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Antiqua
Antiqua; Spaltensatz; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung, Kapitälchen.
Dr. Edward Cullen, Strand, London,
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 Cupìca as the points most worthy of attention; after having re-
gretted, 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, be satisfied to see, at last,
my hopes for so noble an enterprise revived. By your publications, sir,
will be orignated 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
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.