The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1913. THE PANAMA CANAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 53, 4 March 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1913. THE PANAMA CANAL.

At the close of the present year it may he pretty confidently expected that the Panama Canal will be opened, and the great undertaking which has occupied so many years will be an accomplished fact. That the nations to which belong the pioneers of the enterprise will witness the completion of the work with mixed feelings is only natural, for to France belongs the honour of the initiation of the scheme though the United States brings it to a triumphant conclusion. Mr J. B. Bishop, secretary of the Isthmian Canal Company, tells the story of French intervention at Panama in “Scribner’s,” and from it one may learn how much is due to the engineers and scientists who have made such a vast change for the better in the famous! isthmus. When l)e Lesseps inaugurated his scheme in 1880, yellow fever and malaria were tin? twin scourges that lashed the two terminal towns of Colon and Panama, and all the tropical insect-tormented jungle between. Science had not yet discovered that tlu> “stegornyia” mosquito was the carider of the yellow fever germs, and that the “anopheles” mosquito distributed malaria. The death rate during the operations of the French company was frightful. During the nine years covered by that period it is estimated that two out of every three Frenchmen who went to Panama left their bones there, and the total number of labourers who perished was 22,- ()()(). .Never was any great engineering work carried out even by slave labour at anything like such an awful cost in human life. And through all the tragedy and disaster moves the figure of Ferdinand de Lets sops, superb in his confident egotism and in his blind disregard of all obstacles, leading the unfortunate peasant investors of Franco after him to ruin. “The record of French effort and failure at Panama,” writes Mr Bishop, “with its mingling of folly, absurdity, greed anil heroism of the highest quality, is one of the most pathetic as it is one of the most diverting in the history of human endeavour. The project was doomed to failure at the outset, and was fairly rushed to destruction by reckless and rascally management, but it deserved to succeed because of the rare courage and patriotic devotion of the men, many of them the very flower of young France, who did the work in the field.” His success in completing the Suez Canal had convinced De Desseps that no obstacle could bar his progress in digging the canal at Pan-1

a inn. And it was to bo a sea-level (■anal like that at Suez, in spite of the reports of the experts that a canal of that type was impossible. At 7b years of age the enthusiastic Losseps went out to Panama, accompanied by his wife and family, by an international technical commission, and by a party of American visitors. He devis-' ed a grand and impressive ceremony to mark “the first blow of the pick”: at the Pacific entrance of the prospective canal. He chartered a small steam boat to convey the party to the month of the river where they were to disembark and witness the ceremony, i and a cargo of provisions and chain- ' pagne was also put on hoard. Owing i to the rapid ebb of the tide in the : Bay of Panama, the steamer stuck fast i on a shoal, and the party could not land. But De Lesseps was not beaten. He had an empty champagne case filled with earth, and “the first blow of the pick” was delivered upon this hollow mockery of the real thing by his little daughter on board the steamer. After which there was more feasting and oratory. Later on the international technical commission reported that the canal would cost 168,006,000 dollars, and would take eight years to construct. He Lesseps waved their report aside and announced that it would only cost 120,000,000 dollars. That was to be the capital of the company. He went over to New York to dispose of shares, and was received with flattering attentions, hut the American financiers would not loot at his shares, and President Hayes sent a special message to the Senate avowing the principle that “the police of this country is a canal under Am erican control.”- Baffled in the XJnitecj States, he went back to France, made a tour of .the principal cities, and spoke with such moving eloquence that the whole of the stock was subscribed foi twice over. The thrifty French peo pie went wild with patriotic delighi at the prospect of the magnificent dividends that their brilliant fellow-coun-tryman’s magnificent work would brin;. them in. They put up their money handsomely, and they sent out the flower of their young men to plan and supervise and control the carrying out of the work. And of al those who went out, two out of every three dieel of yellow fever, malaria, or other tropical diseases, and He Les sops concealed the fact and juggled with the hospital returns so that there was no falling off in the supply of victims to his stupendous ambitions. Away in France Do Lesseps collected more money and still more, and sear, it out to Panama to be wasted oi bribery and corruption, huge salariei for high officials, and extravagance oi every kind. In 1885, when thing? were beginning to look black, De Les-

scps visited Panama to make a tour of inspection. He wore “a flowing robe of gorgeous colours like an Eastern monarch,” and he rode a prancing horse in front of a procession. H< was crowned with a laurel wreath and acclaimed as the “genius of the nine teentli century.” In 1889 the eras! came. It was found that the Fiend, company had received and spent £52,000,000, that about one-fourth of tin work had been done, and that 22,000 Frenchmen had lost their lives. Di Lesseps was sentenced to five years imprisonment at the age of 88. Ht died soon afterwards. And now ir a few months the new waterway of tin Panama will become an open gate-waj between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and all the disasters of the past, the vast expenditure of treasure and of human life will be forgotten in the triumph of the day.