it would build one across Nicaragua, where an American company already had a concession. If that were done, not only would Panama lose all its hoped-for prosperity, but even the railroad would cease to be operated, and the Isthmus would have as little trade or importance as in the eighteenth century. Naturally the Panamanians watched the Colombian congress anxiously, and, as soon as they saw the American treaty was doomed, began to prepare for a revolution.
Everything was in their favor. The garrison had been left unpaid so long and had so many friends and sweethearts among the citizens that it was easily won over. Companies of men were organized, ostensibly as a fire-department, and rifles for them were smuggled in from New York. (There is as much romance and wickedness in the secret gun-trade of that city to-day as there ever was in bucaneering). Soon every prominent man on the Isthmus was in the plot, except the governor, who shut his eyes to it. Instead of the usual carpet-bagger from Bogotá, the newly appointed governor was Señor José Domingo de Obaldia, a man whose family have lived on the Isthmus for centuries, and he frankly told the Colombians that if the treaty were rejected, Panama would revolt, and he would do nothing to prevent it.
The treaty was rejected, and a date was at once set for the uprising. But the day before, a Colombian gunboat steamed into the harbor of Colon, with four hundred and seventy-four conscripts and a few generals, who landed and demanded a train to take them to Panama City. The Bogotá government had at last become aware of the unsettled state of affairs on the Isthmus, which the
