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Antiqua
Antiqua; Spaltensatz.
to dr. edward cullen, strand, london.
Sir,—I am very much to blame for having so long de-
layed 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 cha-
racter, 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 investiga-
tions in the eastern
part of the Isthmus of Panama; know-
ing 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
wor-
thy of attention—after having regretted, almost with
bitter-
ness, 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 enter-
prise revived. By your publications,
sir, 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 Eastera Asia and
the
Indian Archipelago. The undertaking is by no means above
the
intellectual and material power which civilized 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 differences in height and non-coincidence
of the
tides.