And the Baroness Von Eulaw guessed now who it was that had made the pin holes in her eyes. CHAPTER XXV. “No more shall nation against nation rise.” The Congress of 1892 builded even better than it knew, when it dropped partisan prejudices, and arose superior to local fetterings, and, in a truly national spirit, secured for the United States of America dominion of the seas and control of the commerce of the world. The Act of Congress which guaranteed the payment of five per cent bonds of the Nicaragua Canal Company to the extent of $100,000,000, and which provided that the canal tolls upon American ships should never be more than two-thirds the amount charged the vessels of other nations, enabled the company to construct the canal with unexpected rapidity, without calling upon the United States for a dollar of the guaranty, while, more than any subsidy or favorable mail contract, it aided to place the Stars and Stripes at the mastheads of the vast fleet of ships and steamers which, upon the completion of the canal in the autumn of 1895, began to pass between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The local traffic developed by the canal proved something phenomenal. Early in the history of its construction it became generally known that the country, for hundreds of miles about Lake Nicaragua, was not an unhealthy tropical jungle, but an elevated, breezy table-land, environed and divided by snow-clad mountains, with an average temperature only a few degrees warmer than that of California, and with a much more even distribution of rainfall. A knowledge of these advantages was followed by a large incursion of American settlers. There is perhaps no product of field or forest more profitable than the coffee plant. Steadily the demand for the fragrant berry is upon the increase, while, beside having few enemies in the insect world, the area within which coffee can be advantageously grown is very limited. While the coffee plant does not require an exceptionally hot climate, it will not thrive where frost is a possibility. The hill slopes and table-lands of Nicaragua were found to be peculiarly adapted for its growth, and thousands of acres of young plantations were already thriving where for centuries only wild grasses had waved. Short lines of railroad, centering on Lake Nicaragua, and running in every direction, had made accessible a large extent of country. The scream of the gang saw was heard amid forests of dyewoods, rosewood, and mahogany. Mines of gold, silver, copper, iron, and coal were opened. Cotton, sugar, and indigo plantations were developed, and Millerville, on Lake Nicaragua, when the war ships passed through the canal to attend David Morning’s dynamic exposition, was already a city of fifty thousand people, provided with electric lights and cable roads.