SAN BLAS AND BAYANO RIVER.
This route is one of several surveyed under the generous patronage of F. W. Kelly and others. The map of Mr. McDougal, the surveyor and engineer, and the report of Admiral Davis, furnish some interesting facts. The narrowest part of the Isthmus is found here, being thirty miles from ocean to ocean, and here the tide of the Pacific is said to approach within fifteen miles of the Atlantic coast.
Mr. McDougal proposes to pierce the ridge, which has an altitude of 1500 feet, at a height of 93½ feet above mean tide, by a tunnel seven miles long. The harbor of San Blas is deep and spacious. The channel leading into the Bay of Panama has not less than eighteen feet of water at mean low tide, while the rise of the water is sixteen feet. This result, Admiral Davis observes, does not agree with the admiralty charts.
The map indicates the probable existence of a better route to the north-west, and the surveyors were satisfied they saw evidences of a depression in that direction.
Admiral Davis quotes the well-merited compliment of Sir R. Murchison, to the zeal and energy with which Mr. Kelly has pursued “this great and philanthropic object,” in which “all civilized nations are deeply interested.”