FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 235 



American Government was constitutional, if not 

 irreproachable. Seen from within, it smacked of 

 piracy, but so without a doubt did the processes 

 by which the British Empire acquired one-fifth of 

 the surface of the globe. 



Anyhow, the way is clear. Completion, even 

 of the cheaper and more expeditious lock type 

 favoured by the President and late Chief Engineer, 

 Mr Stevens, may take eight years and fifty millions 

 of dollars, and the sea-level type, to which many 

 experts give the preference, would cost more in 

 both time and money. Money, it is perhaps a 

 platitude to remark, is no object to Americans, and 

 even time is of less moment to a nation in its youth 

 than to others in their dotage. 



At one time the route by way of Nicaragua 

 was a serious rival, and capital was even invested 

 in it, but, after the dreadful fate that has within a 

 year befallen three great cities of the New World, 

 we shall hear no more in favour of a region so 

 subject to earthquake and volcanic eruption, and it 

 seems indeed probable that Nicaragua owed much 

 of its popularity to the distrust engendered by two 

 failures in the very name of Panama. The nation 

 began to think that the project would smell sweeter 

 by any other. 



That America is going to see this great work 

 through to a finish many people in Europe, and 

 not a few even in the States, profess to doubt ; but 

 a visit to the Culebra Cut would dispel any such 

 illusion, for it is obvious at a glance that the 

 immense staff of control works with extraordinary 

 harmony, encouraged, it seemed at any rate to me, 

 by some impulse greater than the mere earning 



