This Canal was to cut across the Isthmus at its very narrowest point. It
was worked on for years, every one believing that it would be opened to
ships before very long. Many of the maps and geographies that were printed
in the eighties said that the Panama Canal would be opened in 1888, or at
latest in 1889.
No one expected what afterward happened. In 1889 the works were stopped
for want of money; the affairs of the Canal were looked into; it was found
that there had been dishonesty and fraud, and in 1892 the great Count
Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez Canal, and a number of other
prominent Frenchmen, were arrested for dealing dishonestly with the money
subscribed for the Canal.
There was a dreadful scandal; many of the high French officials had to
give up their positions, and run away for fear of arrest.
When the whole matter was understood, it was found that, for months before
the work was stopped, the men who had charge of the Canal had decided that
the work would cost such an enormous sum of money that it would be almost
an impossibility to complete it.
They did not have the honesty to let this be known, but allowed people to
go on subscribing money, a part of which they put in their own pockets,
and spent the rest in bribing the French newspapers not to tell the truth
about the Canal.
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