CENTRAL AMERICAN STATES. 205 



the dimensions of Central America, measured not by miles, but by hours. More- 

 over, the interoceanic roads and railways have almost brought into close proximity 

 coastlands which were formerly separated by journeys of several days, and even 

 weeks. A project has recently been submitted by the President of the United 

 States to Congress, having for its object the exploration of the Central Americm 

 States preparatory to the construction of a railway to run longitudinally from 

 Mexico, through Oaxaca, Guatemala, and San Salvador to Panama, 



But much preliminary geographical work remains to be done before any such 

 scheme can be taken in hand. Certain regions, such as the metalliferous districts 

 of Darien, which were formerly well known, have even fallen into oblivion. In 

 the uninhabited tracts, so difficult ure the routes across the swamps and densely- 

 wooded uplands that small exploring parties run great risks, over and above the 

 exposure to the dangerous hot and moist climate. Paths have to be cut through 

 the dense tangle of trees and creepers, and the traveller has to avoid the im- 

 penetrable thickets, precipitous escarpments, slopes liable to frequent landslij)s, 

 gorges flooded by rushing torrents, bottomless quagmires, from which escape is 

 impossible. Explorers provided even with the best guides and porters have 

 often been unable to advance more than one or two jniles a day, and have at times 

 been fain to give up the struggle and retrace their steps. 



The labour already expended during the course of four centuries in discovering 

 or creating interoceanic highways represents a prodigious outlay of energy, 

 which would have certainly sufficed to accomi^lish some one great work had it 

 not been frittered away in a thousand different essays. The first survey was 

 made by Columbus himself, who, in 1502-3, skirted the Central American sea- 

 board from Honduras to Yeragua in search of the passage which he hoped would 

 lead him to the "mouths of the Ganges." During this voyage he at all events 

 heard of another sea, which lay a little farther west. Ten years afterwards 

 Nunez de Balboa, at the head of nearly 800 Spanish soldiers and native carriers, 

 forced his way across swamps and rivers, through forests and hostile populations. 

 In twenty-three days of incessant struggles and hardships he succeeded in crossing 

 the isthmus, here 40 miles wide, and thus reached the spacious inlet which he 

 named the Gulf of St. Michael. Advancing fully armed into the rising flood, 

 he took possession of the new ocean " with its lands, its shores, its ports and 

 islands, from the north to the south pole, within and without both tropics, now 

 and for ever, so long as the world shall last, and unto the judgment day of all 

 mortal races." But the strait still remained undiscovered, and it was being 

 sought in the waters west of the Antilles, when Magellan had already found it 

 at the southern extremity of the American continent. 



When it became evident that there existed no marine passage between the 

 Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, the idea naturally occurred of opening such a 

 passage across one or other of the narrow isthmuses separating the two oceans. 

 Such an undertaking was beyond the exhausted resources of Spain ; nevertheless 

 expeditions were made for the purpose of studying the problem at the isthmus 

 of Tehuantepec, on the banks of the San Juan and Lake Nicaragua, at Panama, 



