but his party was too small to attack
Panama. They seized some Spanish vessels in the bay and plundered all
the coast for some distance. The following description by the bold
buccaneer is not without interest to those who consider the present
importance of the place:

Near the riverside stands New Panama, a very handsome city, in a
spacious bay of the same name, into which disembogue many long and
navigable rivers, some whereof are not without gold; besides that
it is beautified by many pleasant isles, the country about it
affording a delightful prospect to the sea.... The houses are
chiefly of brick and pretty lofty, especially the president's, the
churches, the monasteries, and other public structures, which make
the best show I have seen in the West Indies.

The present prosperity of Panama is due to its large transit trade,
which was recently estimated at L15,000,000 a year. The pearl-fisheries,
famous at the time of Balboa's visit, have now little value. The
narrowest breadth of the isthmus being only thirty miles, there have
naturally been many engineering proposals to connect the Pacific and
Atlantic oceans by a canal. M. de Lesseps founded a French company in
1881 for the construction of a ship-canal with eight locks, and over
forty-six miles in length; but in 1889, the excavations stopped after
some 48-1/2 millions of cubic meters of earth and rock had been removed.
Meanwhile a railway 47-1/2 miles long connects Colon on the Atlantic
with Panama on the Pacific.

The Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec, only 140 miles across, separates the
Bay of Campeachy from the Pacific, and failing the Panama Canal some
engineers were in favor of a _ship-railway_ for conveying large vessels
_bodily_ from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The scheme met with great
favor in the United States, but has not yet been carried out.

The third proposal for connecting the two great oceans is probably the
most feasible because it follows the most deeply marked depression of
the isthmus. The Nicaraguan Ship-canal will, if the scheme be carried
out, pass from Greytown on the Atlantic to Brito on the Pacific, about
170 miles apart, through the republic of Nicaragua, which lies north of
Panama and south of Guatemala. One obvious advantage of this ship-canal
is that the great lake is utilized, affording already about one-third of
the waterway; only twenty-eight miles, in fact, being actual canal, and
the r