Th. Panama Canal, by L C. Rodrigues, LL.B. (Sampson Low
and Co.) should be read—we do not say believed—by all who are in- terested in one of the greatest engineering enterprises of the present or of any time. In the end of 1879, Mr. Rodriguez was sent to Panama by the New York World as a special commissioner to meet If. de Leseeps, and to write his impressions on the canal soheme. The book which Mr. Rodriguez now publishes seems to be based on his studies of that scheme, and on articles embodying them which he contributed to journals in New York and London. The conclusions he has arrived at are eminently hostile—to use a very mild word—to B, de Lesseps. Thus, Mr. Rodriguez says that "even if the canal could be ready in nine years, and should start business with 5,000,000 tons (instead of 3,200,000, as calculated in the United States for the Nicaragua Canal), the outlook of the Company, with a capital in shares and bonds of 2107,000,000, would be the annual de- ficiency of £3,300,000. That result will be owing to the bad selection of the line and the extravagant manner in which money has been spent." Mr. Rodriguez, partisan though he is, writes lucidly as well as forcibly. Partisanship apart, too, his book will be found valuable for the historical account it supplies of the Panama Canal scheme, regarded alike from the financial, the political, and the engineering point of view.
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