had been decided on, de Lesseps went to the Isthmus with an imposing "Technical Commission" of distinguished engineers.
When President Roosevelt made his first inspection of the Panama Canal, nearly twenty-seven years afterwards, he went there in November, at the climax of the rainy season, because he wanted to see things at their worst. For exactly the opposite reason, de Lesseps chose December and January, when the rains have virtually ceased, and the country looks its prettiest. After one trip across the Panama Railroad, many speeches, and no end of feasting and drinking of healths, he hurried away to the United States, where he spent a great deal more time trying to induce the Americans to invest money in his enterprise, but without much success. De Lesseps made another trip to the Isthmus in 1886.
Except for these two short visits, which together covered barely two months, de Lesseps never set foot in Panama, but attempted to dig the canal from his office in Paris. Few people realize that to-day, or that de Lesseps was born as long ago as 1805. He was more than seventy years old, and though he knew very little about technical engineering, his success at Suez and the praise of flatterers made him believe that he was the greatest engineer in the world. As he had dominated the Congress, so he ruled the Canal Company, absolutely and blindly. Ignoring the great differences between the level, rainless sands of one isthmus, and the rocky hills and flooded jungles of the other, de Lesseps declared that "the Panama Canal will be more easily begun, finished, and maintained than the Suez Canal."
