NEWS OF THE WEEK.
NO facts at once new and authentic have been published this week about Panama affairs, all engaged in the two prosecutions and the inquiry waiting the reopening of the Assembly on January 10th to state what they have discovered. 'The investigating Judge, M. Franqueville, has, however, been diligently cross-examining the prisoners, and, it is believed, has arrived at much evidence which will be gradually made public after the date named. The only new arrest has been 'that of M. Blondin, who is now one of the cashiers of the Credit Lyonnais, but was formerly in the employ of the Panama Company. A lady who has recently visited the Canal works, in a letter quoted in the Daily Chronicle, after describing the ruin now going on—for instance, the slow decay of about fifty dredgers and steamboats—mentions an incident curiously illustrative of M. Ferdinand de Lesseps' recklessness of expense. He once visited the works, and doubtless to avoid the miasma of Colon, had a small peninsula run out to sea on which to build a house for the Chairman of the Company. Such a house would be as healthy as a ship, but the peninsula cost a fortune. His theory seems throughout- to have been that the Canal would succeed in the end, and that expense did not matter. He has at last, it is reported, become aware that a judicial inquiry is going on ; but at eighty-seven he is too old to attend, or, indeed, to be much disturbed. -
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