Footnote 18: ([return]) Fugitive, observe. There were some others, and amongst them Major Davie, who, for private reasons, were suffered to survive as prisoners.
Footnote 19: ([return]) "Took Kandy in his route." This phrase is equivocal, it bears two senses—the traveller's sense, and the soldier's. But we rarely make such errors in the use of words; the error is original in the Government documents themselves.
Footnote 20: ([return]) Why were they "all-suffering?" will be the demand of the reader, and he will doubt the fact simply because he will not apprehend any sufficient motive. That motive we believe to have been this: war, even just or necessary war, is costly; now, the governor and his council knew that their own individual chances of promotion were in the exact ratio of the economy which they could exhibit.
Footnote 21: ([return]) We say living, because every attempt hitherto made to explain sensation, has been founded on certain appearances manifested in the dead subject. By inspecting a dead carcass we shall never discover the principle of vision. Yet, though there is no seeing in a dead eye, or in a camera obscura, optics deal exclusively with such inanimate materials; and hence the student who studies them will do well to remember, that optics are the science of vision, with the fact of vision left entirely out of the consideration.
Footnote 22: ([return]) 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.
Footnote 23: ([return]) Lord Grenville in his speech on Indian affairs, April 9, 1813.
Footnote 24: ([return]) The result of their labours was published in the Philosophic Transactions for 1830, accompanied by drawings.
Footnote 25: ([return]) Ulloa (Book iii. chap. 11) remarks, that although the greater part of the houses in Panama were formerly built of wood, fires very rarely occurred; the nature of the timber being such, that if lighted embers are laid upon the floor, or wall made of it, the only consequence is, that it makes a hole without producing a flame.
Footnote 26: ([return]) America and the Pacific, 1838.
Footnote 27: ([return]) Ulloa affirms, that the greater part of the houses in Panama are now built of stone; all sorts of materials for edifices of this kind being found there in the greatest abundance. Mr Scarlett also acknowledges that he there saw more specimens of architectural beauty than in any other town of South America which he had occasion to visit.