Mr. Sullivan to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have the honor to inform you that vast beds of cannel coal have been discovered about forty miles back of Rio Hacha, and opposite to, and to the windward of, Saint Thomas. Rio Hacha is, I think, the nearest point of land to Saint Thomas. Between those coal beds and the sea the land is level and hard, along which a railway for conveying this coal to the Atlantic can readily and cheaply be made.
Ships can run at all seasons of the year, without interruption from adverse winds, from Saint Thomas to this point, for coal.
These facts I have learned from a highly accomplished and respectable English civil engineer who has been in Colombia for the last thirty years, and who has surveyed and mapped the said coal beds. He says this coal is the best in the world.
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I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.