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I am afraid that President Roosevelt's domestic worry, as you term it in your number of the 10th inst., will not cease for many summers to come. Having resided on the Isthmus of Panama for seven years and contributed a series of articles to the "Times," "Saturday Review," "Scotsman," "Chambers' Journal," and "New York Herald," I can speak as an authority with "connaissance de cause." First and foremost, without entering immediately into technical and financial matter, such as the Chagres River, Culebra mountain, the ports of Colon and Panama, the expense and difficulty in finding labour, let me refer to the climate and the sanitary conditions of the Isthmus. Yellow fever resides permanently, whether in an endemic or epidemic form, and until this scourge is eradicated the canal will cost millions sterling, take years to build, and thousands of lives will be its holocaust. Has there been any specific discovered to save a patient once attacked with this disease, and what percentage die and how many recover? There are only special beings, "lucky dogs," who seem exempt from this fatal disease. A muscular, lean man acclimatised in a torrid zone between the ages of 40 and 60 appears to escape its virus, providing he is abstemious and refuses to drink Panama water in any shape or form. Youth and middle age are more subject, especially those who have not lived in or frequented a warm climate. Sanguine, lymphatic, and corpulent natures are tempting preys to the disease. To be acclimatised is to be in a constant state of anaemia, a state which the microbe despises. Children seem to be exempt. I am not alluding to the indigenous population, for it would be very unfortunate if they could not live in their own country, although some, very few, do die from yellow fever through contagion or intemperate habits. The native population are as yellow as quinces, and in a perfect state of chronic anaemia. The yellow fever microbe is seldom the tenant of a black man ; he has enough to do with other bacilli.

During my sojourn on the Isthmus, with a change of air every two years, I knew but very few Europeans who recovered from an attack, and these attacks were slight. None ever weathered a virulent case. We have amongst us to-day a worthy and excellent Sister of Charity of the Order of St Vincent of Paul, who for several years was the Angel of Mount Ancon hospital, where she unremittingly tendered her care and services to the last moments of many a patient

To construct a canal through these Nicropolai you must commence by purifying the whole Isthmus, and changing the sanitary conditions, then you may succeed in improving the climate, but otherwise you can bury your dead and spend your millions, as the French company did from 1881 to 1885. It was not a "French folly," but a French misfortune. They went boldly and gaily to work, but M. de Lesseps never dreamt of such a climate nor contemplated such a task. He preferred the Panama route on account of its being shorter than others proposed, but had he selected any other, the Atrato, Darien, or Nicaragua, even Tehuantepec, he would have succeeded. His genius and popularity would have moved mountains, but he could not battle against the hidden monster of disease which rendered his staff and workmen fearful, nervous, and careless. Engineers-in-chief died, like MM. Blanchet and Boyer, men of vast experience and capacity. In a few months the wife, son, and daughter of Mr. Dingler, the director general, were victims of yellow fever. All collapsed; it was a forlorn hope with a "sauve qui peut'' which ushered on the scene in many cases the fiend of dishonesty. "Apres moi le deluge" was the password.

The luxuriant vegetation and the dense foliage on each side of the proposed line of the Canal prevent the rays of the sun from penetrating the accumulated heaps of dead and decayed vegetable matter from which emanate a mephitic vapour charged with the germs of disease and pestilence. What part of the Isthmus can be pointed out as free from these seeds of malignant fever ? Is it in the swamps of Rio Grande, on the heights of Emperador, Culebra, or Obispo ? On the plains of Mamei, Matachin, or Bohio-Soldado ? Surely not at Gatun nor Colon ! The fever lurks in the dry season from December to March and is ready to sally forth as soon as the change is taking place from April to June and from September to November. Seasons are only two, the rainy and the dry, which fairly divide the year. The former is torrential; the storm gathers in the hours of the antemeridian and bursts with violence, accompanied often with tremendous flashes of fork lightning. I have, on several occasions, seen objects struck with unusual force, displacing blocks of masonry, reducing planks into splinters, melting leaden gutters on the tops and sides of houses. These phenomena are independent of a few good shakes by earthquakes and a few revolutions now and again as a pastime. These are the Isthmian games of this chosen spot. After a rain storm you have rivers and rivulets. The Chagres rises with an extraordinary rapidity. It rose 30 feet in one night in 1882 in one of these charming freshets mandwashed awaythe rails, sleepers, and embankments of the railway between two sections near Barbacoas.

