THE MISSION
dread mosquito that is more to be feared
than war or pestilence, and the sanitation
of the fever infested jungle, is something
new, and will ever remain epic in his-
tory.
It is also contemplated with universal
satisfaction, that when the Isthmian
waterway is opened to public service
there will be supplied to international
ocean commerce a need that has existed
for four hundred years. It is of ex-
ceptional interest to us, as Americans,
that to us has come not only the privi-
lege but the honor of finding that “west-
ern passage to the great sea beyond” that
Columbus and his successors so diligently
yet unsuccessfully, sought.
The problem of a trans-Isthmian
waterway has been of international con-
cern for two centuries. The expanding
industries of the United States have, for
the past half-century, demanded deep-
water communications between our east-
ern and western seaboards. In pursuit
of such a project our government, in
1846, concluded a treaty with New
Granada whereby she secured the right
to construct a means of transit across
the Isthmus. The analogous interests
of England in her American possessions
resulted in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
that bound the contracting parties for
sixty years, or, until it was superseded by
the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 19or1;
“which treaty proved to be one of the
most unhappy affairs relative to the dig-
ging of the canal. However, it gave us
the exclusive right to build and main-
tain the canal.
The last half of the nineteenth century
was celebrated for its activities in canal
building. Both England and the United
States had expended hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars in the industry. Fach
of these countries at that time operated
more than two thousand miles of inland
navigation. France, under the lead of
FIELD 763
the daring Ferdinand de Lesseps had
successfully completed the much needed
Suez Canal in the years 1859-1869, con-
necting the Mediterranean with the Red
Sea, thus making one hundred miles of
waterway twenty-five feet deep at a cost
of $100,000,000. Our Erie, Welland, and
Sault Ste Marie, canals were all in opera-
tion earlier than the Suez. England's
great Manchester Ship Canal, thirty-five
miles long by fifteen feet deep, built at
a cost of $75,000,000 was not finished un-
til 1894. The Cronstadt and St. Peters-
burg Canal, sixteen miles long, twenty
feet deep, costing $10,000,000 was fin-
ished in 1890; Germany's Kaiser Wil-
helm canal, sixty-one miles long, twenty-
nine feet deep, costing $40,000,000 was
opened for traffic in 1895. Even down
in little old classical Greece there was a
stir in the canal activities and the Corinth
canal, four miles long, twenty-six feet
deep was built at a cost of $5,000,000 in
1893.
In 1881 we find the French in Panama.
Although the world was indebted to
the skill of de Lesseps for the success of
the Suez enterprise, still the skill and
genius of the old Count or the gold of
the French peasants was no match in
the fight put up by Panama’s anopheles
and stegomyias, thirty years ago.
The French lost far more in Panama
than they had gained in Suez. A knowl-
edge of that failure would arouse the
sympathy of a Jew. Under such a ré-
gime and with such an environment the
first Napoleon with his grand army
could have done no better. If these
jungle gods could have enticed the little
Corsican warrior to invade Panama, he
would have left more veterans in these
swamps than he left on the frozen
plains of Russia in 1812.
Elated by the success at home and
abroad, without doubt the French came
to Panama overconfident of their own