The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 1887.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 147, 24 June 1887, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 1887.

For the cause that lacks assistance,' For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do,

Mail advices go to show that the recent telegraphic despatch throwing doubt upon the completion of the great inter-oceanic canal at Panama is founded upon a real and formidable engineering difficulty that has arisen. In one of the principal cuttings, it would appear that -. an underground current of water was tapped, and that a river had burst in with resistless forcei carrying tremendous quantities ! of rock and gravel, and almost completely undoing the work accomplished at. that point at a great expenditure. This information, coming from American sources, must betaken with a very big pinch of salt, more especially as the authority for ib is mixed up with the name of Admiral Ammen, the leading advocate of the rival Nicaragua Canal scheme. Even the San Francisco "Chronicle" admits as much when it says :—" Upon the isthmus of Panama there are many difficulties to be surmounted, and there will be many drawbacks which will extend the completion of the work beyond the time originally fixed; bub that the achievement is impossible must be determined by some authority less prejudiced than Admiral Ammen before the decision will be accepted as final.' , - At latest advices the engineers were about to commence work on the Culebra cutting, which is said to be the most difficult on the whole route, and which the Americans declare will take six years to finish. Quite apart from the reported engineering difficulty of controlling the subterranean watercourses, it is evident that matters at

the isfctmiis are not all that they should be. Mr A. Nelson Boyd, an English engineer who visited the works some months ago, has written an article to an English paper, which concludes as follows :—" The impression made upon my mind by a visit to the canal is a sad one. It seems as if the success at Suez was to be tarnished by a failure •at Panama, and the brilliant reputation earned in the East lost in the West. The Suez Canal has been followed too closely for work constructed under very different circumstances. The difficulties were underrated by the early surveyors and the rate of wages miscalculated. Now there is uncertainty and hesitation about the plans to be adopted and a tardy straining after economy." This pessimistic view has doubtless some justification, but it must not be forgotten that engineers even more eminent than Mr Boyd predicted a dismal failure for the Suez Canal, and that they proved to be all astray. So there is room to hope that the gloomy forebodings about the more stupendous undertaking at Panama will turn out to be unjustified. In the meantime the prospects of the Nicaragua scheme are looking up, but ordinary prudence should show its projectors the folly of starting an opposition canal, and the advisability rather of giving their capital and advice to help the completion of that at Panama. For' after all, we are firmly convinced the real difficulty is a financial one, and if that is overcome the finishing of the great work is but a question of a few years.