the range of mountains which divide the western from the Atlantic shores of South America,” said a distinguished statesman,[23] “they stood fixed in silent admiration, gazing on the vast expanse of the Southern ocean which lay stretched before them in boundless prospect.  They adored—­even those hardened and sanguinary adventurers adored—­the gracious providence of Heaven, which, after lapse of so many centuries had opened to mankind so wonderful a field of untried and unimagined enterprize.”  The very same point of land where, in 1515, the Spaniards first beheld the Pacific, is the spot formed by nature for the realization of those advantages which their cautious policy caused them to overlook.  The Creator seems to have intended it for general use—­as the highway of nations; and yet, after a period of more than three centuries, scarcely has the solitude which envelopes this interesting strip of land been broken.  Is Europe or America to blame for this?

[22] This is the first impediment to an oceanic canal, and one equally felt on the other proposed lines.  Captain Sir Edward Belcher, when recently surveying the western coasts of America, availed himself of the opportunity to explore the Estero Real, a river on the Pacific side, which he did by ascending it to the distance of thirty miles from its mouth, but he found that it only admits a vessel drawing ten feet water.  That intelligent officer considered this an advantageous line for a canal, which by lake navigation, he concluded might be connected with San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and extended to the Atlantic; but the distance is immense, the country thinly inhabited, and besides unhealthy, and, after all, it could only serve for boats.

    [23] Lord Grenville in his speech on Indian affairs, April 9,
    1813.

In the present state of our trade, and the increasing competition which we are likely to experience, unquestionably it would be advisable for British subjects to exert themselves in securing a free passage across the isthmus above-named.  It is not, however, to be imagined that this is a new project in our history.  Towards the close of the seventeenth century, one was formed in Scotland for the establishment of a national company to trade with the Indies through the Pacific, which became so popular that most of the royal burghs subscribed to it.  The scheme originated with William Patterson, a Scotchman, of a bold and enterprizing character, who, in early life, is supposed to have been a Bucanier, and to have traversed several sections of South America.  At all events, he seems to have been acquainted with the views of Captain, afterwards Sir Henry Morgan, who, in 1670, took and burned Panama.