The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-07 00:00:00

the undertaking have been appointed by its pro-
jectors, and their names issued through advertise-
ment. Besides a full complement of Directors,
headed by a Chairman and a Deputy-Chairman,
Bankers, Solicitors, Official Auditor, Consulting
Engineer, Engineer-in-Chief, Secretary, and Stock-
broker, have all, even now, been nominated. A
preliminary deposit of 75,0001. will• have to be
raised forthwith, for the purpose of taking the first
step towards the development of this gigantic en-
terprise. • Among the earliest objects kept in
view by the Company, are--the obtaining a right
to open a line of navigation and of land commu-
nications through or over the Isthmus of Darien ;
and, to this end, the securing a concession of
200,000 acres to be granted by the Republic of
New Granada. Already, of course, there is a
route for travellers through the territory of this
Republic. But such a route ! A railroad twenty-
five miles in length has already been constructed.
It connects a little inland village on the Chagres
river, called Barbacoas, with another little village
on the sea coast, called by the natives Colon, but
by its builders (settlers from the United States)
Aspinwall. Aspinwall or Colon, situated about
midway between Chagres and Portobello, consists
of about fifty wooden houses, while little more
than half-a-dozen huts constitute Barbacoas.
Between these two wonderfully important
villages, we have said there already exists a rail-
road. But this railroad consists of only a single
line ! And, after having adventured as far as its
inland terminus, the pleasures of the journey
may be averred then really to begin in earnest.
Leaving the huts of Barbacoas, which are plea-
santly surrounded by swamps of a sufficiently
picturesque and salubrious character, as may be
conjectured, the traveller across the Isthmus of
Panama finds himself agreeably conveyed at a snail's
pace in a flat-bottomed boat drowsily along the cur-
rent of the Rio Chagresto another delectable village,
Hight Gorgona. Thence, during the dry season,
ho can advance by a horrible road, twenty-three
miles in extent, to the old city of Panama—the
object of his destination. During the rainy sea-
sqn,
however, this same road being altogether
impassable, he is compelled to welter along the
surface of the Rio Chagres, eight miles more, to
a spot called Cruces. Cruces being twenty-eight
miles from the shores of the Pacific, the adventurer
his, in his journey along that route, the full
benefit of all its delightful sources of enjoyment
—including, from one extremity of the road to
the other, the variegated charms of marsh mists,
mud holes, musquitoes, scorpions, and centipedes.
It can scarcely be supposed that the miseries
derivable from these accompaniments to the tra-
veller can be in any way compensated by the
mere sight of the luxuriant foliage of the tropical
forests passed through, enlivened though the
woodland solitudes may be by a profusion of
parroquets and humming birds, and beautified
though the very air may be by the wings of the
most gorgeous butterflies. A writer who would
seem to have but very recently traversed this
singular route across the isthmus from Colon to
Panama, tells us that you encounter, along the
road from Cruces, " sometimes double-distilled
Sloughs of Despond, composed of black mud five
feet deep; at others, great stones, eight inches
apart, sharpened and stuck upon end ; then long
rows of wooden sleepers, placed in every conceiv-
able position, except the right one"—(Household
Words, VI., 522),—and so on, as the narrator
informs us with truly Irish naivete—" through" a
tropical forest " matted and impenetrable." A
better line of communication than this between the
Pacific and the Atlantic is surely, after all that
has been here observed, in every respect desirable!
And this better line of communication is at length
promised to the world by the Company just orga-
nised for the construction of a railway across the
Isthmus of Darien, and for opening up in connec-
tion with that undertaking the long-desired faci-
lities in the way of uninterrupted navigation. How
all this is to be accomplished the general public is
now enabled to comprehend, without much diffi-
culty, through the aid of the very curious and
interesting volume* lately written by the Engineer-
in-Chief of the NewCompany—LioNEL GISBORNE,
C. E.—a work describing the Isthmus of Darien
as it appeared in 1852—the narrative being, in
fact, compiled from the author's Journal of an
" Expedition of Inquiry for the Junction of the
Atlantic and Pacific." It cannot yet be forgotten
that the deplorable loss, by fire, of the Amazon
steam-ship, interrupted a somewhat similar ex-
pedition on the part of the gifted and lamented
ELIOT WA,EtBIIRTON. From the intelligent
and entertaining pages of Mr. GISBORNV
" Journal," it will at once be perceived how
very desirable is the speedy commencement
of such a project as the one upon which the new
company is about to adventure, boldly enough,
no doubt, but by no means precipitately.
We would, more particularly and earnestly,
direct attention to the supplemental portion of
the volume, being the report addressed by the
writer to Messrs. Fox,- HENDERSON, and BRA SSEY
(in obedience to the instructions of which firm,
indeed, Mr. GISBORNE had, in company with Mr.
H. C. FORDE as his assistant, entered upon
the labours of the expedition) upon the question,
of all the most important in connection with this
subject, namely, upon that of the feasibility of
" Darien Ship Navigation." It will be perceived
from that report—a report, recollect, written from
perSonal and very recent examination of the loca-
lity—that the author, speaking authoritatively,
remember, in his capacity as an engineer, after
recommending the making a cut(across the Isthmus
of Darien) of sufficient capacity to form an unin-
terrupted navigation (without locks) from sea to ,
sea, pronounces his opinion as to the practicability
of that plan thus distinctly (p. 230)—" Its • exe-
cution offers no engineering difficulties, and no
chance of future failure ; it is simply a ques-
tion of cubic quantity of excavation, dependent
on the dimensions of the cross section." After
that very explicit declaration on the part of
so very competent a judge—as it will be ob-
vious on the face of it that Mr. GISBORNE must
be, from the simple fact of his having been selected
by so eminent a house as that of Fox, HENDER-
SON, and BRAME; to conduct last year's import-
ant Expedition of Inquiry—alter an assertion on
his part so very clearly and resolutely expressed, it
must be manifest that the project about to be ad-
ventured upon by the new company, gigantic and
magnificent though it is, undoubtedly, is, neverthe-
less, at the same time, altogether devoid of any-
thing in the slightest degree bearing the semblance
of extravagance. Cordially, and very earnestly
we wish well to this noble enterprise, because we
regard it as of extraordinary import to the wel-
fare of both the eastern and the western hemis-
phere—because we consider it, in truth, to be very
far, indeed, from the least, perhaps on the con-
trary the most remarkable, step made within the
last few years in the onward march of civilisation.