Note IX-3 — Chapter IX · DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 1513.

Enciso, Suma de Geographia, 57, calls the country 'tierra rasa y buena de muchos mãtenimientos y caças.' 'Experience had proved that moving a body of men sufficient to act as a protecting force and to carry the necessary provisions was attended with great risk and great delay.' Gisborne's Survey of Darien, in London Geog. Soc., Jour., xxvii. 193. 'Mr Hopkins was lately prevented by the Indians from ascending the Chepo river towards Mandinga, or San Blas Bay; and Dr Cullen was stopped likewise by the aborigines while endeavoring to ascend the Paya river.... Climate and natives are at present the only serious impediments to a regular survey.' Fitz-Roy's Isth. Cent. Am., in London Geog. Soc., Jour., xx. 161. 'The Panama railroad, a most stupendous work, considering the excessively swampy nature of the country over which it has been carried.' Cullen's Darien, 95. For obstacles overcome in surveying and constructing the Panamá railway, see Otis' Isthmus Panama, 15-36. The climate inclines 'to the wet extreme, for two thirds of the year, the Rains beginning in April.' Defence of the Scots Settlement at Darien, 64. On the Atrato 'the trees approach to the very edge of the stream, which their branches overhang. The trees are frequently concealed by dense masses of vines which entirely envelope them, and in certain lights present plays of color comparable only to those of the richest velvet.... But like the plumes and velvet of the funeral pageant, they serve but to conceal and adorn corruption. Behind them stretches, far away, the pestiferous swamp, through the dreary wilds of which even the birds refuse to sport; and whose silence is broken only by the sighing of the breeze, or the sullen growl of the roving tiger. Venomous reptiles often fall into the boats from the branches overhead; wasps' nests are frequent and troublesome; natural levees of soft mud stretch along the banks. Floods are common, and the houses are built on stilts.' Trautwine, in Franklin Inst., Jour., xxvii. 220-4. In 1853, Carl Scherzer, a German naturalist, travelling in Costa Rica with a civil engineer and a force of thirty-two men, attempted to make a survey for a road from Angostura to Limon Bay; but on account of scarcity of provisions, illness, and the difficulties of the route, they failed in their purpose; and after having penetrated to within eight leagues of their destination, they were obliged to return, having travelled only ten leagues in two weeks. See Wagner and Scherzer, Costa Rica, 358-407. In December of the same year, a party under J. C. Prevost, of H. M. S. Virago, set out with fourteen days' provisions from the gulf of San Miguel for Caledonia Bay, on the opposite side of the Isthmus. Their route was essentially that of Vasco Nuñez on his return. As he ascended the Sabana River, the attention of Captain Prevost was attracted by the débris on the overhanging branches, which marked the height of water attained during certain seasons. The dense foliage was enlivened by birds of gay plumage; brilliant flowers carpeted the ground; and the chattering monkeys, which they shot in great numbers, furnished the guides food. The country even then was as wild as when traversed by Vasco Nuñez; the natives, however, had exchanged their wooden weapons for fire-arms. Swamps and hills alternate, and 'dense was the forest we had cut our way through.' The flora then changed, and 'instead of the small underwood, we came on almost impenetrable thickets of the prickly palm or aloe, rather more than six feet in height, through which we with great difficulty cut our way.' They crossed 'deep ravines, whose steep and slippery sides caused many a tumble.' The attempt was finally abandoned. Returning, on arriving at one of their ranchos or encampments, where had been left three sailors to guard the provisions, they found the men murdered and the camp sacked. 'So toilsome was our journey,' says Captain Prevost, 'that we spent fifteen days in performing a distance of little more than twenty-six miles, having to force our slow and laborious path through forests that seemed to stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic shores. The trees, of stupendous size, were matted with creepers and parasitical vines, which hung in festoons from tree to tree, forming an almost impenetrable net-work, and obliging us to hew open a passage with our axes every step we advanced.' London Geog. Soc., Jour., xxiv. 249. Nothing could more aptly illustrate the difficulties surmounted by the Spaniards than this narrative of failure, by a British officer of the nineteenth century, who operated under conditions far more favorable than those so successfully overcome by a company of ill-accoutred and poorly fed adventurers more than three hundred years before. With the material before me, these illustrations could be greatly multiplied; but I have given enough to show that the transit of the Isthmus, by a small party of Europeans, over an unknown or unexplored route, is even to-day esteemed a desperate undertaking.