Eureka Daily Sentinel

THE PANAMA CANAL.

When M. de Lesseps organized his company in 1850 he estimated the cost of the Panama Canal at $120,000,000. A tide level canal was found impracticable from the fact that the tide falls at Aspinwall 16 inches, while at Panama it drops from 18 to 25 feet. This necessitated the substitution of a system of locks and basins, within three miles of Panama, at an additional estimated cost of $100,000,000. This difference in the tides seems a simple thing to have thought of and provided for at the start, but M. de Lesseps' enthusiasm blinds him to difficulties and has frequently, in the past, led him to exaggerated statements.

It is not true, as stated in his French organs, that there are no difficulties to be encountered so great as those he overcame at Suez. In fact, the statement is ridiculously, and probably intentionally, untrue. Along the route extending over a distance of 50 miles from Aspinwall to Panama, are such serious obstacles as high hills and streams, which in the rainy season become torrents. The Suez Canal was simply digging a sand ditch across a dry, healthy desert; the difficulty was in raising the money, and that M. de Lesseps surmounted by adroitly arousing France's jealousy of England, and inducing all classes of Frenchmen, even the cooks and laundry women, to subscribe liberally their savings, and by flattering Ismail Pacha's vanity in being considered a progressive Prince, so he subscribed for one block of a hundred millions in stock at bedrock prices, and gave liberally in lands and forced labor besides.

The Suez Canal was plain sailing for M. de Lesseps from the start. Fostered by an Emperor and a widely popular Empress, Louis Napoleon and Eugenie, the then rich exchequer of Egypt at his beck and call, and a healthy climate in which the laborers died only of overwork and starvation, the Suez Canal was child's play to Panama.

None of these easy conditions obtain on the Isthmus of Darien. The backbone of the Andes is to be broken by digging, blasting and grading: a climate as horrible as the Gold Coast of Africa is sweeping away his officers and laborers, hospitals have cost already $2,000,000; jungles and swamps, growing more dense and poisonous as he approaches Aspinwall, are to be cleared away. The rainy season yearly floods the Chagres and other rivers, sweeping over their banks and carrying away the work accomplished; much of it is already destroyed and to be done over again. No, M. de Lesseps has no such easy task at Panama as he had at Suez.

At least $300,000,000, uncounted lives, and the highest application of the engineer's art will be required to complete successfully the Panama Canal. He is reported to have recently remarked in Paris: "The canal will be opened in 1888, and I will be there to go through with the first steamer." This is the faith which moves mountains, but M. de Lesseps has the advertising instinct strongly developed, and he may not have been sincere. If the canal is finished in eight years, he will have to be congratulated on his success and his longevity.