ISTHMUS OF DAKIEN— SUEZ CANAL. 587 



a, powerful enemy witli daDgerous facilities for hostile operations 

 along the coast. 



The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested, 

 whether we consider the physical difficulties of its execution, the 

 magnitude and importance of the waters proposed to be united, 

 or the distance wliich would be saved in navigation, is that of a 

 channel between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, across the 

 Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak of a lock-canal, by way 

 of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route — for such a work 

 would not differ essentially from other canals, and would scarcely 

 possess a geographical character — but of an open cut between 

 the two seas. The survey by Captain Selfridge, giving the lowest 

 point on the dividing ridge as several hundred feet above the sea- 

 level, had been considered as determining in the negative the 

 question of the possibility of such a cut, by any means now at 

 the control of man ; and both the sanguine expectations of bene- 

 fits, and the dreary suggestions of danger, from the realization 

 of tliis great dream, were dismissed as equally cliimerical. Kecent 

 surveys, however, are said to have found a more practicable route 

 across the Isthmus, and a company has been formed in France 

 by Lesseps for the construction of an open ship-canal between 

 the Atlantic and the Pacific at the common level of the two 

 oceans. But the details of the plan have not yet been publicly 

 subjected to professional criticism, and for the present the pos- 

 eibiHty of the execution of such a work must be regarded as 

 problematical. 



Siiez Ca/nal. 



The cutting of the Isthmus of Suez — the grandest and most 

 truly cosmopohte physical improvement ever undertaken by 

 man — ^threatens none of these dangers, and its only immediate 

 geographical effect will probably be that interchange between 

 the aquatic animal and vegetable life of two seas and two zones 

 to which I alluded in a former chapter.* 



* According to an article by Ascherson, in Petermann's Mittlieilungen, vol. 

 xvii., p, 247, the sea-grass floras of the opposite sides of the Isthmus of Suez 

 were as different as possible. It does not appear whether they have yet in- 

 termixed. See Nature, May 11, 1883, for interesting observations of Kellei 

 on the interchange of marine species now slowly taking place along the lina 

 of the Suez Canal, between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. 



