Waiting impatiently, he speculates upon the Aurora Borealis, geology, magnetic observations; ingeniously proposing, by the automatic action of appropriate machinery, to make all meteorological phenomena register its name and mission in a room selected for that purpose. This he calls a “meteorological loom in which the web of time is spun with the present for a pattern.”
“May 29th—The Bogotá mail has come, but no letter from Dr. Cullen. Every thing here is mañana (to-morrow).”
He again takes to speculating on fortifications, and the beauty of the senoritas. A reasonable man would have been contented. But he leaves this primrose path to write, “Dr. Cullen has neither written, nor appeared in person, and I am beginning to have my doubts whether he will do so.” In the meantime Cullen was hammering at the “mañana” Congress at Bogotá.
After waiting six weeks he left Cartejena in disgust, and landed, without the indefatigable Doctor, in Caledonia Bay. Here he spent two days wandering among the hills with his barometer, his spirits going down as the mercury went up.
He was arrested by three half-naked Indians, who, in an unintelligible language, but plainly to be understood gestures, commanded him to follow. This he prudently acquiesced in, but not until he had, as he thought, ascertained the dividing ridge between the Atlantic and the Pacific to be 272 feet above tide. Falling asleep, with a contented mind, he thought he heard the roar of the surf of the Pacific, but his companion, Ford, very shrewdly suggested that they were still within hearing of the Atlantic. With a gentle admonition that they must never be caught there again they were permitted to return to their boat.
Naturally, he could not forbear another fling at the helpless Dr. Cullen. “I had not much faith in Dr. Cullen’s map, as his descriptions of land south-west of Port Escocés were directly contrary to the fact.”
The comment, on his failure may puzzle the reader. “I am far more satisfied at having failed in crossing from Port Escocés than to have crossed and returned (supposing that was possible with safety), and reported a summit 275 feet, when, within a few miles, one of 40 is to be got further inland.”
“It is dangerous to argue by induction,” observes Mr. Gisborne, and he gives 238 pages in illustration of this truth.
Nothing daunted by his failure to effect a transit from the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, he determines to proceed to Panama, and to make another attempt from San Miguel on the Pacific. Proceeding up the Savana river he disembarked with his Asst. Ford, who had charge of the mountain barometer, and penetrating two days’ journey into the interior, he is warned by a log over a stream that he had reached the country of his enemies, the Caledonia Indians. Remembering their parting injunction he returned.
“A dreamy hope of success,” he writes, “is strengthened by inductive argument, the cause of former failures leads to generalizations of geological theories, and topographical analogy, and it was this conviction that cheered me under all difficulties, making suffering an indispensable appendage of success.”