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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 4898, 25 June 1887, Page 2

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A day or two since thore was a telegram saying the Panama Canal business was in trouble, and the work would probably have to be abandoned. To-day the mail news shows that work costing millions has been rendered valueless by the development, of the peculiar difficulties of this [(articular feat of engineering. While allowing a ve>y big discount on everything concerning the canal that comes via the States, where prejudice against it is very strong, still there is plenty of evidence that the position is an exceedingly serious one, and that the prospects of the canal are very blue indeed. In fact, we had better prepare for the worst and bo ready to learn that DeLesseps' wonderful success in one hemisphere has been counterbalanced by tremendous failure in the other. The prospector making a pleasant four-weeks' voyage r.o England is receding into the future. We had better change great confidence to a elate of mind in which success would come as a joyful surprise. Faith in DeLesseps on account ot his Suez success has bueu so unbounded that nearly everyone in the world had accepted his assurance that the canal would be finished in 1889. Any number of stupendous difficulties and risks were admitted, but there has been a conviction that ihe marvellous old man would get over them. Can his daring and fertility of resource have failed, or is it merely financial trouble? He first es*imated the cost at £20,000,000, but after spending £20,000,000 ho said as much more would be wanted to finish. This was a staggerer, but faith was so groat and enthusiasm so unbounded that in August last he was able to get — mainly in France -£20,000,000 of debentures taken up by 400,000 subscribers. At a meeting afterwards he admitted only a sixth of the work had been done, but said £24,000,000 more would finish it, asserting that for every yard of excavation during the last five years " there had been an amount of money and energy expended on the canal in other and less tangible ways, which made that one yard equivalent to (he five yards still to be done." Possibly this calculation has now been proved to be fallacious, and that the money needed to finish the work comes to such a large sum that there is no hope of its being found. If that is so, it will be most deplorable that 30 much treasure has befcn sunk and so many human lives sacrificed in useless excavations. Alas, it begins to look as if the Panama Canal was going — at any rate in the first attempt — to be the most stupendous failure in the world's history !