The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-07-12

J
tho prohibitory law viii be repealed and the
obnoxious and rapidly corruptng and degene-
rating constabulary force abolished. Taking
it all in all, then, there appears to be
troublesome political storm brewing in tho Old
Bay State.
I The Isthnas Of Corinth Cnuai--Ano.her
gateway TO tho Orient.
! In the year 1861, while the doubters and
tremblers Of the commercial world-the short
sighted weddings who mistake the end Of
their own nose for a burning Himalaya, and a
fly Ia the telescope for mastOdon in the
moon-were wagging their wise heads Of
prophecy against the Suez Canal, Cretan
engineer, Colonel Leonidas Lyghouues, who
had served with distinction as director of the
works on the embankments Of the Nile in
Egypt, proposed to the government of Greece
plan for cutting q ship canal through the
Isthmus of Corinth, from the gulf of the same
name to that Of Athens. This narrow neck Of
land, which is the connecting link between
Attica and the Morea, il, at its narr2rest
breadth, only five French Kilometres, or about
three and one-eighth English miles, in width,
and the nature of the soil is such as to render
the work of excavation comparatively easy.
In fact, Colonel Lyghounes computed the pro-
bable cost Of a work sufficient to pass the
largest vessels at no more than twelve
million francs, or not far from two million
four hundred thousand dOllars--a mere tri1e
when compared with the service to be rem
dered. Such a canal woald shorten the
voyage from Marselles to Constantnople
by fourteen and to Trieste by twenty hours,
while it would open direct channel for the
entire trade of Asia Minor coming from the
Black Sea to the Dardanelles and the waters
of the Grecian Archipelago into the Mediter-
ranean and thence to the Atlantic Ocean.
Colonel LyghOunes addressed an elaborate
but lucid report on the whole subject to the
Hellenic Cabinet, and the latter were delighted
with the idea. Baron de Lesseps, the pro-
jector of the Suez Canal, warmly approved Of
the plan and rendered his hearty cooperation;
but it so CHANGED that his own grand design
was, just then, involved in the darkest clouds
Of uncertainty and the Greek government was
too weak and poor to take up the scheme alone.
Hence it has languished for years aud had
almost died out, when the splendid success Of
the Suez undertaking came to revive it. At
length, as we learn by special kilograms from
Europe, both English and French capitalists
have become interested, and this bright de-
sign is to be carried into complete execution.
Moreover, the French Chollet Company have
renewed their proposition to construct rail-
road along the shores of the Gulf of Corinth
on terms more favorable than those that caused
their rejection by the Greeks year ago. This
road will connect all the minor ports tn at look
forth upon that historic sea and once reflected
the porticoes of temples and palaces of Parian
marble which the necessarily extending
wealth Of their Oriental traffic reared on every
jutting promontory. The tribute Of their
modern trade will be poured into the one grand
channel and repay the life that the latter will
have bestowed.
Aftcr all this project is not entirely mo-
deru. When Corinth, so long the defender Of
Greek independence, at last succumbed to
Rome, Nero, the magnificent tyraut planned
and commenced similar work, and traces Of
his excavations have been found by the
modern engineers; but his other varied enter
prises and the turbulence that his expressions
provoked did not leave him time to complete
It. Corinth, the favorlts of the arts and
the mother of commercial luxury, and its
enchanting plain of Sicyon, that combined
the bloom and fruitfulness Of the biblical
Canaan with the laurel and asphodel meadows,
the faun and dryad-haunted groves and the
myrtle covered sleeps of Tempe and Arcadia,
fell Into comparative forgetfulness. to
sparkle ftfully only from time to time amid
their ashes, when the grandeur OF the Otto
man caliphs and the splendid greed of the
Venetian doges touched them with the wand
Of trade AT last Corinth sank from the sight
of general traffic, and was remembered only
as dim, far-away dream of antique luxury
in the era when her invented art Of paint
ing and her richly ornate architecture
eclipsed the glory Of Athens itself. But now,
forming part of that superb succession Of
enterprises which is to unite the Zuyder
Zee and the upper Rhine by snip canal
through Holland the waters Of the Gulf of
Lyons and the Atlantic Ocean by another that
will commngle the currents of the Rhone, the
Lot and the Garonne In France; the classic
pillows Of the Tyrrhene and the Red Seas by
Suez, and the lower Gulf Of Arabia, conse-
Grated by records of higher and more august
antiquity, with the Gulf Of Persia athwart the
middle Arabian mainland, the canal across
the Greek isthmus will revive far more than
all the traffic which concentrated there from
tho West and the East two thousand years
and more ago. Within Ave years the Aero
cornthus, far grauder In It's time than the
Athenian Acropolis and more stupendous In