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“Here ended,” says Irving, in a strain of tender eloquence, “the lofty aspirations which had elevated him above all mercenary views in his struggle along this perilous coast”——“it is true, he had been in pursuit of a chimera, but it was the chimera of a splendid imagination and a penetrating judgment. If he was disappointed in finding a strait through the Isthmus of Darien, it was because Nature herself was disappointed.”

This sagacious conjecture has its foundation in nature, and is supported by the opinions of savans and the facts of recent geological explorations.

The Prussian geographer, Berghaus, as early as 1823, and Prof. Hopkins, contested the accepted opinion as to the unbroken continuity of the Isthmus and the contiguous continents.

The French engineer, Garella, after making a geological reconnoissance, declares that the Isthmus is of more recent origin than the continents which it unites. Col. Hughes and Garella concur in a belief in the existence, at an early period, of a strait uniting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The identity of the species of fish inhabiting the waters on both sides of the Isthmus is an additional argument in confirmation of this view.