re all going."

"Think of all that land being put down in the bed of a lake!" Harry
Stevens exclaimed. "We ought to have taken a tip when the canal was first
talked about and bought up that property. Uncle Sam would have bought it
of us at a fancy price. Just think of a sure-thing speculation like
that."

Peter Fenton, known as the Encyclopedia, sat back in his chair and laughed
until his face was as red as the painted snout of the black bear which
looked down from a shield on the wall. The boys shook him up until he
regained the power of speech.

"If you boys had been one year old when the Panama Canal was first
mentioned," he managed to say, choking back his laughter, "you would now
stand at the venerable age of four hundred and sixteen years."

"I guess you get your history in the dream book," Jimmie cried.

"Nixy dream book," declared Peter, with the dignity which comes of much
knowledge. "The Spaniards who lived in the Province of New Granada, on the
Isthmus of Darien, as it was then called, planned a ship canal across the
neck in the year 1518, and there has been talk of the big ditch ever
since."

"Then it takes a long time to get at the job," suggested Jimmie. "The
trench could have been scooped out with a teaspoon in less than four
hundred years."

"Wait until you get down there! You'll see what impression your teaspoon
would make. I've been reading up since I've returned to New York, and know
something about the size of the job. The canal will cost millions more
than Congress figured on, and the job is going ahead without graft, at
that."

"Still," Harry Stevens interrupted, "it would have been a wise move to
have annexed a lot of that land."

"If your speculation had developed when the first talk of the canal was
heard," Peter went on, "you would have had to do business with King
Ferdinand, of Spain. He would have put the soil on the bargain counter for
you one day and shot you up the next. That wouldn't have been so
cheerful."

"Nice party to do business with," laughed Harry.

"He was next to his king job, all right," Peter continued. "He was there
with the gunpowder when any subject stood to put anything over on him. He
caused Columbus to be returned to Spain in chains, and permitted one of
his officials to shoot up the first white man who ever looked out on the
Pacific from the divide of the Isthmus. He carried things by a large
majority, did Ferdinand."

"It was his queen who put her jewel