THE DARIEN SHIP-CANAL.

The subjoined interesting letter is from Alexander von Humboldt on the subject of the projected oceanic canal across the Isthmus of Darien.

The importance of the undertaking is fully admitted by the learned baron; and he urges the necessity of constructing a canal without locks as the only medium of communication suitable for the accommodation of the trade of the world.

It is now said that it was to the absence of this important feature in the Nicaragua ship-canal-scheme that the failure of that project was mainly owing:—

“Potsdam, June 4, 1853.

“Sir—I am very much to blame for having so long delayed an answer to the agreeable and interesting dispatch that you have been kind enough to forward me, by the hands of Mr. Augustus Peterman, so estimable by his character as well as by the solidity of his geographical labours.

Dr. Cullen cannot doubt the high importance that I would attach to the merit of his courageous and useful investigations in the eastern part of the Isthmus of Panama.

Knowing my position and my antediluvian age, he will receive with indulgence, even so late, the expression of my lively gratitude.

“After having laboured in vain, during half a century, to prove the possibility of an oceanic canal, and to point out the Gulf of San Miguel and Cupica as the points most worthy of attention—after having regretted, almost with bitterness, in the last edition of my ‘Aspects of Nature,’ that the employment of the means which the present state of our knowledge affords for obtaining precise measurements has been so long delayed, I ought, more than any one else, to be satisfied to see, at last, my hopes for so noble an enterprise revived.

By your publications, and by that of Mr. Gisborne, will be originated the great work of changing an important part of the commerce of nations, and of rendering more accessible the rich countries of Eastern Asia and the Indian Archipelago.

The undertaking is by no means above the intellectual and material power which civilised nations have attained to.

The work should be one to last for ever—it should not commence with a canal with locks like the magnificent Caledonian Canal—it must be a really oceanic canal without locks —a free passage from sea to sea, across which the speed of the navigation will be modified, but not interrupted, by the difference in height and non-coincidence of the tides.

Receive the expression of my highest consideration. Yours, &c., Alexander von Humboldt.

“Dr. Edward Cullen, Strand, London.”