INTER-OCEANIC RAILWAY.

CHAPTER XXIX.

SPANISH EXPLORATIONS FOR A TRANSIT IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-HISTORICAL NOTICES.

IN the month of September, 1513, scarcely eleven years after the first landing of Columbus on the continent of America, in Honduras, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, crossing its narrowest isthmus at Darien, rushed, sword in hand, into the waters of the South Sea, and claimed its almost limitless shores for the crown of Castile and Leon. From that period, it became a leading object of European ambition to discover "a short and easy passage" between the seas. Deeply impressed with the importance of such a communication, the great Charles, writing from Valladolid in 1523, enjoined upon Cortez to seek diligently for "el secreto del estrecho," the secret of the strait, which would shorten, as was then supposed, by two thirds, the voyage from Cadiz to the "land of spices" and the shores of Cathay. In reply to this behest, the Mexican conqueror laments the failure of his search, but consoles himself with the hope that he will yet be able to achieve that grand discovery, which, he adds, "would make the King of Spain master of so many kingdoms that he might consider himself lord of the world."

Geographical research, however, early demonstrated that to this "short and easy passage" the American

continent presents an unbroken barrier. And then the daring of man began to contemplate the Titanic enterprise of cutting through the continent, and opening an artificial water communication between the two

oceans.

The kings of Spain, ruling over dominions surpassing in extent the proudest empires of antiquity, and supported by a people roused to the highest pitch of daring and of enterprise, looked with impatience upon the barrier which interposed between their ambitions and those Oriental kingdoms which their fancies had surrounded with exaggerated splendors, and invested with unbounded wealth. To overcome this obstacle became at once a ruling purpose of imperial zeal. The bravest and best of their subjects, comprehending well the rich rewards which success in this respect would be sure to secure, devoted to it all their intelligence and energy. They traversed the continent and investigated its recesses as eagerly and as thoroughly as their predecessors on the sea had scrutinized every river, and inlet, and bay, in their unavailing search for the "short and easy passage to the Indies." If we could expose to light the treasures of the Spanish archives, that mine of early American history, we should find abundant evidences that not a single point which modern research has indicated as affording facilities for inter-oceanic communications had escaped the observation of these active and indefatigable explorers. Certain it is, that within thirty years after the discovery, all the great lines of transit which are now known and recognized had been very carefully traced, and their capabilities very accurately pointed out.

"It is true," wrote the ancient historian Gomara, "that mountains obstruct these passages, but if there

be mountains there be also hands; let but the resolve be formed to make the passage, and it can be made. If inclination be not wanting, there will be no want of means; the Indies, to which the passage is to be made, will itself supply them. To a King of Spain, with the wealth of the Indies at his command, when the object to be obtained is the spice trade, that which is possible is easy.

But at that early period engineering science, except perhaps in its application to military purposes, was in its infancy, and under the system and with the comparatively limited mechanical appliances of the day, the task of cutting through the continent was too vast for even the gigantic power of Spain, with the spoils of a hundred conquered nations in its lap, to undertake. The swart miners of England had not yet torn up the iron ribs of the earth, wherewith to fashion implements for the hands of the, as yet, untamed spirit of fire and water, the giant steam. The kings of Spain had the will to do, but lacked the ability to accomplish. Slowly and reluctantly they were compelled to abandon their cherished scheme of a great open-cut channel for their fleets to the South Sea, and to accept the only alternative of a long, circuitous, and dangerous voyage by the Straits of Magellan.

For all purposes of rapid communication, nevertheless, the monarchs of Spain depended upon those roads across the continent which their inability to convert into canals had compelled them to accept. The galleons from the Philippines, and those laden with the treasures of Peru, and carrying also the passengers and correspondence of that period, concentrated either at Panama or Acapulco, whence their precious freights were transferred over land to the Atlantic coast, and thence dispatched to Spain.