these make clear the questions at issue between the contending forces in Congress.

It is the hope that what is herein preserved and presented may be useful, not only for the present, but in coming years when similar problems may disturb and vex our country. If our statements appear in any way partisan, it is not from prejudice and impulse, but from the very logic and reason resulting from past events, and from right and justice emanating from all our compacts and the surrounding circumstances. GEO. A. TALLEY. Linwood Station, Pa., Aug. 1914.

PANAMA CANAL.

CHAPTER I.

SPAIN AND THE ISTHMUS.

The intrepid and inspired Columbus in 1492 sailed west from Palos on the uncharted and unknown sea hoping to reach China or some intervening land; he failed in reaching China, but discovered America. He landed on the island of Guanahani which he believed to be part of India, and later visited the adjacent West Indian Islands and finally settled on Hispaniola (Haiti). And on January 4, 1493, he set out on his return to Spain to report his discovery and to receive his country's plaudits.

In September, 1493, he again sailed to America with a number of ships and 1500 men and made other settlements among the various islands, and again returned to Spain (in 1496) taking 225 Spaniards, 30 natives and vast treasurers with him. There were the usual jealousies against the successful discoverer and great opposition was encountered in raising supplies for another expedition, which retarded him for a year.

In 1498 he made his third voyage to the new colony. The mistake he made was in taking with him many men charged with crime. These he found to be a trouble and a detriment. It was on this voyage that he discovered Trinidad and at last reached the shore of Continental America: the first mainland seen by Columbus was on the shore of Venezuela.

His enemies having carried their unjust calumnies to such an extent Ferdinand ordered Columbus placed

in irons and carried to Spain where he arrived late in the fall of 1500, but he was almost instantly given his liberty and rewarded with still greater honors and dignity. It is said that Columbus retained his fetters as long as he lived and ordered that they be placed with his body in his coffin.

Feeling that his great work was not yet accomplished he sailed on his fourth voyage in 1502. He arrived off St. Domingo but was refused the right to land. Later he sailed on to Darien and this was perhaps his first view of the historic isthmus separating the two great oceans. Columbus here failed to find the fabled "secret strait" which was supposed to furnish a passage to the Pacific and the way to China. Columbus never saw the Pacific, and in 1504 broken in health and spirit he returned to Spain to spend two years in sickness, suffering and despondency and finally to die at Valladolid, May 20, 1506. Like other great heroes he was to suffer the misfortune of having others reap the harvest where he had so courageously and successfully sown. Thus the cruelty of fate often decrees that men of heroic and immortal accomplishments must suffer martyrdom and death and be consigned to the tomb in order to gain their just rewards.

It is most fitting that in writing of one of the "wonders of the world" (yet without a number) we should pause to pay tribute to that intelligent and daring genius who first led the white man into the territory in which lies the great American isthmus; and whose name was properly given to the state and nation that until but recently included the famous Panama Canal zone. Although some believe that Rodrigo Bastidas touched the Panama coast before Columbus; yet this is in grave doubt; but it is recorded that in 1503 Columbus actually visited the famous Chagres river which has fur

nished a large portion of the bed of the Panama canal. The finding of the Chagres river in 1503 was almost as important as the opening of the famous canal in 1914. Both were momentous, each according to its day and time. While lauding our American enterprise and prowess for the wonderful accomplishment let us not forget the incomparable navigator who sailed this river four hundred years before.

Some of the men of history and contemporaries of Columbus were Bastidas, Balboa, Cortez and the cruel Pizzaro. In a few years Spain was in control of nearly all the territory now known as Latin-America. But it was not until 1513 that the white man crossed the isthmus and discovered the Pacific, then called the South Sea. Balboa, taking 190 Europeans and many natives began his march from the North to the South Sea, and it took him from September 6 to September 29 to make the trip. When he reached the top of the mountains he first received a full view of the eastern shore of the greatest ocean. He made a second trip to the Pacific in 1516 and constructed the necessary ships and sailed up and down the shore of the Pacific in pursuit of gold, silver and pearls but he was induced to return to the north side of the isthmus by Pedrarius (or Devila) and was treacherously tried, condemned and beheaded. It was Magellan, not Balboa, that named the Pacific Ocean. It is to be remarked that Balboa traversed the isthmus from coast to coast nearly one hundred years before the settlement at Jamestown.

It seems that the natives had told and often repeated the story of the "secret strait," and since no search could locate it, many supposed that it formerly existed and perhaps was obliterated by some convulsion of nature.

Cortez, in 1523, not being able to find the lost strait

considered the idea of making such a waterway. Spain many times had visions of a canal across the isthmus, but never succeeded in getting beyond the investigation stage. Some went so far as to look upon the enterprise with superstitious awe, and considered that as the Creator had separated the two oceans disaster would result from making an artificial connection. Spain with her Cortez and Pizzaro did not have pluck for such a Herculean task.

Nations in colonizing America have kept mostly to their home lines of latitude. Columbus left Palos on the 37° of Latitude, and as he supposed, sailed due west, and which should have landed him in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. But fate or accident veered him towards the south and he first saw land on the 25° of latitude. And in his immediate discoveries thereafter he moved farther south and centered at last on the isthmus of Panama on the 9° of latitude. He was seeking a farther ocean and perhaps the stories of the natives directed him to the isthmus as the only way of reaching the South Sea. Looking back from the present, it seems as if destiny rather than design steered the first permanent settlers on this continent almost directly to Panama. Here ships met the barrier and it has taken four centuries to overcome it and still the barrier is only partially removed since mechanical devices are yet necessary to complete the transit. It is upstairs at one end and down stairs at the other. It is a wonderful achievement and French initiative followed by American force, energy and finance, has wrought it.

Those who desire to go deeply into ancient Spanish theorizing on building a canal across the isthmus can find satisfaction in consulting Willis F. Johnson's comprehensive work on the Panama canal.