To a king of Spain, with the wealth of the
Indies at his command, when the object to be obtained is the spice
trade, what is possible is easy.
But the sacred fire suddenly burned itself out in Spain. The peninsula
had for its ruler a prince who sought his glory in smothering free
thought among his own people, and in wasting his immense resources in
vain efforts to repress it also outside of his own dominions through all
Europe. From that hour, Spain became benumbed and estranged from all
the advances of science and art, by means of which other nations, and
especially England, developed their true greatness.
Even after France had shown, by her canal of the south, that boats could
ascend and pass the mountain crests, it does not appear that the
Spanish government seriously wished to avail itself of a like means of
establishing any communication between her sea of the Antilles and the
South Sea. The mystery enveloping the deliberations of the council of
the Indies has not always remained so profound that we could not know
what was going on in that body. The Spanish government afterward opened
up to Humboldt free access to its archives, and in these he found
several memoirs on the possibility of a union between the two oceans;
but he says that in no one of them did he find the main point, the
height of the elevations on the isthmus, sufficiently cleared up, and
he could not fail to remark that the memoirs were exclusively French or
English.
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