The Nome nugget., 1904-01-06


 1883, met at the table dhote of the Hotel de Paris in Panama, with from thirty forty member. of the staff of the Panama Canal Company. They were office attendants, surveyors, engineers and supern tendents of actual work of construction on the differ ent sections of the canal, mostly Frenchmen with sprinkling of Americans, ranging from young men freshly graduated from college of technology to veterans of the Suez canal and to old, trusted em- ployes of de Lesseps. Otherwise a most jolly pany it was with certain note of sadness that they discussed the enterprise with which they in tmately connected, discussing it, perhaps, all the more freely and the more frequently because they were beaten. Everyone of them expected shortly to return home. Under such circumstances it was but natural that the projected canal formed the main topic of their table talk and strange as it may seem there was an unanimous consensus of opinion among them that the enterprise was total failure and ab- solutely infeasbe. And they who had had every opportunity to know and who, a whole of that makeup that finds it hard and is loath to admit the word Impossible" into their yocabu- laries.
 was at the time altogether too young and too inexperienced to follow the different arguments and to understand the many which ad vanced and which had made their conclusion in- evitable. One cause, however, has stuck with me, undoubtedly because l experienced object les sons which tended to bring it properly home.
 The isthmus of Panama is -ennently of vol canic character. Earthquakes are of more frequent occurrence there than bzzards in the arctic re- gons during winter, and who has felt the flat roofed, low and broad-walled adobe buildings of Panama shake around him under repeated severe and prolonged shocks, needs neither vivid imagna- ton nor much technical knowledge to understand hot hoy of tba high embankmsnts of deep cuts. A few months work would often go to ruin in few minutes time.
 De Lesseps had just previously returned to France, by all local accounts. fully resolved to throw up the enterprise, and my table companions in daily expectation of their recall and discharge. You will be able to picture their surprise when they ceived by mail numerous copies of French papers giving glowing accounts of the great work that was being done by France on the sthmus and telling of the enthusiastic ovation de Lesseps had received on his return to Paris when they one and all came in for promotion and large increases in their salaries ,; when shiploads of the finest champagnes liquors and brandes and all kinds of French delicaces were sent out to them to further induce ahem to stay with the enterprise and to retard their return to France. Well-that there was some method in this way of doing things, every fake mining promoter in Nome is able to testify to.
 It would be doing de Lesseps an injustice to infer that he became willing party to this most colossal swindle of all history, alongside of which the South sea and Mississippi bubbles puny babies, merely for the lust of money. There were by far graver sons. He had been foremost in opening the gates ]; now he was helplessy carried along by the impetu- ous flood. Originally he had been fully imbued with the entire feasibility of the enterprise Swollen with his success at Suez, he had failed to give sufficient
 
 Panama. On the strength of his name and fame an immense sum of money had been raised. For the largest part it had been expended in preparatory and actual construction work in building numerous finely equipped camps, hotels and hospitals, in buying and