wo oceans. In 1550, one Galvao,
a Portuguese navigator, wrote a book to prove the feasibility of an
artificial connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and in 1780
a scientific commission from Spain studied the three Central-American
routes--Panama, San Blas, and Nicaragua. These are simple facts to be
pondered over by busy people who may possibly be in doubt as to whether
the "father" of the isthmian enterprise was De Lesseps, Theodore
Roosevelt, or Admiral Walker.

But it required a knowledge of practical geography to learn that from
Colon to Panama by sea is eight thousand miles, instead of forty-seven
across country--and it took a dauntless American President to demand
that his government construct a national water route across the isthmus
at Panama, and to point the way to that end; and this was done against
potent opposition to any canal, and expressed preference of powerful
statesmen for the unfeasible Nicaraguan project.

It may be profitable for enthusiasts jumping at the conclusion that the
American canal will pay from its opening, to study the returns of the
Suez enterprise, the first full year of whose operation (1870) showed
gross takings of only $1,031,365 from tolls levied upon 486 vessels.
Speaking generally, a shipper sends his cargo by way of Suez only when
3,000 miles at least of ocean steaming may be saved--this is the
approximate economy effected by the great turnstile between West and
East, counting time, fuel, wages and other expenses. It may be accepted
as a concrete fact that the employment of any canal by commerce must
ever depend upon economic considerations.

Already acknowledging our commercial predominance, Europeans are not
blind to the real purpose of the Panama Canal. But it should be borne in
mind that whenever it is an open choice between the canal toll and the
equivalent of time at sea, the Briton will be slow to decide in favor of
contributing to the resources of a nation rising in brief time to
commercial premiership; and Frenchmen, economists by nature, will take a
similar view, as will Germans, and shippers of other nations. Expressed
in the fewest words, the employment of the Panama route will be governed
exclusively by self-interest, computed from the standpoint of material
economy; sentimentality will bring not one ship to Uncle Sam as a
patron--unless it be an American ship.

Suez will always be favored by European shipmasters determining routes
for cargoes in whic