canal was being promoted, M. de Lesseps was able to point his countrymen to the fact that the shares in the Suez Canal, which had been issued at 500 francs, had risen to a value of 2200 francs, while the debentures issued at 300 francs were worth 565. The impressionable French people did not stay to recollect that the two enterprises were totally different in character, in cost, in accessibility, in practicability, and in prospects. And it is only fair to recollect that the original estimate of the cost of the canal has been largely exceeded by circumstances that were hardly capable of being foreseen. The repeated attacks made by inimical interests, led to the company having to borrow on higher terms, as well as to the suspension of work on the isthmus for nearly a year. A much larger amount and higher rate of interest has had to be paid to share and debenture holders than was ever expected.