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112 this fifty-mile railroad was eight millions. But even before the first through track was laid, it had earned two million dollars' worth of fares, and during the first ten years of its existence, it took in $11,339,662.78. This was the Golden Age of the Panama Railroad, when it enjoyed the monopoly of the Atlantic trade, not only of California, but the entire west coast of the three Americas.



Its stock earned dividends of twenty-four per cent, a year, and was considered one of the safest investments in Wall Street.

But in the contract made between John L. Stephens and the government of New Granada, that government had been given the right to buy the Panama Railroad, twenty years after it was opened, for five million dollars—and it was now paying twenty-four per cent, on seven million dollars' worth of stock! At the end of the twelfth year, Colonel Totten went to Bogotá, the capital, and succeeded in obtaining a new franchise for ninety-nine years, but at the heavy cost of a million down and