make a preliminary barometrical examination of the elevations to be crossed. This proving satisfactory, a regular surveying party was despatched during the following year by Mr. Kelly and his associates. As a result, a partial survey was executed by Messrs. Mc Dougall, Sweet, Forman, and Rude, and a canal line was run from a point opposite Chepillo island off the Pacific coast, across the divide to within two miles of the Atlantic at San Blas. Here the party came in conflict with the natives and were obliged to put back. The surveyors then guessed at the remaining distance and reported a plan for a canal of 27 miles with a tunnel to make up seven miles of the length. But this offered no satisfactory solution of the transit problem; so, after all the money and labor spent, Mr. Kelly, disheartened, abandoned the lower isthmus and all its delusory canal routes that had once appeared to him so promising.' Even after Strain's exposure of its fallacy, the Caledonian route seemed to claim a fatal fascination for the French mind. They had evidence $ 102. The of its unfeasibility besides from one of Continue in their own countrymen; for a French physician, Dr. Lebreton, while practising cerning the his profession in New Granada made Caledonian several reconnaissances along the Darien divide in search of gold and a transit-way, French their Delu sions con Route. but reported no depression in the range. 1 Rodrigues, loc. cit., pp. 11-26. Sullivan, loc. cit., pp. 27-28, 67 ff. Rear-Admiral Chas. H. Davis, Report on Interoceanic Canals and Railroads," Govt. Print, 1869, p. 18 ff. The Société d'Études in Paris was not to be convinced, however, and so, with a determination. worthy of a better cause, this company sent out another surveying party in 1861, in charge of a M. Bourdiol, to work its way into the interior, this time from San Miguel on the Pacific. These surveyors, like their predecessors, appear never to have succeeded in crossing the range; but on his return, M. Bourdiol, with that airy enthusiasm and lack of scientific precision so characteristic of all the French surveys on the isthmus, was able to elaborate a canal route out of his own mind. According to his plan a canal was quite feasible along this route, to extend in a straight line from San Miguel to Caledonian Bay, a distance of but 31 miles, with a maximum elevation of only 144 feet, and at total cost of barely $34,000,000. This project naturally revived French hopes and induced M. Airiau, another Frenchman then resident in New Granada, to continue M. Bourdiol's surveys, on his own account. Starting in also at San Miguel, Airiau worked his way some distance up the range, but he too seems never to have emerged on the Atlantic side. With such meagre information at his disposal, the eager Frenchman then returned and elaborated the data he had collected in a remarkable monograph on the "Canal Interocéanique par l'Isthme du Darien." This work gave minute details of the route, and contained a collection of very full but hopelessly inexact maps of the proposed line. According to this sanguine authority, there was no dividing range to be encountered in this region, which was true as far as he had gone,but only groups of detached peaks. Thus by following along the route he laid out, M. Airiau declared, the canal would only have an elevation of fifty metres to overcome. Thus Lionel Wafer and Manuel Milla were exonerated from Strain's outrageous calumny, and French enthusiasm over the route was justified. M. Airiau had a rival, however, in the person of a M. de Puydt, and the rival, moreover, possessed the greater influence at the capitalistic court in Paris. De Puydt claimed to have discovered a still lower depression lying between San Miguel on the Pacific and the Gulf of Darien on the Atantic, and his plan was to lay out a canal route diagonally across the isthmus between these points, along the valley of the Rio Tuyra. On the basis of this preliminary report a company was formed in Paris by a group of French capitalists, and de Puydt was sent back to the isthmus with a corps of engineers to lay out his proposed route in detail. He there gave evidence of the striking originality of his mind. Wishing to learn the altitude of the range, and not caring to brave the dangers of the interior, de Puydt reached his conclusions by measuring the velocity of the stream at the mountain's base. According to this calculation the divide before him rose some 101 feet above the sea; but, to be on the safe side, de Puydt made it 150 feet, and returned to Paris with this report. Just at this critical juncture a Spaniard, named Gogorza, came to de Puydt's assistance. In rum maging among some ancient archives in Madrid, Gogorza came upon some old documents and a map, which went to prove the existence of a very low pass in the vicinity of de Puydt's explorations and and directly in the line of his canal route. The French promoters were elated over their success, and even prevailed upon the more conservative Compagnie General Transatlantique to co-operate with them in the final surveys. The French nation, it must be borne in mind, was highly wrought up over American affairs at this time. The United States was surely going to pieces ere long, and the Emperor was soon to re-establish French prestige in the New World. Interoceanic canal projects were, therefore, in the full swing of the tide, and the de Puydt company was being carried along with the rest. Two surveying parties were accordingly despatched to the lower isthmus; one by the canal company, in charge of another of its willing engineers, a M. Lacharme; and another under the direction of M. Flachat, sent out by the Compagnie Transatlantique. Flachat soon discovered that the fabled pass was all a myth, and, without wasting further time on any such fool's errand, he reported almost immediately to his employers, that immense obstacles stood in the way of any canal construction in this region. Lacharme, indeed, was no more fortunate than his colleague in locating the wonderful depression that de Puydt and the old Spanish map had described; but he had been sent out by a speculative company, and it would never do to return without some ingenious and feasible plan. So he, too, elaborated a scheme for a canal to connect the Gulf of San Miguel with the Atrato by a somewhat longer route of fifty odd miles, giving the maximum level as 190 feet. But it was the Emperor's turn now, and he, as we know, had a route of his own across Nicaragua. All minor schemes of French enthusiasts were accordingly brushed aside, as we shall presently see, to make way for imperial ambitions.' § 103. The Chiriqui Scheme. Neither the Spaniards in their search for gold, nor the Americans in their quest for a transit route, had as yet taken any notice of the Chiriqui isthmus. Savages still dwelt unmolested Coloniza- here, and, though both New Granada and tion Costa Rica claimed the land as theirs, still neither could, by any possibility, have de lineated its own frontier in these regions. Captain Barnet, of the English navy, first explored the Chiriqui lagoon in 1839, for his own government,— always on the lookout for coaling stations and the like, and reported very favorably to the Admiralty. Some years later Golfo Dulce, on the Pacific side, was examined very carefully by Admiral Pelion of the French navy, and he was even more enthusiastic in his report to the Home authorities. 1 Rodrigues, loc. cit., p. 17. Moritz Wagner, loc. cit., pp. 13-17. Sullivan, loc. cit., pp. 28-30. |