Chap. X.—B. S.] 
BAYANO RIVER. 
159 
road Company obligingly lending me the ‘Panama,’ a 
steamer of 250 tons, and all the leading foreign resi¬ 
dents, including consuls, were invited to accompany 
me. We left the island of Flaminco on the 16th of 
June, late at night, and at daybreak reached the 
mouth of the Bayano, which we entered with the tide. 
There were mangrove forests for the first few miles, 
but gradually the country became less swampy, and 
there was everywhere evidence that in the high-days 
of Spanish power it had been covered with plantation, 
—in one or two places some old solidly-built landing- 
made a journey from Panama to Chepo or Bayano Biver, [on a schooner 
belonging to the Central American Association,] simply for a recon¬ 
naissance, and he says that the tide of the Pacific extends to within 
fifteen miles of the northern coast, and that he saw from Chepo a 
remarkable depression in the mountain chain, about ten miles distant. 
Pie makes the remark, in which all will concur, that it is a discredit to 
the civilization of the nineteenth century that this part of the Isthmus 
should not have been explored. This is not owing, however, to a want 
of effort. Attempts to cross the Isthmus at this point were made by 
Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Wheelwright, but they were driven back by the 
aborigines. It is very gratifying to have it in my power to say that 
this discredit to the civilization of the nineteenth century has been 
removed by the indefatigable zeal and enterprise of Mr. P. M. Kelly, of 
New York, of whom it was justly said by the President of the Institu¬ 
tion of Civil Engineers jf London, that he had produced more intelli¬ 
gible information towards the solution of this problem, of such vast 
importance to the commercial and political interests of the world, than 
had hitherto been accessible; and of whom Sir It. Murchison also said 
he “ heartily wished he might succeed in his great and philanthropic 
project, which so deeply interested civilized nations. 55 After having 
spent a vast amount of labour and money upon the examination of the 
Atrato and San Juan rivers, in search of a suitable route of an inter- 
oceanic canal across the province of Choco, Mr. Kelly and his friends, 
in 1864, took up the long deferred but much coveted exploration of 
the route from Chepo to the Gulf of San Bias. Prom Mr. Kelly’s 
