isastrous in the
execution, or to raise and spend fresh tens of millions to follow those
that are gone with no certain prospect of success after all. The saddest
part of the story will be soonest forgotten--the frightful consumption
of human life in those damp and pestilential jungles. M. Lesseps having
made his name immortal at Suez, aspired at eclipsing his first
achievement, by a second yet more splendidly ambitious, at a time of
life when common men are content to retire upon their laurels. He
deserves and will receive an unstinted admiration for his energy and his
enthusiasm. But his countrymen who have so zealously supported him will
be rewarded with no dividend upon their shares, even if the two oceans
are eventually united, and no final success can be looked for in the
bold projector's life time.

At dawn we swept out under the Moro, and away once more into the free
fresh open sea. We had come down on the south side of the island, we
returned by the north up the old Bahama Channel where Drake died on his
way home from his last unsuccessful expedition--Lope de Vega singing a
paean over the end of the great 'dragon.' Fresh passengers brought fresh
talk. There was a clever young Jamaican on board returning from a
holiday; he had the spirits of youth about him, and would have pleased
my American who never knew good come of despondency. He had hopes for
his country, but they rested, like those of every sensible man that I
met, on an inability to believe that there would be further advances in
the direction of political liberty. A revised constitution, he said,
could issue only in fresh Gordon riots and fresh calamities. He had been
travelling in the Southern States. He had seen the state of Mississippi
deserted by the whites, and falling back into a black wilderness. He had
seen South Carolina, which had narrowly escaped ruin under a black and
carpet-bagger legislature, and had recovered itself under the steady
determination of the Americans that the civil war was not to mean the
domination of negro over white. The danger was greater in the English
islands than in either of these states, from the enormous disproportion
of numbers. The experiment could be ventured only under a high census
and a restricted franchise. But the experience of all countries showed
that these limited franchises were invidious and could not be
maintained, the end was involved in the beginning, and he trusted that
prudent counsels would prevai