255 



neous view of the two seas is remarked in some 

 parts of the isthmus as being* very extraordi- 

 nary; from which we may, I think, conclude 

 that the mountains are, in general, not an 

 hundred toises high. Some feeble indications 

 of the temperature and geography of the native 

 plants, lead me to think that the ridge over 

 which the road passes from Cruces to Panama, 

 is not 500 feet high ; Mr. Robinson * supposes 

 it at most 400 feet. According to the assertion 

 of a traveller who describes with the most 

 ingenuous simplicity what he has seen, the hills 

 that compose the central chain of the isthmus, 

 are separated from each other by vallies, " which 

 leave a free course to the passage of the waters." 

 The researches of the engineers who are charged 

 to explore those countries should be principally 

 directed to the discovery of the transversal 

 vallies. We find examples in every country of 

 natural openings across the ridges. The moun- 

 tains between the channels of the Saone and the 

 Loire, which the canal of the Centre would 

 have had to pass over, were eight or nine hun^ 

 dred feet high ; but a neck of land or interrup- 

 tion of the chain near the reservoir of Long 

 Pendu, furnished a passage 350 feet lower. 

 If we are not at all advanced in the know- 



* Memoir on the Mexican Revolution, p. 269. 

 f Lionel Wafer, Description of the Isthmus of America, 

 1729; p. 297. 



