450 PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, 



and led to the Golfo de San Miguel. We know that Columbus 

 (Vida del Almirante por Don Fernando Colon, cap. 90) sought for 

 an "estrecho de Tierra firme;" and in the official documents which 

 we possess of the years 1505 and 1507, and especially 1514, men- 

 tion is made of the desired " opening" (abertura), and of the pass 

 (passo) which should lead directly to the "Indian Land of Spices." 

 Having for more than forty years been occupied with the subject of 

 the means of communication between the two seas, I have con- 

 stantly, both in my printed works and in the different memoirs which 

 with honorable confidence the Free States of Spanish America have 

 requested me to furnish, urged that the Isthmus should be examined 

 hypsometrically throughout its entire length, and more especially 

 where, in Darien and the inhospitable former Provincia de Biru- 

 quete, it joins the Continent of South America ; and where, between 

 the Atrato and the JBay of Cupica (on the shore of the Pacific), the 

 mountain chain of the Isthmus almost entirely disappears. (See in 

 my Atlas geographique et physique de la Nouvelle Espagne, pi. iv. ; 

 in the Atlas de la Relation historique, pi. xxii. and xxiii. ; Voyage 

 aux Regions e*quinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, t. iii. pp. 117-154 ; 

 and Essai politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, t. i. 

 2de e-dit. 1825, pp. 202-248.) 



G-eneral Bolivar, at my request, caused an exact levelling of the 

 Isthmus between Panama and the mouth of the Rio Chagres to be 

 made in 1828 and 1829 by Lloyd and Falmarc. (Philosophical 

 Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the year 1830, 

 pp. 5968.) Other measurements have since been executed by ac- 

 complished and experienced French engineers, and projects have 

 been formed fbr canals and railways with locks and tunnels, but 

 always in the direction of a meridian between Portobello and Pana- 

 ma or more to the west, towards Chagres and Cruces. Thus the 

 most important points of the eastern and south-eastern part of the 

 Isthmus have remained unexamined on both shores ! So long as 

 this part is not examined geographically by means of exact but 

 easily obtained determinations of- latitude and of longitude by chro- 

 nometers, as well as hypsometrically in the conformation of the sur- 

 face by barometric measurements of elevation so long I consider 

 that the statement I have repeatedly made, and which I now repeat 



