From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York

WHERE SHIPS WILL PASS THROUGH A MOUNTAIN. THE FAMOUS CULEBRA CUT, FINISHED DEPTH 330 FEET (S.E.), PANAMA CANAL

and with your first order have one made to your

own measure.

Before I came to Panama I thought all work had long ago stopped on the canal, but I am told that up to the day of Panama's Declaration of Independence about fifteen hundred negroes were shovelling, digging, and wheeling on the great contract. To keep alive its charter the company was expected to expend at least forty-five thousand dollars monthly in prosecuting the works. From ocean to ocean as the crow flies is twenty-nine miles. When completed the canal will be about fifty miles in length, or twenty-four miles longer than our Welland. The three greatest obstacles in the building of the waterway are the Culebra (snake) Mountain, three hundred feet high, the control of the Chagres River, and the climate. The canal is more than half cut through. There is a trench one hundred and sixty feet deep already through the Culebra saddle, and only one hundred and ninety feet remain to be dug.

For a time this mountain offered an almost insurmountable difficulty. For sixty feet from the surface the cut was composed of soft, spongy, sliding soil, and the enormous mass to be removed called for machinery of great power and weight, which sank into the yielding earth. Another and seeming insurmountable obstacle was and is the control of the waters of the Chagres River. To turn into the Pacific the course of this river, which flows from the Andes to the Atlantic, or to build

a huge earth dam at Bohio across the river and turn its waters westward, is a problem the American engineers will have to solve.

When finished, the distance from Liverpool to Yokohama will be shortened by four thousand miles. Thirty-six miles are now dug to a depth of twentyeight feet. When this wonderful enterprise was begun by M. De Lesseps twenty years ago, it was calculated to a mathematical certainty that one hundred and fifty millions of dollars would complete the work.

This mathematical certainty, supported by the prestige of and admiration for the great engineer of the Suez Canal, tempted the thrifty French peasantry to pour their savings into De Lesseps' lottery-box and keep on pouring till the bubble burst, entailing ruin upon thousands and driving hundreds to suicide. Nor was M. De Lesseps far afield in his estimates. American engineers who are here looking over the ground tell me that the prodigality, unbounded extravagance and waste of material ate up more than the canal itself. In those days forty thousand men were employed on the works, and money flowed as water in a mining

camp.

Speaking of the prodigality of the officials, Albert G. Smith, formerly one of the section "bosses," now living in Mexico, said to me that nothing could exceed the extravagance of the official class, and that the richest firm on earth would have gone bankrupt under similar conditions. One instance which goes

to show the recklessness of these men was when Ferdinand De Lesseps expressed his intention of visiting the isthmus. Immediately the commissioners of the canal company began the erection of a $195,000 dwelling, which was completed and ready to receive the distinguished engineer upon his arrival. He remained but a few weeks, and his term of occupancy on the occasion of both visits did not exceed a month. The building has been vacant ever since, and stands near the abandoned machinery that was ordered to be dumped from the ship into the sea, because some official had been interrupted at dinner by the importunities of the captain who, having been in the harbour some days, wished to clear port.

In these few eventful years there was not grouped on any place on earth so much foul disease, such a hideous manure heap of moral and physical abomination as was then concentrated on this isthmus. Adventurers, card sharpers, keepers of dives, bunco men and fallen women all swarmed to Panama as vultures swoop upon carrion. Every one gambled, and many in sheer desperation took their lives when brooding over their losses at the gaming table. One instance in particular was that of a young man, who after saving up some fifteen thousand dollars, had decided to return to New York City, his birthplace, and build for his mother and only sister a home that would keep them comfortable for the rest of their days. The evening before sailing he took a stroll through the gambling section of the town. He