The Panama Canal.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 237, 14 January 1888, Page 4

The Panama Canal.

De Lesseps now proposes to build the Canal with lqoks, instead of the tide-water plan, but will adopt the latter eventually. Henry B. Slavin, President of the Mexican Contracting and Dredging Company fchat> has been actively in the work of dredging the Canal since the start, arrived in New York on November 29th, He informs the " Sun " that the Canal is nearly half done, and, in his opinion, ships will cross within three years from January, 1888. The Canal is open at present for vessels drawing 15ft. of water for twenty kilometres on the Atlantic side, out of a total length of seventy-four kilpmetres, r ancl twenty-four jnore will be done by July next j the French Compapy on the Pacific side will have five more completed. Lesseps denies tha.t he ever said the Canal would fie opened in February, 1689. Some American papers, notably the "New York Tribune,' advance the opinion that the election of Sadi-Carnot to the Presidency of the French Republic will have an important bearing upon the fortunes of M., de Lesseps's enterprise, basing ifc upon the fact that when the New President, was Finance, Minister of the De Freycinefc Cabinet, in 1886, he proposed, on the parfe of the Government, the authorisation of the Panama Company's lottery bonds, a proposal which was rejected after a masterly report had been made by Rousseau. Sadi-Carnot is now elected President at a critical moment, when the De Lesseps's enterprise is said to be in the last ditch. Apropos the kind of labour employed on the " great cut," the experiment of importing Africans does not, Work. They are a hard set of men to manage, and a company of them have taken to the;lsthmian forests, stripped off their clothing, and are reported to be indulging in barbarities with true native zeal. The "Economiste Francaise," of Paris, gives the following summary of I)e Lesseps's plan :—": — " To cut the canal witb locks ; to raise the total expenditure from 1,200,000,000 francs to 1,500,000,000 j to issue lottery loans for 585,000,000 francs, which have still to be obtained ; to refund, if stockholders consent, 1 the existing stocks so as to diminish the charges. As a pretext for these operations, a new contract has just been signed by M. de Lesseps, with M. Eiffel, the builder, of the new tour now going up upoa Cliamps de .Mars. GDlie contvacb « ifcli M_ Eiffel is to take the place of the famous contract Avith Convreux et Hersent, p-nd of the contract with the, famous Anglo-Dutch contractors. Ifc is, -well-known that the Panama Company has never had any trouble in making contracts with contractors. The more or less serious tiouble has been insetting these contracts carried out, and r so lai;, it has never succeeded."