354 



FRANCE. 



FRIEDEIOH WILDELM. 



issued, introducing the inspection of schools by 

 French officials, and the Italian school-masters, 

 under the instructions of the Consul-General, 

 refused admittance to the Bey's inspectors. 

 The powers, which had sustained Italy in the 

 Massowah question, because in that port the 

 authority of the former Mohammedan Gov- 

 ernment had been openly superseded, as in 

 Cyprus and Bosnia, joined in the Italian pro- 

 test in respect to Tunis, because, although the 

 authority of France is supreme, she has only 

 accepted a protectorate, and ostensibly main- 

 tains the rule of the Bey. 



The Panama Canal. The affairs of the Pan- 

 ama Canal Company reached a crisis in De- 

 cember, 1888. The technical committee of 

 the Paris Congress of 1879 estimated the total 

 cost of a sea-level canal of 73 kilometres at 

 1,200,000,000 francs, of which 1,070,000,000 

 francs would be for tunnel construction. The 

 company has had to contend with difficulties 

 from the beginning. The first attempt to float 

 the shares failed, and on the second attempt 

 the subscription was barely covered. The is- 

 sues of obligations have never more than par- 

 tially succeeded. The company has labored 

 under the disadvantage of having to pay 5-per- 

 cent, dividends out of the capital. The engi- 

 neering difficulties were greatly underestimated; 

 the disadvantages of the deadly climate, for 

 instance, were not sufficiently taken into ac- 

 count. The company had money enough to 

 begin work in 1881, and by 1883 had 11,000 

 men employed. After three years, only 119,- 

 000,000 tons of the estimated 3,500,000,000 

 tons of excavation had been removed. Many 

 millions have been spent in constructing a dam, 

 more than a mile long and 140 feet high, across 

 , the Chagres valley, in order to prevent the 

 river in times of flood from sweeping away the 

 canal works ; but this dam is still far from be- 

 ing completed. The company had expended 

 1,400,000,000 francs by 1888. After repeated 

 appeals, the French Chamber was induced to 

 authorize a lottery loan on June 8, 1888, but 

 the subscriptions were disappointing. The 

 company sold only 850 of these bonds ; yet to 

 make good its promise as to prizes it was com- 

 pelled, under the law, to invest 100,000,000 

 francs in rentes. A final effort was made to 

 raise a new loan. It was announced that un- 

 less 400,000 obligations were taken up the 

 subscription would be null and void. Only 

 125,000 were subscribed, and on December 14 

 the company suspended payments. The Cham- 

 ber refused to authorize the company to defer 

 payments for three months. M. de Lesseps 

 said that the canal could be finished by 1891, 

 not on the level plan but with locks, and that 

 357,000,000 francs of additional capital would 

 be required. It was proposed to form a new 

 company to complete the work, which should 

 assume the capital obligations of the old com- 

 pany, but pay no interest on the existing bonds 

 and shares until it can be defrayed out of the 

 profits of the canal. M. de Lesseps and his 



colleagues resigned their posts as administrators 

 of the company on December 14, whereupon 

 the Tribunal of the Seine appointed judicial 

 liquidators. 



FRIEDRICH WILHELM MCOLAUS KiRL, 

 eighth King of Prussia and second Emperor of 

 Germany, born in Potsdam, Prussia, Oct. 18, 

 1831 ; died there, June 15, 1888. He was the 

 only son of Emperor Wilhelm 1 of Germany, 

 who at the time his son was born was Prince 

 Wilhelm of Hohenzollern, second son of King 

 Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. The birth 

 of the prince was the occasion of general re- 

 joicing throughout Prussia, as the succession to 

 the crown devolved upon the issue of Prince 

 Wilhelm; the Crown-Prince, afterward Fried- 

 rich Wilhelm IV, being childless. His mother, 

 Augusta, daughter of the Grand Duke Karl 

 Friedrich of Saxe-Weimar, a woman of rare 

 attainments, devoted her whole time and energy 

 to his education. Col. von Unruh was ap- 

 pointed his military instructor, and on his 

 tenth birthday the prince officially entered the 

 army as second lieutenant of the First Regiment 

 of the Guards. The first tutor of the young 

 prince, the Rev. W. Godet, was succeeded in 

 1844 by Dr. Ernst Curtius, the Greek historian, 

 who directed his studies till 1850. According 

 to a custom of the Hohenzollern family, which 

 requires every prince to learn a trade, Prince 

 Friederich, at the age of fourteen, chose that 

 of a printer, and, in Hoenels' royal printing- 

 office at Berlin, attained such proficiency that, 

 in setting up the type for a book in German, 

 Greek, and Latin, one of the oldest composi- 

 tors had difficulty in keeping pace with him. 

 Much of his time between 1841 and 1846 was 

 spent in traveling throughout Germany. In 

 1846 he entered the University of Bonn, the 

 favorite educational institution of German 

 princes. He spent four semesters at the uni- 

 versity, engaged in the study of history, civil 

 and criminal law, and kindred sciences. His 

 vacations were spent in pedestrian tours and 

 in the study of the architecture of Cologne, 

 Aix-la-Chapelle, and other German cities. At 

 the university he was highly popular, in spite 

 of the fact that the name of Prussian was then 

 a rebuke in the Rhineland province. On May 

 3, 1849, he entered the First Foot Guards. The 

 year 1850 was spent in traveling through Switz- 

 erland, the Tyrol, the north of Italy, and the 

 south of France. The opening of the London 

 Industrial Exhibition of 1851 took him to 

 England for the first time, where he became 

 acquainted with his future bride, the Princess 

 Victoria, then a girl of eleven years. On his 

 return to Berlin he was promoted to the rank of 

 captain in the Guards, and the following year he 

 accompanied the Emperor Nicholas of Russia 

 back to St. Petersburg, where he was appoint- 

 ed colonel of a Russian regiment. He studied 

 the practical workings of administrative law 

 under Herr Flottwell president of the province 

 of Brandenburg, and the art and tactics of war 

 under Von Moltke. Toward the close of 1853 



