240 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



naturalist. One of the strangest sensations, such 

 as cannot be experienced even at Port Said and 

 Suez, which He much further apart and have no 

 connecting train, is to stand on the shores of two 

 oceans between breakfast and lunch. Wandering 

 that Sunday on both foreshores, I was struck with 

 the apparent similarity of the seaweeds. I say 

 "apparent," for I trusted to a memory only three 

 or four hours old and did not actually compare 

 specimens. This harmony in the wind-drift tangle 

 from the sea-gardens tells us far more surely than 

 any corresponding resemblance in the land plants 

 of both seaboards that the Isthmus was submerged 

 at no very remote period as geologists reckon time, 

 for the land plants have other modes of dispersal. 



It looks therefore as if the dream that killed De 

 Lesseps and the reality that is occupying Washing- 

 ton is a restoration rather than a creation, and that 

 this proposed sundering of two continents the better 

 to unite two oceans so distantly connected is 

 nothing but a return to prehistoric conditions. 



On other grounds, the two aspects of the 

 Isthmus differ, particularly in such characters as 

 are derived from a contrast between the fierce ebb 

 and flow of the Pacific and the calm stagnation of 



o 



the Caribbean. At Colon, a town that stands on 

 stilts, knee-deep in a marshland beloved of mos- 

 quitoes, there is so little tide that the largest 

 vessels of the Royal Mail line berth at any time 

 alongside the wharf. Panama, on the other hand, 

 exhibits rather the conditions of those well-known 

 homely resorts that defiantly urge their nominal 

 claim to a marine outlook, to wit Southend-on-Sea 

 and Weston-super-Mare, gazing at low tide over 



