Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
Du Bois submitted the following proposals to the Colombian government: ratification of the Root treaties, involving the payment to Colombia of the first ten installments of the annual rental of the canal zone amounting to $2,500,000; the payment of $10,000,000 by the United States to Colombia for the right to build an interoceanic canal by the Atrato route and for the lease of the islands of Old Providence and St.
If, to complete the sketch of the structure of the Andes from Tierra del Fuego to the northern Polar Sea, we pass the boundaries of South America, we find that the western Cordillera of New Grenada, after a great depression between the mouth of the Atrato and the gulf of Cupica, again rises in the isthmus of Panama to 80 or 100 toises high, augmenting towards the west, in the Cordilleras of Veragua and Salamanca,* and extending by Guatimala as far as the confines of Mexico.
Several towns were founded at the mouth of the Rio Atrato, by the names of Antigua del Darien, Uraba or San Sebastian de Buenavista.
The three great rivers here mentioned have heretofore been the only commercial routes, I might almost add, the only channels of communication for the inhabitants. The Rio Atrato receives, at twelve leagues distance from its mouth, the Rio Sucio on the east; the Indian village of San Antonio is situated on its banks. Proceeding upward beyond the Rio Pabarando, you arrive in the valley of Sinu.
This population was computed, at the period when I travelled there, to be 3000. These people have not the ferocity of the Darien and Cunas Indians, on the left bank of the Atrato; who often attack the boats trading with the town of Quidbo in the Choco; they also make incursions on the territory of Uraba, in the months of June and November, to collect the fruit of the cacao-trees.
It is difficult to conceive why the mouth of a great river, descending from a country rich in gold and platina, should have remained uninhabited. The Atrato, heretofore called Rio del Darien, de San Juan or Dabayba, has had the same fate as the Orinoco. The Indians who wander around the delta of those rivers continue in a savage state.
Finally, the fourth branch of the Andes of Antioquia, situated westward of Zitara and the Rio Atrato, undergoes, long before it enters the isthmus of Panama, such a depression, that between the Gulf of Cupica and the embarcadero of the Rio Naipipi, we find only a plain across which M. Gogueneche has projected a canal for the junction of the two seas.
No stronger proof of this need be asked than that which Alcedo gives in connection with the proposal by Gogueneche, the Biscayan pilot, to open communication by the Atrato and the Napipi. "The Atrato," says the historian, "is navigable for many leagues, but the navigation of it is prohibited under pain of death, without the exception of any person whatever."
The atmosphere is agitated by violent gales known in winter by the name of the brizotes de Santa Marta. In calm weather, the vessels going from Carthagena to Rio Sinu, at the mouth of the Atrato and at Portobello, are impeded in their course by the currents of the coast.
Travellers who may at some future time pass over the unknown land between Cape Mendocino and the source of the Rio Colorado, may perhaps inform us whether the connexion of the maritime Alps of California or New Albion, with the western branch of the Cordilleras of Mexico, resembles that which, notwithstanding the depression, or rather total interruption observed on the west of the Rio Atrato, is admitted by geographers to exist between the mountains of the isthmus of Panama and the western branch of the Andes of New Grenada.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking