47o 



NA TURE 



[Sept. 



second;has never been visited at all, although Dr. R. Ball, in 

 his exploration of Lake Nipigon, was within 200 miles of it, 

 and the distance is ab mt the same from the Rat Portage. It is 

 in the neighbourhood of Cat Lake. Here then we have objects 

 worthy of a scientific ambition and of the energies of this young 

 country, but requiring liberal expenditure and well-planned 

 efforts, continued steadily, at lea it in the case of the first, for, 

 perhaps, three or four years. Of objects more exclusively geo- 

 graphical, to which it may be hoped that this meeting may give 

 a stimulus, I am inclined to give a prominent place to the ex- 

 ploration of that immense tract of seventy or eighty thousand 

 square] miles, lying east of the Athabasca River, which i^ still 

 nearly a blank on our maps, and in connection with such future 

 exploration 1 cannot omit to mention that monument of philo- 

 logical research, the " Dictionary of the Languages of the native 

 Chipewyans, Hare Indians, and Loucheux," lately published by 

 the Rev. E. Petitot. The lexicon is preceded by an introduction, 

 giving the result of many years' study among these people of the 

 legends or traditions by which they account for their own origin. 

 M. Petitot, who formerly was unconvinced of their remote 

 Asiatic parentage, now finds abundant proof of it. But perhaps 

 his most interesting conclusion is that in these living languages 

 of the extreme north, we have not only the language of the 

 Nabajos, one 'of the Apache tril.es ,,l" Mexico, which has been 

 remarked a, linguistically distinct from the others, but also the 

 primitive Aztec tongue, closely resembling the language of the 

 Incus, the Ouichou, still spoken in South America. I need not 

 say how greatly these relations, if sustained by the conclusions 

 of other students, are calculated to throw light upon the 

 profoundly inter. l of the peopling of America. 



This is perhaps a proper occasion to allude to a novel theory 

 proposed about two years ago, with high official countenance, 

 upon a subject which will never cease to have interest, and 

 perhaps never be placed quite beyond dispute. I mean the 

 landfall, as it is ^technically called, of Columbus, in 1492. The 

 late Captain G. V. Fox, of the Admiralty, Washington, argued 

 111:1 carefully-prepared work, that Atwood's Key, erroneously 

 called Samana on many charts, is the original Guanahari of 

 Columbus, renamed by him S. Salvad >r, also that Crooked 

 Island and Acklin Island are the Maria de la Concepcion of 

 Columbus and the true Samana of succeeding navigators in the 

 sixteenth century. The last supposition is unquestionably cor- 

 111 1. (looked, Acklin, and Fortune Islands, which from the 

 narrowness of the channels dividing them may have been, and 

 very probably were, united four centuries ago, are plainly the 

 Samana of the Dutch charts of the seventeenth century, and are 

 so named on the excellent chart engraved in 1775 for Bryan 

 Edwards's "History of the West Indies," but the view that 

 Atwood's ■ Key is identical with Guanahari is original, and is 

 neither borne out by any old chart, nor by Columbus's d scrip 

 tion. This small island is conspicuously wanting in the one 

 physical feature by which Guanahari is to be identified " una 

 laguna en medio muy qrandt." There is no lake or lagoon in it, 

 nor does its distance from Samana tally at all with such slender 

 particulars as have been left us by Columbus respecting his pro- 

 ceedings. The name S. Salvador has attached, not to' Atwood's 

 Key, but to Cat Island, one of the Bahamas ; it is true that 

 modern research has shifted it, but only to the next island, and 

 on very good grounds. Cat Island is not muy liana, very level ; 

 on the contrary, it is the most hilly of all the Bahamas, and it 

 has no lake or lagoon. Watling Island, a little to the south- 

 east of Cat Island, and now generally recognised as the true 

 Guanahari or S. Salvador, is very level ; it has a large lagoon, 

 it satisfies history as to the proceedings of Columbus for the 

 two days following his discovery, by being very near the 

 numerous islands of Exuma Sound, and I think few im- 

 partial persons can doubt the justice of the conclusion of the 

 late Admiral Becher and of Mr. Major as to its identity ; 

 there are difficulties in the interpretation of Columbus's log 

 on any hypothesis, but there is one little "undesigned coin- 

 cidence " which to my mind goes far to carry conviction. 

 Columbus, when he sighted land, was greatly in want of water, 

 and he continued cruising about among the small islands in 

 search of it for some days. Clearly, therefore, the laguna on 

 Guanahari was not a fresh-water lake; nor is the lagoon on 

 Watling Island fresh water, and so it exactly meets the case. 



