Jan. 12, 1857.] OF THE RIVER ORINOCO. 263 



returns, it should be said, to cultivation, whicli would hardly deserve 

 the name in this country. 



Nothing can be more certain, than that judicious steam navigation 

 on the Orinoco and its affluents, would soon show steadily increasing 

 returns to capital. The regions drained by that system are in- 

 calculably rich in vegetable and mineral resources. The lower 

 lands teem with tropical products and cattle; the valleys of the 

 mountainous districts, and the table-lands, have the climate of 

 temperate regions with the vigour of a tropical sun, and a soil of sui- 

 passing fertility. I asked Mr. Clay, many years since, in a voyage 

 which we made together on the Mississippi, what he thought it would 

 be reasonable to compute steam navigation had done in accelerat- 

 ing the settlement of that basin. He replied that he had often 

 reflected on that subject, and he considered it scarcely an exaggeration 

 to say that if it had pleased God to create those vast regions with all 

 their present productive powers, but with no great watercourses 

 rolling through them until many hundred years after they had been 

 partially inhabited, the consequences could hardly have been more 

 wonderful than those which had followed within his own short scope 

 of observation, since the first establishment of steam navigation on the 

 Mississippi and its affluents. But what is the basin of the Mississippi 

 and its affluents, to the united basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon ? 

 Insignificant indeed, in every respect of area, and variety and value 

 of natural resource. 



It has often occurred to me, during my residence at Trinidad, 

 that when the enthusiastic and heroic Ealeigh sought, or feigned to 

 seek, his El Dorado up the Orinoco, it could hardly have failed 

 to strike that brilliant imagination, that he was upon the track of 

 an El Dorado of far deeper significance, and more inexhaustible 

 streams of wealth, in the truest sense of that word, than those 

 mountains of gold, and cities and palaces paved with precious stones. 

 The realisation of all the promise of that wondrous tale, would be 

 poor indeed in comparison with the results of those grand and wise 

 plans of Humboldt, founded, not upon impulses of cupidity, or 

 visions of conquest, but on the sober deductions of exact knowledge, 

 and the sure consequences to flow from the dissemination of the arts 

 of peace, of commerce, and the endless train of civilization and 

 improvement. " Eivers," says Pascal, " are roads that run, and 

 lead us where we will ;" and when we consider that this amazing 

 network of waterpaths, longer by thousands of miles than the cir- 

 cumference of the globe, has its nearest exit to the shores of Europe, 

 almost within sight of a British possession, it is certainly an abashing 

 reflection that more has not been done to avail ourselves of these 



