Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/178

 340 WORKMEN AND HEROES Such a state of things could not last forever. The end, long prophesied, came at last ; the exposure was complete, and the whole stupendous scheme of fraud was unmasked. Something might have been saved from the wreck had the canal itself been a real thing so far as it had gone, a practical enterprise, sure in time to pay its investors and serve the public. But it was found that every- thing connected with the construction of the canal had been grossly misrepre- sented ; the estimates of expense ; the reports of the engineering difficulties to be overcome ; the dangers from the climate ; the bills of mortality ; everything, in short, was enveloped in a cloud of lies. So great was the shock to public confi- dence that followed this exposure, that for a time the Republic itself seemed in danger of overthrow. The eyes of the world were fixed upon De Lesseps and his son Charles as the chief authors of the mischief, and when the crisis was passed, and the smoke of the upheaval had passed away, the Panama Canal was seen to be a ruined enterprise, and buried deep underneath it was the once-hon- ored name of Ferdinand De Lesseps. ^^T^ er GENERAL JOHN C FREMONT* By Jane Marsh Parker (i 8 i 3-1 890) r N these days of rapid transit between New York and San Francisco, of luxurious travel across desert and mountain, the story of John Charles Fremont, the Path- finder of the great West, is of peculiar interest, a striking illustration that the history of the world is in the bio- graphy of its leaders, in the pathfinders of the unexplored. The stormy tide of the French Revolution sent the father of John Charles Fremont to the New World about the time, presumably, when Napoleon Bonaparte was in the height of power. This M. Fremont came of a good family living near Lyons, France. A British man-of-war made prize of the ship in which he sailed for San Do- mingo, and he was carried prisoner to one of the British West India islands, his captivity lasting several years. Upon gaining his liberty he stopped at Norfolk, Va., to refill an empty purse as a teacher of French, and there met Anne Bev- erly Whiting, a leading belle of an old Virginia family, who became his wife. One of the illustrious connections of the Whitings was that with the family Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.