Monroe doctrine, so far from being opposed to our enterprise, is directly favorable to it; inasmuch as it is the Republic of the United States of Colombia which has granted the concession for the Panama Canal, and the decree of the President of the United States of Colombia, of the 3d of September, 1879, as well as the letter of the Governor of Panama, which informed me of that decree,* very plainly signify that the nations of that part of America are heartily enlisted in the undertaking.

As for myself, I devote myself all the more willingly to this enterprise of an American canal, brother and complement of that of Suez, because of a sympathetic drawing which I feel toward America, the eldest daughter, perhaps, of ancient Egypt; for that continent which we call the "New World" was visited, according to the opinion of certain learned men, by fleets of Solomon and of Hiram, at that period of history when we were clothed in the skins of beasts and our ancestors lived in the age of stone. Christopher Columbus, who discovered America for us, and the Spaniards who succeeded him, discovered the traces of an ancient civilization. Everything reminds us of that extinct civilization with which the early navigators were, doubtless, acquainted: the monuments of Yucatan, a stone covered with Tyrian inscriptions lately found in the upper Amazon, and which the learned Emperor of Brazil, our illustrious colleague of the Institute, has caused to be deposited in the museum at Rio de Janeiro. In this manner has the narrative of the Bible been verified, which recounts that the fleets of Solomon and of Hiram set sail from the harbor of Joppa (Jaffa), and, after three years, returned laden with the merchandise of Ophir, of Paruim, and of Tarshish. Some historians have maintained that the Egyptians and the Tyrians went in search of gold along the eastern coasts of Africa, below the entrance to the Red Sea, where the Tyrians had also fleets which Solomon had caused to be built. But the Bible is quite explicit on this point; it gives the departure and the duration of the voyages-three years. It declares that, on sailing from Joppa, they went to Ophir and Paruim, and, following the coast of Africa, visited the Cape de Verd Islands and the islands of Madeira, which the ancients called the Fortunate Islands. The Carthaginians were acquainted with them; the Tyrians knew them in this connection, that they prevented other nations from passing through the Pillars of Hercules, in order not to be deprived of their

* See note at the end of the article.

commerce with other parts of the world. All this seems to me highly interesting. I should be glad if this question might be investigated, as it has not been hitherto; the Spanish conquerors had not the time, and science, moreover, had not reached the point at which it is now arrived. I have always wondered that no investigation has been made respecting that passage of Plato in which, in the dialogues of Timæus, he describes his voyage to Egypt. This Timæus, the interlocutor of the dialogue, presents himself before a high priest of the temple of Saïs, a great city of Lower Egypt, and demands of him what he thinks of his nation, Greece.

"You are children, you Greeks," he replied; "you have forgotten the history of your fathers, who taught us to handle the bow and the arrow, and to defend ourselves from the Atlantides, who came upon the great shores of the sea." Atlantis was composed of two great islands, and between these two great islands and the Pillars of Hercules there were smaller islands. There is nothing more striking. I have nowhere observed that this passage of Plato has been made the subject of later studies.

The Egyptians, and especially the Tyrians, and the fleets of Solomon, after having rounded the coasts of Africa, could easily have reached the coasts of Brazil, over a tranquil sea. In searching for the mouth of a river, they no doubt discovered the Amazon, and ascended the course of it. What is remarkable is, that Paruim is, in the language of the country, the plural of Paru, which is one of the two higher affluents of the Amazon. There is reason to believe that in the Spanish archives evidence would be found to demonstrate that, when the Spaniards arrived in this country, they discovered the decadence of a very ancient civilization.

Civilization lives again on the American Continent in our day; at its head marches the intelligent people of the United States. The nations of Central America and of South America are struggling to elevate themselves, and to follow in the footsteps of the great Republic of the North; and the canal can not fail to assist the development of these American countries.

I invite the coöperation, in the accomplishment of this great enterprise, of all men of noble purpose, all those who strive after the works of peace and of progress, in which the United States are especially preeminent.

In closing this paper, I turn back and am reminded that a new work is in preparation. How many people, and those among the most eminent, formerly treated the Suez Canal as an impracticable

enterprise! To create a harbor in the Gulf of Pelusium; to cross the morasses of the Lake of Menzaleh, and to mount the threshold of El-Guisr; to dig through the sands of the desert; to establish workshops at a distance of twenty-five leagues from any village, in a country without inhabitants, without water, without roads; to fill the basin of the Bitter Lakes; to prevent the sands from encroaching on the canal—what a dream of madness it all was!

