Gold Seekers of 49 | Page 5

years. Lieutenant Lucien B.
Wyse of the French Navy makes a survey and a report.
1879--An International Congress of 135 delegates, eleven being from
the United States, is held at Paris, to discuss the route for a canal.
Ferdinand de Lesseps, French engineer who had built the Suez Canal,
presides. The route selected is that through Panama, between Colon and

Panama. The Universal Company of the Panama Interoceanic Canal is
incorporated. De Lesseps is made chief engineer. He calculates that the
canal can be built in eight years, at a cost of $127,000,000. Shares in
the company are widely sold.
1881--Work on the French canal is started.
1892--The French company has already spent eight years and
$260,000,000, and has accomplished little actual headway. An
enormous amount of money has been wasted. The company is declared
insolvent and a receiver is appointed by the French court.
1894--The company is reorganized as the New Panama Canal
Company. In five years it expends $8,000,000, in work on about
two-fifths of the canal.
1899--By authority of Congress President McKinley appoints an
Isthmian Canal Commission to investigate the property of the French
company and see by what methods it can be purchased. The
commission in its report recommends a route up through Nicaragua.
Estimates are made that $102,000,000 and ten years' work will be
required.
1901--The question of a Panama canal or a Nicaragua canal is debated
in Congress. Expert opinion from engineers and shipping interests
favors the Panama route.
1902--By authorizing the purchase of the French company's property
and franchises for $40,000,000 the United States declares its purpose to
build a Panama canal itself. The Secretary of War is instructed to make
plans upon an expense basis not to exceed $130,000,000.
1903-1904--The United States formally takes over the French rights
and concludes a canal treaty with Panama, the canal to be completed in
fourteen years.
1904--The Canal Commission appointed by the President and under
supervision of the Secretary of War, William H. Taft, arrives on the

Isthmus to pursue the building of the canal. John F. Wallace is
engineer-in-chief. The commission decides on a lock canal, instead of a
sea-level canal as originally planned.
1905--John F. Stevens succeeds Mr. Wallace as chief engineer.
1906--The foreign members of an International Board of Consulting
Engineers which visits the canal at the invitation of the United States
report in favor of a sea-level canal; American members, in the minority,
report in favor of the lock canal.
1906--In his message to Congress President Roosevelt supports the
minority report favoring the lock canal. Congress adopts the minority
report.
1907--Engineer Stevens resigns. The canal work is placed under the
direction of the War Department. Lieutenant-Colonel George W.
Goethals, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., is made engineer-in-chief. He
estimates the cost of a lock canal at $375,000,000; of a sea-level canal,
$563,000,000.
1913--October 10 (the anniversary of the day upon which Balboa took
possession of the Pacific Ocean) the Gamboa dike, marking the
division between the canal waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific, is
blown open when President Wilson presses an electric button at the
White House. This year a mud scow passes through the canal from the
Atlantic to the Pacific.
1914--January 7, the steam crane boat Alexander la Valley, 1200 tons,
makes the passage--the first vessel by steam. February 1 the ocean tug
Reliance, Captain R. C. Thompson, having steamed around the Horn
returns to the Atlantic through the canal--the first commercial vessel to
pass.
1914--The annual report of Colonel Goethals states that the cost of
constructing the canal to date, has been $353,559,049, including
fortifications.

1915--The great canal is formally opened. Including the $40,000,000
paid to France, and the $10,000,000 paid to the Republic of Panama,
the outlay represented by the canal as built by the United States totals
about $400,000,000, of which not a cent was misused.

GOLD SEEKERS OF '49
I
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
Charley Adams was trudging up to his knees in snow, on his way home
from down town. It was Washington's Birthday, 1849, and winter had
sent St. Louis a late valentine in shape of a big snowstorm. As this
occurred seventy-five years ago, there were no street-cars in St. Louis
(or in any other American city, for that matter); and even had there
been street-cars they doubtless would have been tied up. At all events,
Charley had walked down, and now he was trudging back with the
mail.
His father was very anxious to see that mail. It contained the Eastern
papers, and these probably would add to the tidings printed in the St.
Louis papers, from the marvelous gold fields of California.
Since January, when President Polk's annual message to Congress had
been read in St. Louis, in the papers, St. Louis people, like the whole
population of the United States,