of Anian against the English, which statement answered as well as another, no one then knowing that there was no strait and no Englishmen there. Fuca's falsehood was rewarded by giving to the entrance to Puget sound his name, which it bears to this day, an honor such as is the too frequent reward of a lie well told. Fuca said his strait was 100 miles wide at the entrance; he carefully mapped it, filling up the blank spaces around with cities of the plain, as Quivira, and monsters of the deep, such as all mythical geography then contained; finally, sailing this strait for twenty days he came to the Atlantic ocean. This same Anian strait was first placed further south, where it would cut through the continent at about the mouth of the Columbia river; but as the southern coast became explored, and it became known that no such passage-way existed, rather than lose altogether so interesting a feature, and so betray their ignorance, the map-makers kept shoving it further north, until they finally got it up to Bering strait, where it will probably remain.

The Wytfliet-Ptolemy maps of 1597 assisted to perpetuate mythical geography, being filled with fanciful conjectures received as fact by the scholars. In his Book of Sea Heroes, 1598, Conrad Löw gives a general map supposed to be original, yet copied from Ortelius and Ptolemy, in which the kingdom of California is placed near the north pole, by the large strait of Anian, which separates Asia from America. Then there were the stories told by Torquemada and Father Ascension; the tale of the wonderful island of Zinogaba, rich in pearls; the story of Maldonado, who in 1588 sailed from Labrador into the Polar sea, and through the strait of Anian into the Pacific; the stories of Father Zárate Salmeron, of Pierre d' Avity and Peñalosa, of fathers Kino and Salvatierra, of Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte, whose letter appeared in the London Memoirs for the Curious, in 1708, and others, which if told in full would fill a volume.

Whence it appears that this matter of interoceanic communication, which is now so plain to the members of congress, who would dig the ditch and have done with it if their allopposing politicians and the railway magnates did but graciously permit, was for a century or two a great mystery, which, like all mysteries that cannot be fathomed, men translated to suit their fancy, stoutly asserting the same as fact, and so

far as the use or effect of their knowledge went, was perhaps to them as good as fact. By the middle of the sixteenth century the Atlantic coast was known northward only to latitude 60°, and the Pacific coast to latitude 40°, yet there are many maps of the region beyond drawn prior to 1550. Honest old Sebastian Cabot stated squarely before the century began, "And understanding by reason of the Sphere that if I should saile by the Northwest I should by a shorter tract come into India, not thinking to finde any other land then that of Cathay, and from thence to turne toward India, but after certaine dayes I found that the land ranne towards the North, which was to mee a great displeasure."

Leaving the Northern Mystery and returning to sober statements, we find that for a period of 400 years efforts have been made to obtain a water-way through the American continent. Columbus spent the later years of his life in search. of a strait, before Vasco Nuñez ascertained that there was a great ocean so near at hand. Passage was attempted by the Atrato river from ancient Darien. Angelo Saavedra proposed to cut a waterway through the isthmus of Panamá as early as 1520, and not long afterward Cortés had the isthmus of Tehuantepec surveyed for a canal. Antonio Galvao in 1550 submitted four different schemes for a canal. The Spanish cortes in 1814 ordered work begun at Tehuantepec, but independence intervened to prevent; and yet a survey was there made in 1821, and to José de Garray in 1842 was given a concession to construct a canal, and there the matter dropped. President Bolivar instituted an examination of the Panamá isthmus for canal construction, as did the Frenchman Garella, and others.

Then came the discovery of gold in California, and the construction, on the Panamá isthmus, of the first railway across the continent of America, from ocean to ocean. This, indeed, was a great event, though the distance was only 48 miles. The work was completed, at the cost of much money and many human lives; in 1855, and thereafter 40,000 passengers were annually conveyed across this narrow neck of land at a fare of $25 each. The canal of M. de Lesseps was to follow the route of the railway, which indeed was purchased by the French company. The estimated cost of the canal by the de Lesseps company, which took form in 1881 as the Inter

oceanic Canal company of Panamá, was 600,000,000 francs, but which failed as every previous attempt had failed.

Charles V was thoroughly interested in the project of a waterway across the Panamá isthmus. When he first saw mapped the Darien country he was struck with the near approach of the heads of streams flowing in opposite directions, and he soon formed a plan to unite the Rio Grande with the Chagre, and Andagoya, who made an expedition to Biru in 1522, was directed to make a survey, with estimate of cost. His report was unfavorable. At that time, a ship arriving at Nombre de Dios discharged cargo into flat-bottomed boats which ascended the Chagre to Cruces, distant about six leagues from the South sea. There muleteers took the merchandise in charge for Panamá.

