The project is plagued from the beginning by a lack of engineering expertise.

An international engineering congress had been convened in Paris, with Ferdinand de Lesseps at its head, in May 1879; of the one hundred and thirty-six delegates, however, only forty-two were engineers, the others being made up of speculators, politicians, and personal friends of de Lesseps.

De Lesseps is convinced that a sea-level canal, dug through the mountainous, rocky spine of Central America, can be completed as easily as, or even more easily than, the Suez Canal.

The engineering congress had estimated the cost of the project at two hundred and fourteen million dollars; an engineering commission had revised this estimate to one hundred and sixty-eight million, six hundred thousand dollars on February 14, 1880.

De Lesseps had twice reduced this estimate, with no apparent justification; on February 20 to one hundred and thirty-one million, six hundred thousand dollars, and again on March 1 to one hundred and twenty million dollars.

The engineering congress had estimated seven or eight years as the time required to complete the work; de Lesseps had reduced the time to six years, as compared to the ten years required for the Suez Canal.