24 
for fifty years; and the proprietorship of the waste lands, 
comprising a breadth of ten leagues on either side of the 
line of communication. It further authorizes, with ample 
privileges, the settling of colonies within fifty leagues on both 
sides of the line; and concedes the exclusive employment of 
steam locomotive power within the Isthmus for the period of 
sixty years: adding also in the same, as well as subsequent 
decrees, many other concessions of importance. (See Ap¬ 
pendix, No. II. and III.) 
Mr. Garay, being bound, at his expense, to make all the 
surveys necessary for the execution of the work, named the 
following scientific Commission for that purpose, viz :— 
Director. 
Signor Gaetano Moro. 
Engineers. 
Lieutenant-Colonel De La Troupliniere, 
Captain Gonzalez, of the Staff Corps. 
Secretary and Treasurer. 
Don Pedro Garay, First Officer of the Ministry of War. 
Assistant. 
Don Mauro Guido, Lieutenant of the Navy. 
This Commission set out for Tehuantepec on the 30th April, 
of the same year amply provided with every thing requisite; 
and as the following Memoir is compiled from the reports al¬ 
ready presented to the Public in the past year by Sr. Moro, this 
chapter cannot more appropriately be concluded than by inser¬ 
ting verbatim the last few sentences from his work. 
“ I may perhaps be allowed, in presenting this Report, to ex- 
“ press my ardent wdshes that our labours in the isthmus may 
“ not be considered in reference only to whatever scientific me- 
“ rit they may possess, but as the means by which a most im- 
“ portant fact has been ascertained, and which I have described 
“ with the strictest conscientiousness. Should it be so, I am 
“ not without hopes that the great work which has been dur- 
“ ing three centuries so anxiously desired, and which the 