Montejo, governor of Honduras, in 1539 addressed a letter to the emperor urging the construction of a road for packanimals between the bay of Fonseca and Puerto de Caballos, by way of Comayaga, the distance being 32 leagues. He claimed this to be a more favorable route for merchandise between Spain and Peru than that via Panamá, the harbors on either side being better and the climate less unhealthy. The governor asked for negroes to do the work, as the natives were not reliable laborers. In 1554 Juan Garcia de Hermosillo was commissioned by the king to inquire into the merits of the respective routes, and he reported in favor of Honduras. Still the interest in the canal was kept up, for this same year we find the old chronicler Gomara writing, "It is true that mountains obstruct these passages, but if there be mountains there be also hands; let but the resolve be formed to make the passage and it can be made."

In early times several millions were spent on a canal from Cartagena bay to Calamar, on the Magdalena river; it is called el dique de Cartagena, but never proved successful, because the work was not properly done, and navigation is obstructed by the batata grass which fills the canal.

The isthmus of Tehuantepec is 130 miles wide at its narrowest point, where, besides lakes and lagoons, are the rivers Coatzacoalcos and Tehuantepec, emptying into the bays of Campeche and Tehuantepec respectively. The plan here was to enlarge and connect these two rivers, and it was seriously discussed at various times, and surveys made.

It was proposed in France, in 1791, by La Bastide, to cut a channel from the gulf of Nicoya to the Sapoa, widening that river between the lake and the gulf of Papagayo, but the French revolution drove the matter from the minds of the projectors. So it was in Spain, in 1814, when survey and construction were decreed by the cortes, subsequent political events rendering the decree inoperative.

The attention of the Spanish court was for many years occupied by projects for a ship canal through Nicaragua. Search was made for the outlets of lakes Managua and Nicaragua by Pedrarias Dávila, first governor of that region under the crown of Spain. The falls of the San Juan were carefully examined by Este and Rojas, officers of the king, and a waterway round them for ships recommended. Not only were the Spaniards interested in this scheme, but also the French and English, the latter even contemplating the conquest of the country. The contrivance of locks being then little understood, Galisteo in 1781 declared the plan impracticable.

"If the isthmus of Panamá is cut through some day" said Decrès to First-consul Napoleon, who asked his ministers' advice about the cession of Louisiana to the United States, "it will occasion an immense revolution in navigation, so that a voyage around the world will be easier than the longest cruise to-day. Louisiana will be on the line of this new route, and its possession will be of inestimable value. Don't give it up."

It is now three quarters of a century since the attention of the United States was first directed to the subject in 1825. After considering it for a full decade, the president was requested by the senate, in 1835, to enter into negotiations with the Central American states and New Granada, having in view treaties for the protection of Americans who should attempt opening communication between the two oceans. With New Granada a treaty was made in 1846, which gave the United States right of way across the Isthmus, but instead of a canal a railway was built.

Let us hope, as regards a ship canal, a short line railway across the continental desert, or irrigating and land-reclaiming canals and systems, that hereafter when the government pays for a thing it will keep it, and operate it, and not hand it over to private persons to be used to grind the people who contributed to the construction. As to the routes for a ship

canal, the commercial world will be satisfied with either; probably to all except North America the Panamá route would be preferable, being more central and shorter; through Nicaragua, however, will best suit the United States, being nearer, and therefore more useful.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, Joseph L. White, and others, in order to make more secure their exclusive privilege for conveying freight and passengers across Nicaragua, organized in 1849 the American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal company, probably having no intention then or at any time to construct such a waterway. A survey was made, and in 1851 White secured a charter from the Nicaraguan government authorizing the formation of another company for the same purpose, composed of the same members but with a different name. No wonder that Nicaragua, wearied at the long and useless delay of congress to take action, should permit the privilege to pass into private hands. While it is better for the United States government to control the canal, it is of less consequence to commerce who builds it than that it is built.

Nothing exemplifies more forcibly the great awakening of the American people incident to the war with Spain than the revolution of opinion regarding the importance of an interoceanic ship canal. Except upon the Pacific coast, and among those more especially interested on the Atlantic side, there was a general apathy as to the question, especially in the midcontinent states, where it was looked upon as a measure to benefit the coasts at the expense of the interior. Politicians arrayed themselves against it for personal reasons, and there were statesmen and journalists who saw in it only a scheme for swindling the government. But with the war, and the expansion of ideas which followed, all this was changed.

As to the necessity of the canal to commerce, or the feasibility of constructing it, the time has passed for such discussion. As to its relative value to one part of the world and to another, it will prove nearer of equal value to all than might appear at the first glance. Whatever helps London, helps all who do business with London, and that is all the world. I cannot say much for the intelligence of the midcontinent man who claims that because his town is not a seaport he will derive no benefit from ship canal. Let him consider that an interoceanic waterway across any isthmus of America will make