88 the president's addeess. 



American Provinces, whether as an element of commercial progress 

 and improvement, or as a means of drawing more closely the ties 

 which unite us to the Mother Country ; and, while increasing 

 the advantages we derive from that connection, enhancing the value 

 of these colonies to the empire. 



I have met with no account of any very recent proceedings to- 

 wards the establishment of the interoceanic communication between 

 the Atlantic and the Pacific The last expedition organized to 

 survey the Isthmus of Darien, was in 1854, when the Governments 

 of England, Prance, the United States, and Granada, assisted in the 

 object of the expedition. The result of that survey shewed that the 

 harbours of Caledonia and Darien, were in every way adapted as 

 the termini of the suggested Canal. It was further ascertained 

 that a range of mountains varying from 900 to 1600 feet in height 

 form the water-parting of the country, at a distance of only five 

 miles from the Atlantic ; the distance between the tidal waters 

 on the opposite coast being under thirty miles ; but such is the 

 character of this mountain range, that no canal could be there 

 constructed without tunnelling, though a railway might be cons- 

 tructed between ports, not more than thirty-six miles apart, the 

 summit level to be crossed not exceeding nine hundred feet above 

 the sea. Other lines, having the same object, have been suggested 

 and discussed, but the present unsettled political condition of the 

 territories through or near to which any such communication could 

 be established, seems to postpone indefinitely any practical attempt 

 to realize the design. 



In passing from this subject it will not be altogether inappropri- 

 ate to refer to a matter which has been recently discussed, and on 

 which new light has been thrown by Captain Becher, E.N. I allude 

 to the question where Columbus made his first landing on this side 

 the Atlantic. Navarette names Turks Island as the one which the 

 natives called Guanabani, and on which the discoverer conferred 

 the name of San Salvador. "Washington Irving on the other hand 

 decides in favour of Cat Island, situated fully 300 miles distant 

 from Turks Island, and which, on every map that I have seen, is 

 marked as the San Salvador of Columbus. Meenoz, who was the 

 Spanish Cosmographer-in-chief for the department of the Indies, 

 in a history of America, of which he lived to publish only the first 

 volume, points out "Watling's Island about fifty miles easterly of Cat 

 Island, as the first landfall, and this view Captain Becher supports 

 and confirms. 



