Ir is over three hundred and fifty years sines European engineers first conceived the idea of piercing with a jean al the rocky peninsula that joins North and South America. Parodying the line of the poet, they would make the mountains join the oceans they divide. The name of the ingenious Fleming, to whom the idea first ocourred, has been whelmed in night, but it was an idea that would readily occur to any one who could stand even in imagination on the summit of the neck and see an ocean on either haud, It is only forty-three miles by land from soa to sea, and it is much over nine thousand miles by water, The motions of his spirit must be dull indeed who does not recognise the value and importance of making such a short out as that.
The first realisation of the idea, a ion which kept the word of promise to the ear, but broke it to the hope, was the construction of the Panama railway. It solved a small portion of the difficulty. Steamers could afford to pay for the transport of their passengers and a few light and valuable goods: bat it has been useless for the bulkier and less costly cargoes of sailing vessels. As the railway from Alexaudrin to Suez, instead of extinguishing the necessity for the Suez Canal, only brought that necessity into greater prominence, 60 the Panama railway, by showing daily its own deficiencies, has drawn renewed attention to the want of a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific, or, if not necessarily a canal, some means of transporting a ship bodily with her cargo from ocean tu ocean. As often happens, there is now, after long neglect, a severe competition to supply the long-felt- want, and there the present moment three such schemes before the world, The first is promoted by Count De Lesseps, the old man eloquent who has brought away with bim from the land of Cleopatra the secret of her excellence, 80 that age cannot wither him nor custom stale his infinite variety, He has adopted the Panama Canal. This is to follow almost exactly the line of the present railroad, It is far the shortest of the three competing schemes, but it is not the least expensive, for the mountain range that forms the backbone of the Isthmus would hat to be tunnelled; and to excavate a tunnel deep and wide enough to allow two of the largest ocean steamers to pass each other without touching the ground, and high enough to let them through without striking their masts, is an achievement that has never yet been attempted. The Canal jis to be a level one throughout, and without locks, though the difference in the tides at the two extremities, some twenty feet, would necessitate pair of flood-gates. Beside its shortness, about forty-three miles, this scheme has the advantage that there is already a good harbour at each end of the proposed Canal. The cost is estimated at £22,000,000, and this is to be raised by shares for a total of £12,000,000, and by debentures for the remainder. The whole of the share capital has been allotted to anxious applicants; 500,000 shares were put
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.