274 RECOLLECTIONS Of FORTY YEARS. 



Museum, with reference to a work in English which 

 I am preparing, and which it is generally thought 

 will be of considerable use." 



To Baron de BrucJc, Minister of Finance at Vienna. 



11 LONDON, June 28, 1855. 



" My journey to Vienna will be somewhat delayed 

 by my prolonged stay in London, where I have to 

 meet difficulties and objections arising from a mistaken 

 appreciation of the affair. I must not fail to tell you 

 that the reports and speeches of Mr. Eobert Stephen- 

 son, a member of the company formed for studying the 

 question in 1847, and the recent article in the Revue 

 des Deux Monde s, in favour of a roundabout route, by 

 means of a bridge canal carried along the two branches 

 of the stream and fed by the water of that river, have 

 contributed in no small degree to create erroneous 

 impressions in the public mind, and to make some 

 people believe that the piercing of the isthmus is an 

 impossibility, and to make others believe that it can 

 only be executed at a cost of labour and money out of 

 all proportion to the revenue to be derived from it. 



" The Yiceroy still defrays all the expenses of the 

 preliminary experiments, and it will not be until the 

 commission of engineers, well versed in hydraulics, 

 to which he proposes to entrust the drawing up of the 

 definite scheme, has reported upon the matter, that we 

 shall proceed to organise the company and open a 

 subscription for shares." 



