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Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1920, 1 July 1869, Page 3

A Canal Across the Isthmus of Panama. —The success of M. Lesseps in his great undertaking at Suez has again directed attention to the possibility of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by means of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Tho preliminaries have been already arranged, and a treaty for the excavation of a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama and Darien was signed at Bogota on 14th January by Miguel Samper and Tomas Cuenca, Plenipotentiaries on the part of Columbia and Peter T. Sullivan, on the part of the United States, and approved by President Gutierrez two clays after. It grants to tho United States the right to effect all the necessary surveys and exploration, and employ 500 troops in addition to all necessary workmen and employes. Columbia grants ten miles on each side of tho canal, and all sea and tributary waters necessary for construction and maintenance. Tbc canal must be adapt d to the pas-age of all kinds of vessels. The tariff of charges is to be on a perfect equality for all nations both in peace and war. On the eonqiletion cf the canal, possession, supervision, and control of it will belong to the United States, subject to the right of Columbia to inspect the various operations,, ascertain tonnage of vessels, and examine accounts. The entrance will be strictly closed to belligerents. The survey and maps to be completed in three years, the works commenced in five years, and finished in fifteen years or less. Congress aparoprinted 40,000 dollars for the survey of the two routes three years ago. A company comprising some of the largest capitalists in New York, has been formed in anticipation of the signing of the treaty. The estimated cost of the work is 100,000,000 dollars (twenty millions sterling). An excellent bull is attributed to an Irish coroner, who, remarking on the recent cxe- ssivc mortality in his county, said he could not account for it, but it was a fact that great numbers of persons had died this year who Lad not died last. A small man having been dubbed “ the little rascal ’ in the community whore he lived, was asked one day in public why he had been so called. “To distinguish me from my neighbours,” he at once answered, “ who are all ‘ great ’ rascals.” Shy Eleanor Las such a horror of being thought forward, that she is taking the greatest pains to alter the character of her handwriting, having been told that hers is a “ bold hand.” Bees are sometimes drowned in their own honey, so is some men’s logic in their rhetoric. When Sir Thomas More was prisoner in the Tower, they took from him all his books ; whereupon lie shut up bis windows ; and on being asked why lie had done so, he answered : “ It is quite time to shut up the shop when all the ware is gone. ” An observing individual in u very healthy village, seeing the sexton at work in a hole in the ground, inquired what lie was about. “Digging a grave, sir.”—“ Digging a grave ! Why, I thought people didn’t die often here—do they?”—“Oh, no, air, they never die but once.”