382 VISCOUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEPS. 



tious that for many years diverted our capital from the oceau, to which 

 it reluctantly returns. 



" Fear only the unforeseen " is a classic proverb, much affected by 

 the French, but among no other people has it less practical honor. 

 For the Panama project, the almost unprecedented depth of the cut, 

 the peculiarly obdurate ledges, the great rainfall interrupting labor and 

 causing sloughing of the banks, the necessity for turning tlie Chagres 

 River, were difficulties weighed and discounted at the start, by able 

 engineers and by a very large and very intelligent company in France. 

 But the ''bodily slipping of the hills," in the excavations near the 

 summit level, was a frightful disappointment. It necessitated a post- 

 ponement of the sea level cut, and the adoption of a scheme of locks, 

 which involved the ponding of the Chagres River. This change of base 

 "was fixtal, and the company broke. A new company has been formed 

 and may keep the project alive till a stronger call from the commercial 

 world comes to its aid. 



The King of Spain, looking from his chamber window, shaded his 

 eyes and said, " I am looking for tlie walls of Panama, — they have 

 cost enough to be seen from here." 



With regard to the charges of fraud against the financial manage- 

 ment of the Panama Canal Company, we do not feel competent to 

 speak, except to call attention to their diminution as investigations 

 proceed. But with regard to the waste of plant, it does not seem in 

 undue proportion to the magnitude of the experiment. Charges of 

 waste were made against the Suez Canal Company, — especially by 

 our journals and those of other distant people, — and they attend all 

 great enterprises. The plant that does not prove equal to the new 

 work must be cast aside, and lost, if far away from the junk market. 

 The greatest and most successful works that we have visited are 

 strewn with wreckage, marking the field where the battle was won. 



Throughout the whole period of the construction in Egypt, M. de 

 Lesseps was actual manager in chief. Many thousands worked under 

 his direction, holding all gradations of rank, but he was the real 

 master spirit. Flis reports from the beginning are full of acknowl- 

 edgments of the services and merits of his subordinates. At the 

 outset he leaned upon the superior engineering of Linant Bey and 

 Mougel Bey, and for many years preceding the completion of the 

 canal his reports place Voisin Bey in the foreground, not as a shield 

 from responsibility, but as the support of an enthusiastic company 

 whose millions were thus insured. In his old age, the dependence 

 upon others necessarily became greater and greater, and in the 



