The coveted wealth of “Ormus and of Ind” was a siren who had lured adventurous navigators to dare the dangers of unknown seas.
The same diversity of motive may be found in the men of that period which now exists and animates the westward course of civilization. Love of money and fame are found contending by the side of the desire to extend the domain of knowledge and zeal for the spread of religion.
The result of these combined passions was to open new avenues to wealth, industry, and science.
Four hundred years have elapsed since the wondering eyes of Spanish discoverers first gazed on the strange beauty of the New World. In this interval a nation of forty millions of people have been planted in the country of Columbus, its wildernesses are traversed by steam, its products supply food and clothing to a large part of the world; but, with all this progress, the visionary strait of the great navigator is yet an unrealized dream.
Impossibilities have been accomplished, poetical fictions have become facts, visionary theories of the past are the industrial arts of the present. In wealth, comfort, health, longevity, art, science, organized labor and charities, the human race of the present have out-stripped the Arcadian felicity of the golden eras of Hesiod and Cervantes.
Possessing every facility, occupying a preëminent coigne of vantage, we have left one thing unachieved. This ought we to have done, and not to have left the others undone.
Many minds, speculative and practical, have closely scrutinized the feasibility of making the American Isthmus a highway for the commerce of the world.
Its importance grows in dimensions in proportion to the study bestowed on it. It ranks among its friends some of the most able men of the race.
Columbus, Cortes, Charles V, Alverado, Gonzales de Avila, De Solis, Gomaro, Bautista Antonella, and, in more recent times, Paterson, Pitt, Jefferson, Humboldt, Guizot, Napoleon III, Wheaton, Dallas, Biddle, and a long and honorable list of statesmen and publicists have contributed to the project.
According to the scheme of General Miranda, sanctioned by Wm. Pitt, it was proposed that Great Britain should supply the money and ships, and the United States should send 10,000 men.