Trees grow without culture, (no need of arable land), on the tops of houses, and your boots and shoes in one night in the wet season are coated with a lovely soft mildew like lambswool. As for perspiration, you are in a constant state of liquefaction, from the damp heat before the storm burts, when you are partly relieved. Then comes the dry season, when the land is absolutely arid—better the Sahara, even with Jacques Ier. as Emperor. It is difficult to obtain water and one is obliged to go several miles to bring a pailful or purchase one from the trickling Matasnillo and its stagnant pools. And then it is not as if your journey could be rewarded or your purchase satisfied with a meagre quantity of good water, but you are confronted with a pail of dancing animal culae. The house trees fade and die and are whirled away from the slender roots with the breath of Aquilon; but do not weep ! The tiles will bring forth others next season. The streets and roads are watered with clouds of fine dust and the Savanna is a parched plain. "0 fortnatos nimium, sua si bona norint Panamania!"

This is only climatic, what about the technical side? Will the Culebra be ever mastered, will it be prevented from closing its wound when it is cut ? This is the phenomenon of the moving mountain. What about the Chagres ? is that to be muzzled, how and when ? By a deviation to the east of Colon or by a dam which in my time was to retain 2,000,000,000 cubic metres of water. Well! if it comes to grief on a freshet like 1882 it will remind us of the flood without the ark which will not be ready to receive the Isthmians of Panama. This sovereign miniature State was wrenched from the territory of Columbia. A second Andorra with a Bishop as President instead of an engineer. The former will be more useful in this case as there will be only souls left. What about the ports of Panama and Colon and the three-mile dredging in open roadstead to Flamenco ? MM. Barratoux, Latellier & Co. worked like Spartans at this channel but they found out to their astonishment that as fast as they dredged in front it filled up behind, and for a surplus of misery they lost their director, Mr. Lilas, and part of their staff from yellow fever. Mr. Latellier thought it wiser to abandon his hourglass and take up journalism.

Is it a level or a lock canal ? Ask Mr. Eiffel if he knows about the lock system. I know he is a "tower" of strength, but when he found that the Atlantic rose only six inches and the Pacific 20 feet he thought that, considering yellow fever was to be calculated with this rise and fall, it would be prudent to leave that problem for later on and construct a more profitable enterprise in the shape of "la tour d'Eiffel."

I never doubt American enterprise with money and science, but they have not yet discovered the antidote for yellow fever, nor the remedy to prevent staff and workmen deserting. Moreover, will they be able to induce West Indians to come to the Isthmus, only to return invalided and increase the poor rates ? And if they do, will the governors allow the depopulation of their dependencies ? If they want to get rid of the coloured population of America the best thing would be to make them a present of the infant Republic, and allow them to govern themselves and dig the Canal. The coloured American race would be extinct in a very few years. They might save a couple to please Bostock.

If they could invent automatic excavators, diamond drills, self-working dredgers, etc., I could believe that the Panama Canal was approaching its construction, but as long as "Yellow Jack" holds its sway I must wait until the spread Eagle has conquered him.

Panama is more American now than Colombia, and had not America supported the Franco-Panamanian visionaries with Mr. Bunau-Varilla as High Commissioner and Envoy-extraordinary and Plenipotentiary per interim, the Canal would be the same to day as it was 25 years ago, but with £15,000,000 more in the American Treasury. There is a notice out, I see, that stray and ownerless dogs found in the San Stefano quarter during the night of Friday and Saturday at daylight will be poisoned by the police. I am off— Vale.

Professor Chantemesse, an eminent French doctor, and Director-General of the Paris Hygienic Bureau, says, according to the "Daily Mail" correspondent, that Europe is seriously threatened with a cholera epidemic this year. During the last four years, he states, cholera has been advancing rapidly westwards, and it now threatens to invade Europe by four different routes: (1) Through Moscow, St Petersburg, and the Volga river ; (2) through the Black Sea, Odessa, and Central Europe ; (3) through the Danube and the Balkan principalities ; (4) through Constantinople, the Adriatic, and Italy. All that is wanting now for the advent of cholera in Europe, says the Professor, is a long spell of hot weather.