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for nurses, but a practical administration which was a grim travesty of therapeutics and sanitation, and which would have been unworthy of the Ninth, not to mention the Nineteenth, Century.

Another serious error was made in the use of experimental machinery. Panama was the happy hunting ground of every mechanical inventor with a fad, where he could get his device practically tried at the expense of some one else. Pick and shovel were old and well tried, of course, but it was not alone with them that the canal was to be cut. Dredges and steam shovels were needed, and these and other machines were too often untried, impractical, and fantastic types, which, after experiments costly in both money and time, were found unsuitable or worthless. A single ex

ample, a minor one, will illustrate how the French were handicapped by imperfect utensils. The crux of the whole work, after the sea-level plan was abandoned for a canal with locks, was the monster dam at Bohio, and of course the crux of the dam-building was to find a secure foundation. There are those now who say there is no need of going down to bed-rock for the foundation, but that the great dam can be securely built upon clay or gravel. However that may be, the Frenchmen clung to the old theory that a rock base was necessary. In making their surveys and estimates, therefore, they made borings to ascertain the depth at which the bed-rock lay, so as to determine how great the excavation would have to be and how high the structure of masonry. They had, however, no diamond drills, though such implements were in common enough use elsewhere; and the result was that when they struck a boulder as big as a barrel, they supposed it to be bed-rock, and so reported it, when in fact the actual rock was fifty feet below.

Not to extend the catalogue of errors too far, another grave mistake lay in the manner and place of their disposal of the material excavated, especially at Culebra. Our present plan is to take it a long distance away, and indeed to cart most of it down to the coast at Colon, to raise the level

of that city and to fill in the surrounding swamps. The French, however, dumped it close to the sides of the cuttings. Now the cuttings are not all through rock, but chiefly through clay, marl, and other comparatively soft and yielding soils. They are so soft that the sides of the cuttings cannot be left nearly as steep as they would be in a firmer soil. A steeper slope than one of forty-five degrees is likely to be marked with trouble, the side wall presently bulging and sliding down into the cut. That is why the canal must be made so wide at the surface in comparison with the width at the bottom. Now the French, not appreciating these conditions, and seeking to save time and labour as much as possible, did not cart the excavated earth away, but piled it up on the high ground at each side of the cutting, where, of course, its weight, superimposed upon the earth which belonged there, greatly increased the tendency of the sides to bulge and slip into the cutting, and thus greatly aggravated the natural conditions. It is to avoid this error and its consequent mischief that the American engineers have ruled that no earth shall be deposited within a certain and very considerable distance of the cutting. This rule necessitates the building of many miles of railroad, to carry the material away, but it will in the end greatly facilitate and expedite the completion of the canal.

With all these and various other errors to handicap them, we can but wonder that the French accomplished as much as they did. In fact, they really did a vast amount of admirable work, most of which is now being utilised by the American engineers. They also, with all their consignments of snow-shovels and petroleum torches, and with all their improvident experiments with untried and impractical devices, took to the Isthmus a vast amount of excellent machinery, tools, and hardware supplies, which is still, much of it, in first-rate condition. Our engineers, on taking possession of the works, found vast storehouses stocked with hardware of all kinds, practically as good as when it was shipped from France. Moreover, astounding as it may seem, in view

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of popular impressions of Isthmian climate and of its effect upon metal work of all kinds, they found locomotives and other steam engines, which had been standing neglected since De Lesseps's day, some of them actually in the open jungle, which needed only a little oiling and new leather belting to be set to work, as good as new. The dredges down in the submerged parts of the canal were chiefly rusty junk. But up on the highlands, around Culebra and Empire and Matachin, machinery has been preserved from ruin in a surprising and gratifying way.

It would be ungracious to dwell too long upon the errors of the French, and it would be vainglorious to exploit too highly the manner in which Americans are avoiding them. It was not strange, perhaps it was inevitable, that the French should make some serious blunders, in undertaking so vast a work, and a work so unlike, in some fundamental particulars, any they had ever undertaken before. It would be inexcusable for Americans to fall into the same errors. The French, too, as we have seen, suffered from certain unfortunate conditions beyond their control, to which we are not subject. We have the advantage of the great advance which has been made in the last score of years in medical science, and we were not prevented by the Monroe Doctrine from securing control of the Canal Zone. Much more, almost immeasurably more, is properly to be expected of us than of the French. That we shall meet those expectations in a satis factory manner is to be hoped, but is yet to be proved. The first year and more of our work there, as we shall presently see in greater detail, was by no means free from errors, serious, though happily not disastrous. There are at the present time, moreover, potentialities and even menaces of further complications of an embarrassing and even discreditable character. The lesson of the French failure is, therefore, not one of vaunting on the part of Americans, but rather one of prudence, circumspection, and that eternal vigilance which is the price of honesty and efficiency as well as of liberty.

CHAPTER VIII

NICARAGUA OR PANAMA?

THE French did not propose, however, to lose all they had done and spent at Panama without a struggle. They realised as fully as the most censorious of their critics the blunders which had been made and the appalling corruption which had prevailed. They knew, however, that much good work had been done, and their confidence in the practicability of the enterprise was not diminished. Resolute and resourceful, they rose from the ruins of the De Lesseps company with splendid determination. The receiver of the bankrupt company, M. Brunet, promptly organised a committee to study the situation and to devise ways and means to rehabilitate the enterprise and to push it to completion. This committee was composed of nine Frenchmen, one Belgian, and one Dutchman. It met in October, 1889, and two months later five of its members visited Panama for personal observation and investigation. In May, 1890, it reported to M. Brunet that the canal could be completed, on the highlevel plan, with locks, and recommended the organisation of a new company to undertake the work. M. Brunet accepted the report and decided to act according to its recommendations. His first step was to send Lieutenant Wyse to Bogotá to secure an extension of the franchise. The original concession dated from May 28, 1878. On December 26, 1890, Lieutenant Wyse secured an extension of it for ten years, on condition that the new company should be fully organised by February, 1893. This condition it was found impossible to fulfil, but the Colombian Government complaisantly-for a substantial consideration-extended the time little by little, until on August 4, 1893, it gave a