s are plants of slow growth in lands of the Eastern
hemisphere, compared with the New World, the fascinating tale of Suez
required two or three thousand years for its development, while that of
Panama had its beginning less than four hundred years ago. In both cases
the possession of a canal site demanded by commerce brought loss of
territory and prestige to the government actually owning it. The
Egyptians were shorn of the privilege of governing Egypt through the
reckless pledging of credit to raise funds for the completion of the
waterway connecting Port Said and Suez, and the South American republic
of Colombia saw a goodly slice of territory pass forever from her rule,
with the Panama site, when the republic on the isthmus came suddenly
into being.

Vexatious and humiliating as the incidents must have been to the
Egyptians and the Colombians, the world at large, broadly considering
the situations, pretends to see no misfortune in the conversion of
trifling areas to the control of abler administrators, comparing each
action to the condemning of a piece of private property to the use of
the universe. When the canal connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific
shall be completed, no more waterways uniting oceans will be necessary
or possible. But, did a weak people possess a site that might be
utilized by the ebbing and flowing of the globe's shipping, when a canal
had been made, they would obviously hesitate a long time before
voluntarily parading its advantages.

The uniting of the Mediterranean and Red seas was considered long before
the birth of Christ, and many wise men and potentates toyed with the
project in the hoary ages. The Persian king, Necho, was dissuaded
sixteen hundred years before the dawn of Christianity from embarking in
the enterprise, through the warning of his favorite oracle, who insisted
that the completion of the work would bring a foreign invasion,
resulting in the loss of canal and country as well. The great Rameses
was not the only ruler of the country of the Nile who coquetted with the
project. In 1800 the engineers of Napoleon studied the scheme, but their
error in estimating the Red Sea to be thirty feet below the
Mediterranean kept the Corsican from undertaking the cutting of a canal.
Mehemet Ali, whose energies for improving the welfare of his Egyptian
people were almost boundless, never yielded to the blandishment of
engineers scheming to pierce the isthmus; he may have known of the
prog