After forty days of wandering, subsisting for the time chiefly on sour palmetto berries, emaciated with hunger, lacerated with thorns, sick, and half naked, Strain, having hastened ahead of his party, sought succor in Yvisa. Proceeding to the Savana, he presented himself to the English agent, who, receiving him with every kindness, shed tears at the sight. Securing assistance, which was reluctantly granted, at Yvisa, he hastily returned to find the remnant of his party, feebly struggling back toward Caledonia Bay, having lost five of their number, among whom were the two Granadian Commissioners.
Strain, mistaking the Chuquanaqua for the Savana, reached the Pacific by the longest route. He claims that his expedition “has disproved a magnificent preconceived theory,” and that instead of a summit-level of 150 feet, it is at least 1000 feet.
Three days after the departure of Strain, “another party, composed of English and French together, under the guidance of Dr. Cullen and Mr. Gisborne, set out from the same point, and endeavored to follow in his track.” “Gisborne and Cullen could not follow their own maps,” and after having “penetrated not more than six miles in all, returned.” Mr. Gisborne, observes the narrator in the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, “dementait complétement” his former statements. They failed to confirm the first statements, and the London company, organized with such high hopes, was dissolved.
On the heels of Gisborne and Cullen, the Granadian expedition, under the command of Codazzi, made a cotemporaneous essay. “How far,” says Strain, “it penetrated is not known; but, struggling over the space of a mile, it was broken up, and returned after having lost several men.”
While failure and misfortune was befalling the exploring parties starting from the Atlantic coast, another attempt was made at the same time to effect a transit from the now notable Savana. Capt. Prevost, of the Virago, after advancing twenty-six miles, at the rate of one and one-half miles per day, returned again to the Savana, followed, says Mr. Gisborne, by two hundred hostile Indians. Four sailors, left to guard a depot of provisions, were found murdered.
Capt. Prevost failed to find a practicable pass. Crossing valleys which probably led to the Pacific, the altitude of which is not given, he terminated his survey at a summit of 1080 feet above the level of the ocean. “L’execution de canal interoceaneque était devenue á peu pris impracticable,” remarks the reviewer.
After an examination of the maps of Gisborne, Prevost, Strain, and Codazzi, there seems to be a general agreement in placing the summit of the ridge at not less than one thousand feet above the level of the tide. The united maps of Prevost and Gisborne exhibit their routes, proceeding from opposite points and intersecting, and the continuous profile between the two oceans fails to solve the question of a practicable route. As one of these parties had the advantage of Dr. Cullen’s personal guidance, it is but fair to allow him to supplement his first statement by an explanation of the causes which led to a failure so complete and unexpected.
Speaking of the party from the Virago, he observes that Capt. Prevost “directed his explorations too far to the north-west.” That when it stopped he was but thirty miles from the point where the line should pass.
Strain, on the other hand, erred by going “too far to the south-west.” In a word, the true line is to be found in the golden mean in which Aristotle places all virtue.
But he has so far modified his first statement that he now thinks a line, “with tunneling,” may be found between Sucubti and Port Escocés. Under nine heads, he enumerates the advantages of this route.