The extraordinary venture had lasted more than a decade. It had cost, according to the best estimates, 1,435,000,000 francs—about $287,000,000—which was 1,000,000,000 francs more than the cost of the Suez Canal, far more in fact than had ever before been spent on any one peaceful undertaking of any kind. The number of lives lost, a subject that had been strangely avoided throughout the Affair, had not been determined, nor was it ever to be with certainty. Dr. Gorgas, from his analysis of the French records, would conclude that at least twenty thousand, perhaps as many as twenty-two thousand,
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