Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be: it is like that which the physicians call predigestion, or hasty digestion, which is sure to fill the body full of crudities, and secret seeds of disease: therefore measure not dispatch by the time of sitting, but by the advancement of the business; and, as in races, it is not the long stride, or high lift, that makes the speed; so in business, the keeping close to the matter, and not taking of it too much at once, procureth dispatch. It is the care of some only to come off speedily for the time, or to contrive some false periods of business, because they may seem men of dispatch; but it is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off. The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion must be well weighed; and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands; first to watch and then to speed.

PREFACE.

In the following pages I have endeavored to relate the story of the Panama Canal from the earliest explorations to the present time with as much avoidance as possible of technics and in a manner that shall be comprehensible to the general reader. A certain degree of familiarity with the scene of the operations on the Isthmus and a somewhat close study of the subject may have enabled me to achieve my purpose.

The book has been withheld from the press for sev eral months pending the decision as to the type of waterway to be adopted. The 85-foot level plan, upon which the Canal will be constructed, is described in detail and illustrated by maps. For the purpose of comparison a description of the counter project has been included.

Since the manuscript was placed in the hands of the publishers a number of magazines have published articles treating of the Canal from the pens of other men who made special investigations on the spot. There is a close correspondence between my statements and those of the most reliable of the magazine writers. As I have depended chiefly upon official sources for my facts regarding the work and conditions on the Isthmus during the past two years it is evident that the information offered freely to the public by the Canal Commission since the inception of the undertaking has been of an entirely trustworthy character, and there is every reason to believe that it will be so in the future. C. H. F-L.

PHILADELPHIA, July 15, 1906.