32C On a Communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 



Quitting tliis, which may perhaps be regarded as debateable ground, we 

 next arrive at the narrow tract of level ground interposed between the 

 upper part of the little river Napipi, a tributary of the Atrato, and the 

 bay* of Cupica on the coast of the Pacific. Here our information is some- 

 vehat more precise, as well as more recent; and here, if any where, from 

 all the evidence obtained both from the researches of Humboldt, and the 

 communications of private correspondents, the obstacles to the formation 

 of a communication between the two seas appear to be reduced to their 

 minimum. From the right or northern bank of the Rio Tuyra, to the 

 nortliern termination of the littoral branch of the chain which traverses the 

 Choco, the ridge of the Andes, as has been already observed, wholly disap- 

 pears, leaving a tract of country which consists, according to Humboldt, upon 

 the authority of Don Ignacia di Pombo, a merchant of Carthagena, deeply 

 interested in every thing which regarded the statistics of New Granada, of a 

 perfect plain (tereno enteramente Hanos)\ interrupted, as a correspondent 

 at Carthagena in a letter of the 24th of January, 1835, states as the re- 

 sult of minute inquiries, by only one small hill of trifling elevation. Hence 

 the diflficulty of establishing a line of communication between the nearest 

 point of the Napipi and the bay of Cupica, either by a canal or by a rail- 

 road, must arise more from the distance between these two points, than 

 from any obstacles of surface. 



In the absence of all positive and precise information respecting the 

 geographical positions of the several points, and their mutual bearings, it 

 is impossible to do more than give an approximate estimate of distances. 



In the map of Columbia, prefixed to the sixth volume of Humboldt's 

 Personal Narrative, the scale of which, however, is too small for accurate 

 calculations, the nearest point of the Napipi appears to be in 7° 22' of north 

 latitude, and IT^ 20' of west longitude; while the nearest point of the Rio 

 Cupica is in 7° 20' north latitude, and 11° 32' west longitude, giving a 

 difference of two minutes of latitude, and twelve minutes of longitude, or 

 about twelve marine miles and eleven hundredth parts, equal to a httle more 

 than fourteen English miles, for the distance between these two points. 

 Humboldt, in the extract of the letter from Carthagena, already referred 

 to, fixes the distance at from five to six leagues ; while an article inserted 



* " I have not seen the lort of Cupick marked in any Spanish map, but have 

 found Puerto Quimodo o Tupica, at 7° 15' lat. (Carta del Mar de las Antillas, 1805. 

 Carta de la Costa Occidental de la America, 18 10 J A manuscript sketch in my pos- 

 session, of the province of Chocf>, confounds Cupich, and Rio Sabaletta, lat. 6° 30'; 

 yet Rio Sabaletta is placed in the maps of the Deposito south and not north of Cape 

 Francisco Solano, consequently 45' south of Puerto Quemado. According to the 

 map of the province of Carthagena, by Don Vincensi, Lond. 1816, the confluence of 

 the Rio Napipi (Naipi .') is 6° 40' lat. It is to be hoped that these uncertainties of 

 position will soon be removed by observations taken on the spot." Pers, Narr. vol. 

 vi. p. 249, note. 



t Pers. Narr. vol. vi. p. 251. 



