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THE ATLANTIC FLEET VISITS THE ISTHMUS

Mr. Tracy Robinson, a charming chronicler of the events of a lifetime on the Isthmus, says of this period: “From the time that operations were well under way until the end, the state of things was like the life at ‘Red Hoss Mountain’ described by Eugene Field:

‘When the money flowed like likker....

With the joints all throwed wide open, and no sheriff to demur.’

Vice flourished. Gambling of every kind and every other form of wickedness were common day and night. The blush of shame became practically unknown.”

The De Lesseps house stands at what has been the most picturesque point in the American town of Cristobal. Before it stands a really admirable work of art, Columbus in the attitude of a protector toward a half-nude Indian maiden who kneels at his side. After the fashion of a world largely indifferent to art the name of the sculptor has been lost, but the statue was cast in Turin, for Empress Eugénie, who gave it to the Republic of Colombia when the French took up the Canal work. Buffeted from site to site, standing for awhile betwixt the tracks in a railroad freight yard, the spot on which it stood when viewed by the writer is sentimentally ideal, for it overlooks the entrance to the Canal and under the eyes of the Great Navigator, done in bronze, the ships of all the world will pass and repass as they enter or leave the artificial strait which gives substance to the Spaniard’s dream.