The Panama Canal

n, or, having provided such a passage at Nicaragua, to allow it to be obstructed again by volcanic action. This imperviousness of the long American ba

interrupted the ancient trade routes between East and West. Brigands held up the caravans which plodded across the desert sands from the Euphrates and the Indus, and pirates swarmed in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, intercepting the precious cargoes of silks

greatly exaggerated the eastern extension of Asia, with the result that the distance from Europe to China and India was underestimated by at least one-half. This was a fortunate mistake, for it is improbable

ch is now called Rio de Chagres, which hath its springs near the South Sea, within four leagues of Panama, and runneth into the North Sea." It was this same river, as we shall see, that became the feeder of the canal when the high-level scheme was adopted. So far out of his reckoning was Columbus that at Panama he imagined himself to be ten days' journey from the mouth of the Ganges! One of his objects, as we know from his own journal, was to convert the Great Khan of Tartary to the Christian faith, and this entanglement in what he called "the islands of the Indian Sea" was a sore hindrance to that and all his other purposes. He began that search for the strait which engaged the attention and tried the temper of Spanish, Portuguese, and English navigators for the next thirty years. He had hea

strait." In 1513 Balboa set himself to the great enterprise. If he could not discover a waterway he would at least see what lay beyond the narrow land barrier. From Coibo on the Gulf of Darien he struck inland on September 6 with a hundred Indian guides and bearers. It i

all h

h other with

n a peak i

ying, "If the strait is found, I shall hold it to be the greatest service I have yet rendered. It would

uthern extremity of the continent, Magellan pushed his venturous way into the great ocean beyond. But even Magellan had no idea that a few miles south of his strait the land ended and Atlantic and Pacific mingled their waters in one great flood. That truth was accidentally discovered by the English Drake more than fifty years afterwards (1579). Drake had been driven southward by stormy weather when he made the discovery which almost eclipsed in its importance even Magellan's exploit. In his exultation, we are told, he landed on the farthest island, and walking alone with his instruments to its extremity threw himself down, and with his arms embraced the souther

nized. And no sooner was this fact accepted than projects for an artificial canal began to be put forward. It was clear to the geographers and traders of those

TNO

ertainly not that from which Balboa first sighted the Pacific, though v