The West Indian correspondent of the Times contributes to Tuesday's
issue a very interesting account of a recent visit to the Isthmus of Panama, during which he traversed the canal from end to end. The upshot of his survey is to make it clear that, in spite of the cessation of work between 1889 and 1897, a great deal of solid preliminary progress has been made. For the last six or seven years a thousand labourers have been continuously employed by the new Panama Canal Company, with the result that, broadly speaking, the greater portion of the maritime sections has been completed— eleven and a quarter of the fifteen miles between Colon and Bohio are already navigable—on the intermediate levels the excavation in dry earth has been carried down to a consider- able depth, and for six miles across the central ridge an enormous trench has been dug, in some parts reaching a point only a hundred and sixty feet above sea-level. Most of the cuttings on the central section are in good condition, no indications of landslides being observable ; operations are actively going on on the summit level ; and the bungalow residences of the original staff on the heights of the Cordil- lera are still in good order. The danger of the Chagres fever in the marshy flats beyond Colon remains, and can only be diminished by cutting down the bush and filling in the swamps,—a costly undertaking. Still, the writer's conclusions are that it would have been folly for the United States to have adopted any alternative scheme, and that the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty makes it certain that the scheme will now be carried through.
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