All this, nevertheless, has been accomplished, and I know at the cost of what efforts it has been done. I do not hesitate to declare that the Panama Canal will be easier to begin, to finish, and to maintain, than the canal of Suez.

FERD. DE LESSEPS.

PARIS, November, 1879.

NOTE.

The following is the text of the decree of the President of the United States of Colombia, and of the letter of the Governor of Panama communicating the same, which are referred to by M. de Lesseps on page 12 of the foregoing article:

"The President of the United States of Colombia, considering

"1. That, according to official information received by the Executive Department, the concession granted by the Government for the opening of a canal has been assigned to a general company for the construction of an Interoceanic Canal, presided over by M. Ferdinand de Lesseps;

"2. That this pioneer of progress, already celebrated in the scientific world by his labors in the construction of the Suez Canal, will arrive at the Isthmus of Panama at the beginning of the next year, accompanied by engineers and contractors to inaugurate this enterprise :

"3. That Colombia, favored by the selection which the International Scientific Congress has made of a section of her territory for the construction of the canal, ought to demonstrate by explicit acts the high importance which she attaches to the execution of this work, and the satisfaction with which she welcomes its promoters, decrees:

"ARTICLE 1. A Minister Secretary of State, designated by special decree, shall proceed to the Isthmus in season to preside, in the name of the Government of Colombia, at a formal reception which shall be given to M. de Lesseps and his associates, as soon as they shall have landed.

"ART. 2. The Secretary of State for the Interior and for Foreign Relations shall address an invitation to each of the Governments of the United States, in order that they may each send official commissioners to take part, in conjunction with the national Secretary of State, in the formalities of the reception.

"ART. 3. The Secretary of State shall arrange that the Government of the State of Panama shall take part with the Minister who shall be designated

in the preparations to be made, pursuant to the wishes of the Executive power, for the reception of M. de Lesseps and his companions.

"ART. 4. By a separate decree there shall be opened an extraordinary credit in the budget of expenditures, to meet the outlays rendered necessary by the execution of the present decree.

"Given at Bogotá, the 3d of September, 1879.

LUIS CARLOS RICO."

"The Secretary of State for the Interior and for Foreign Relations,

(Signed)

Extracts from a letter of Don GERALDO ORTEGAS, Governor of the State of Panama, to M. F. DE LESSEPS, accompanying the transmission of the above decree (September 29, 1879):

"Thus it appears that your presence is ardently desired in our country; and you will triumph over all the obstacles which have been raised up against you.

.

"On a day which is not far distant, the Isthmus and Colombia are proposing to receive you with joy and enthusiasm; not with triumphal arches, such as admiration or fear dedicate to victorious warriors, but with grateful hearts which know how to bless the true benefactor of the human race.

...

"When the happy moment shall arrive, you will find cooperation and affection on the part of the Government and of all the inhabitants of this hospitable and generous country."

THE WOMAN QUESTION
QUESTION AGAIN.

FIVE chiefs of the woman-suffrage movement have joined forces to answer the article on "The Woman Question" in the "North American" for October. Their answer evades most of the points presented by us, repeats a series of well-known fallacies, and rests on a general base of argument which we had affirmed to be unsound and which the critics do not try to vindicate. We shall not follow them in detail, for the task of refuting their special errors is as needless as it would be easy. We will only classify some of their principal failings, and then touch in particular on such of the rest as may suggest a moral or serve as a text for observations on the subject in hand.

They condemn all our reasons at once by saying that they are not original, which is perfectly true. What we wrote is nothing but an expression of the convictions, more or less distinctly shaped, of the great majority of sensible and thoughtful persons of both sexes. It is the fact that it is the voice of a vast multitude which has roused this coalition against it. The critics on their part stand only for themselves and the small following that they represent. Their reasons have all been familiar to many of us for a generation or more. We looked with interest through all the thirty-two pages of their fivefold philippic to find some fresh thought to enlarge or correct, as the case might be, our own ideas; but we could see nothing but the same well-remembered faces. The company, it is true, had changed positions. Some, once conspicuous in the front, now kept in the background; such, for instance, as the fair form of the "Purification of Politics by Woman," whom we missed altogether till we descried her at last in a modest corner.

On the other hand, there were some promotions in the group. Advocates of woman suffrage have never been backward in praising the private virtues of their sex; but on this occasion they have