The report of Lieut. Raymond P. Rodgers, of the United States 

 Navy, on the state of the Canal Works at Panama so lately 

 as January 25 last, which has doubtless been eagerly read by many 

 present, leaves me little to say on that great enterprise. Per- 

 haps the following official returns of the amount of excavation 



effected in cubic metres (a cubic metre is i'3o8 cubic yards) will 

 enable the audience to realise its progress : — 



The total quantity of excavation to be done in a length of 

 46^6 miles is estimated at 100,000,000 cubic metres, but the 

 rapid augmentation of quantity shows that the limit has not been 

 attained. This is no place to speak of the stimulus given by this 

 great work to mechanical invention or the gigantic power of the 

 machines employed, which will probably receive attention in 

 another Section, but I may mention the two great problems 

 which still await solution. The first is how to deal with the 

 waters of the River Chagres ; the second is how to manage a 

 cutting nearly 400 feet deep (no m. to 120 m.). The Chagres 

 is a river as large as the Seine, but subject to great fluctuations 

 of volume ; it cuts the line of the canal nearly at right angles, 

 and for obvious reasons it is impossible to let it flow into it. It 

 is proposed to arrest the stream by an enormous dyke at 

 Gamboa, near the divide. It will cross a valley between two 

 hills, and be 1050 yards long at the bottom, 21 10 yards at the 

 top, no yards thick at the base, and 147 feet in greatest height. 

 Out of the reservoir so constructed it is proposed to lead the 

 overflow by two artificial channels, partly utilising the old bed. 

 The cutting will be nearly 500 feet wide at the top (150 m.), with 

 the sides at a slope of \. It is proposed to attack it by gangs 

 or parties working on twelve different levels at the same time, 

 one each side of the summit, dividing the width at each level 

 into five parallel sections. Thus there will be 120 gangs at work 

 together, and it is confidently hoped that the whole will be really 

 finished in iSSS, the date long since assigned for its completion 

 by M. de Lesseps. There is practically no other project now 

 competing with it : for the proposed routes by the Isthmus of 

 Tehuantepec, the Atrato, and San Bias, may be regarded as 

 almost universally given up ; both the latter would involve the 

 construction of ship tunnels on a scale to daunt the boldest 

 engineer. The so-called Caledonia route has not stood the test 

 of examination. There remains but the Nicaragua route, and 

 this, while practicable enough, has failed to attract capitalists, 

 and is environed by political and other difficulties, which would 

 leave it, if completed, under many disadvantages as compared 

 with its rival. Among the latter must be named the necessity 

 for rising by locks to the level of the Lake of Nicaragua (108 

 feet). 



It is very tempting to speculate on the probable consequences 

 ill bringing the I [ispano- Indian Republics bordering on the 

 Pacific into such early contact with the energies of the Old 

 World, but these speculations belong to politics rather than 

 geography ; moral transformations, we know, are not effected so 

 easily as the conquest over physical difficulties. 



Sir J. H. Lefroy then alluded at some length to recent progress 

 in African exploration ; then turning to Central Asia he went on : — 



The Russian project for diverting the Oxus or Amu Darya 

 from the Sea of Aral into the Caspian, remains under investiga- 

 tion. We learn from the lively account of Mr. George Kennan, 

 a recent American traveller, that there is more than one motive 

 for undertaking this great work, if it shall prove practicable. 

 He states that the lowering of the level of the Caspian Sea, in 

 consequence of the great evaporation from its surface, is occa- 

 sioning the Russian Government great anxiety, that the lend is 

 steadily but slowly falling, notwithstanding the enormous quan- 

 tity of water poured in by the Volga, the Ural, and other rivers. 

 In fact, Col. Venukofsays that the Caspian is drying up fast, 

 and that the fresh-water seals, which form so curious a feature of 

 its fauna, are fast diminishing in number. At first view there 

 would not appear great difficulty in restoring water communica- 

 tion, the point where the river would be diverted being about 

 2 16 feet above the Caspian; but accurate levelling has shown 

 considerable depressions in the intervening tract. As the ques- 

 tion is one of great geographical interest we may devote a few 

 minutes to it. It is not to be doubted that the Oxus, or a branch 

 of it, once flowed into the Caspian Sea. Prof. R. Lenz, of the 

 Russian Academic Imperiale des Sciences, sums up his investi- 

 gation of ancient authorities by affirming that there is no satis- 

 factory evidence of its ever having done so before the year 1320 ; 



