Originally published in 1885, the December 1888 financial failure of the French efforts to build the Panama Canal of December 1888 was predicted in the author's articles for the New York World in 1883. In the preface the author says: "In studying the way in which that enterprise was launched I was led into a most mortifying disappointment, for the whole project of the great promoter seemed to me to have been undertaken without any serious studies, and indeed without the common precautions taken by any responsible contractor in works of much less magnitude."