Over Darien by a ship canal : reports of the mismanaged Darien expedition of 1854, with suggestions for a survey by competent engineers, and an exploration by parties with compasses.

  • Cullen, Dr.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Over Darien by a ship canal : reports of the mismanaged Darien expedition of 1854, with suggestions for a survey by competent engineers, and an exploration by parties with compasses. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    portant a survey, and the failure of finding a practicable route or direction for a ship canal across the Isthmus. In page 1 you state, that instead of a single well aiTanged expedition, there were three unconnected explorations. Hence, fi-om the commencement, nothing but discord may have been anticipated. This should form a beacon to instmct others to avoid disunion in all future attempts of the kind. I was not aware of the existence of an Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company of London. The acting parties of such Com])any made a sad blunder in appointing their engineer to command the expedition to Darien, in preference to one who had made a personal inspection of much of the country in question; but, in general, competent men are put aside for others who have the tact or effrontery to jvrite engineer after their name without due qualification. In page 2, I find the American engineer (Strain) was a good sample of the go-a-heads, and a very polite one also. In page 3, it appears that on the 2Gth January, Colonel Codazzi and Mr. Gisborne crossed a hill to the Chueti, a river on the Pacific side of the Cordillera: here half the business would appear to have been acconiplislied; but on the following morning the Granadian colonel contrived, in the face of the glaring fact that you had passed the watershed between the two oceans, to lead them back to the Atlantic side of the hill in question. Where was the science of the engineer-in-chief? If he had been without a compass, surely tlic sun in the heavens would have been a suflicient guide to him to have put a negative upon the colonel's accident or design to frustrate or stultify the affair. On the 3rd February you evidently ascended the culminating point of land between the two oceans : you do not give the elevation ;* but in page 10 it is stated that a hill 120 feet highf * Tho elevation the party reached on the mountain Agla, which fonna the watoi-shed between the Aglascuiqua and the Sucubti, was COO feet. t This is tho hill, about five miles on the Atlantic side of the Chuquanaqua, stated by Commander Prevost, of H.M.S. Virago, to be 120 feet high, from the top of a tree on the summit of which hia native guide, Maria, saw the If Atlantic, as stated in Trevost's official report, pubUahed in the Royal Geo- : gi-aphical Society's journal for last year, aud in letters from Captain Kenmsli and Mr. Robert Nelson, C.E. (« volunteera from the Now York Atrato Oauni Company, who accompanied Prevost), published in the Echo, Herald, Star, m Panaineno, La Estrdla, and La Cronica of Panama, aud the Nexo rork Ilcrmi and Tribune, in February aud March, 1854. Tho following passages from tlio report of Dr. Ross, who had medical charge of Provost's expedition, publisnw in tho Sun and Morning Post of the 12th and 13th September, 1856, refer to the same hill, and the valley which traverses the Cordillera in a direction from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the existence of which I reported six years ago, but tho scientific explorers on the late expedition, not having souglit m, and perhaps not havuig desired to find it, reported, very logically, that it m not exist, and that my statements as to the existence of a valley aci-oss uit Cordillera were false. „„„ft. « Next day; Jan. 1, 1854, a party of tlio expeilitiou crossed (tho Chuquai^^ qua) and reiurucd at night with iutulligencc of having soon the sea—m A