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  t was a crushing defeat, not just for Ferdinand de Lesseps, but for all of France. After nearly a decade of labor and at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, all that was left of the French effort to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama was a large muddy ditch. For the hundreds of thousands of French people who had invested their money in the project, it was a disaster. Many had lost their life savings. For the families of the thousands of French and Caribbean workers who lay buried in the jungles of Panama, it was a sad tragedy.To de Lesseps, the failure must have seemed unbelievable. After a lifetime of victories in the face of overwhelming difficulties, surely this had not happened to him. Hadn't he built the Suez Canal through the burning Egyptian desert when all the world had said "impossible"? Once he had been hailed as a hero and a genius. Now he was in disgrace, an old man afraid to leave his home. What had gone wrong? |