VISCOUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEES. 383 



Panama scheme he no longer verified the statements of the engineers 

 by adequate inspection and exploitation, but absolutely fell back upon 

 others. His old attitude of control and command continued, but he 

 merely indorsed the reports of the chiefs of divisions, — whose figures, 

 we now know, were correct, — v^ithout discovering their misleading 

 limitations. His famous promise that the canal should be open to the 

 passage of vessels in 1889 was based, as he stated, upon the unani- 

 mous acquiescence of his chiefs of division. Moreover, if we plot on 

 profile paper the amount of work done from date to date, the curve of 

 increments, projected, seems to justify the prediction. His own belief 

 in it is enthusiastically stated in his '' Recollections of Forty Years, " 

 and he adds : " I am an octogenarian. Old age foresees, and youth 

 acts." This last mot was lost upon the public, who saw him now only 

 as the figure-head of a brave ship given over to pirates. 



In 1869, the year of the triumphal opening of the Suez Canal, 

 M. de Lesseps was sixty-four years old. This is the age of compul- 

 sory retirement for our United States Engiueei's. But M. de Lesseps 

 was so vigorous that he was for many years later a most valuable man 

 in council. He aided the ship canal of Corinth, and the grand canal 

 from tlie Elbe to the Baltic. It was not until he was seventy-six that 

 the Societe du Canal de Panama was constituted, and he was eighty 

 when he crossed the ocean to make a personal inspection of the work 

 in progress. The execution for a year or two, under the full con- 

 tracts, seemed to realize his predictions, and warrant great expecta- 

 tions ; but after that everything went wrong. The master's mind 

 failed before he could have discovered how much he had been betrayed. 

 He lived to be eighty-nine, and died a poor man. His widow and her 

 children are now dependent upon a pension from the Suez Canal 

 Company. 



1896. Henry Mitchell. 



Note. — The foregoing had been written out for transmission to 

 the Academy, but was withheld under misgivings as to the adequacy 

 of our very much foreshortened view of the causes of the failure 

 at Panama, until Mr. Nathan Appleton (American Agent of the 

 Panama Canal Company) sent us the last word spoken on the sub- 

 ject by a competent witness. This was in the form of a biographical 

 notice by M. Gabriel Gravier, which the Countess de Lesseps sent 

 to Mr. Appleton with her autograph indorsement. This writer takes 

 the ground that all was going well, till a senseless panic upset the 

 market. " The work was marching to a certain success ; the original 



