The Canal That Could Freeze England: A Climate Warning from the Isthmus of Panama

STRATEGIC COMPETITION.

In statesmen are not rare who see at strategic results have been accomplished by means of some kind of a cut practical joke played on the elements. Though the great Butrington tried to capture Richmond a few years ago with his Dutch Gap Canal, yet earlier examples of this kind were Cyrus the Great, as recorded to have taken Babylon, the then capital of the world, by turning the course of the Tigris and marching his troops in the night up the dry bed under the gas lighters. Napoleon on placed the destruction of the beaten armies of Austria and Russia, at Austerlitz, by depressing his guns to bear upon the ice of the frozen river over which they were retreating.

Akin to this kind of strategy, though perhaps unintentional, is the titanic enterprise which threatens empires with swift and certain ruin by diverting the flow of the ocean current through canals dug in the interests of commerce. It is alleged that the opening of the Suez Canal has so far operated to divert the Gulf Stream down the Mediterranean as to have already very materially affected the climate of England for the worse.

This may only one of the sensational myths of science, but there is far too much plausibility about it to be either comforting or amusing. If in truth, time should demonstrate its terrible reality it would indeed furnish a poetic retribution—the genius of De Lesseps avenging the misfortunes of Villeneuve and the insidious ooze through the sand gap of Suez, atoning for the humiliation of Aboukir and Trafalgar, and slowly freezing the life-blood in the veins of the haughty commercial power that abased the glory of France.

But more sweeping still is the proposition to let the Mediterranean into the Sahara desert, which is lower than the sea level), thus converting it into a second and greater Mediterranean. This would certainly revolutionize the climate of Western Europe, for besides its influence in changing the course of the gulf stream, it would destroy its important office in the economy of nature in supplying from its hot sands the warm winds that refresh Europe and the Mediterranean coasts. It would be a fine thing for the possible embryo republics in Central Africa, but from a conservative point of view, is more valuable in its present function as the laboratory of tropical zephyrs to fan Italy and flavor the vintage of Lusitania and Champagne, than as a water body to afford ocean steam navigation to the prolific jungles of Ethiopia and Loameram.

So much for the opponents. The important suggestion in the subject is its bearing upon the effect that would result to our own climate which by the way is our glory and our wrath from the cutting of the much talked of canal through the Isthmus of Darien. If the opening of that canal would deflect in any degree our Japan current, as some have surmised it would, it is better to let that costly project alone. Better let Harry lay his blackmailing plan upon it to stay, and the Central American government tie up the route with red tape in behalf of their local capitalists are the better and quicker medium of an immediate than steam concentrated all our energies and attention upon the best of cheap and systematic railroads, commerce. This is the winning card for us, even on general principles.

Other materials in your latitude of the earth's equator in whose effect upon climatic conditions would soon be probably material.