No. 52.
Mr. Scruggs
to Mr. Fish.
Bogotá, May 7, 1876. (Rec’d May 31.)
Sir: A person calling himself Anthoine de Gogorza, and claiming to be a citizen of the United States, arrived here some days since on a mission connected with the Darien ship-canal enterprise. He claims to represent a syndicate formed in Europe for the purpose of re-surveying the route between the gulfs of Darien and San Maguiel, known as the “Acquiacua” route, by the Cacarica and Paya.
Gogorza claims to have information of the most conclusive character, obtained from the archives of Spain, showing that a passage from sea to sea existed as late as 1680, “when a body of above four hundred buccaneers in eighteen large canoes, with their stores, armaments, and ammunitions, crossed from the swamps at the west of the Atrato to Real de Santa Maria, on the river Tuyra, which they took by surprise and pillaged.”
Upon this information he says he made an exploration of this pass in 1866, which he describes as follows:
The Northern Cordillera, following the curve of the Atlantic coast in a general direction from northwest to southeast, lessens rapidly in altitude toward 8° 7ʹ north latitude until it disappears in the swamps of Cacarica; while the western range of the Andes, or Southern Cordillera, coming from the south along the Pacific shore in general direction toward the north-northwest, ends abruptly at Cape Garachine without extending any spurs across the valley of Tuyra.
The two distinct Cordilleras, above described, are represented as “passing each other on a parallel, and leaving between them the deep valley of the Tuyra, which, at a comparatively recent period, was the sea-channel, and formed the natural separation of the two great American continents.”
Mons. Gogorza asserts positively that he has himself traced this pass in company with a competent engineer; that he made the fact known to Commodore Selfridge at the time of the survey of the Atrato-Napipi route; that he invited that officer to accompany him thither with a corps of competent engineers and test the matter for himself; but that this “was declined upon some frivolous pretext, and the resurvey of the route indicated was never made.”
It will be observed that Mons. Gogorza’s theory is quite similar to that set forth by Señor Quijano Otero, the Colombian engineer, an English translation of whose curious paper was transmitted with my No. 114 of July 17, 1875. As the one seems to corroborate the other, the subject is creating some interest here.
[Page 88]The object of Gogorza’s mission hither is, ostensibly, to solicit from the Colombian government concessions of privilege to make the survey of his route by a corps of French, English, and Colombian engineers, and should this survey verify his statements, then the concession of exclusive rights and privileges to form an international company to open a ship-canal across the Isthmus, said company to deposit a large sum of money as a forfeiture in case the work should not be successfully carried out.
This project has been all the more favorably received by the Colombians, by reason of the general belief that the United States commission have made a final report in favor of the Nicaraguan route. And what is perhaps an object of more surprise, the scheme is quietly encouraged by one of the foreign legations here, while some of the British naval officers, as if acting in concert therewith, have been writing letters to parties here denouncing the Nicaraguan route as practically impossible, and pointedly insinuating that the surveys of the Atrato and Panama routes by the United States commission amount to a farce, if to nothing more serious.
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I have, &c.,