held 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.

In England, the "Scots Company" was strenuously opposed by the
incorporated traders to the East Indies, as well as by the West India
merchants. Parliament equally took the alarm, and prayed the king not to
sanction the scheme. So powerful did this opposition at length be