I HISTORICAL.* A retrospect of four centuries, with a rapid glance at the progress of modern discovery, exploration, and invention, will probably serve as an appropriate introduction to our projected scheme of Interoceanic Communication by means of the TEHUANTEPEC RAILWAY, and show that the time is near at hand for its accomplishment. Let us, therefore, go back for a moment, and survey the little old world and its inhabitants as they appeared about the middle of the fifteenth century. According to Ptolemy, the best recognized authority, whose geography had stood the test of thirteen hundred years, the then known world was a strip of some seventy degrees wide, mostly north of the equator, with Cadiz on the west, and farthest India or Cathay on the east, lying between the frozen and the burning zones, both impassable by man. The inhabitants, as far as known in Europe, were Christians and Mohamedans, the one sect about half the age of the other. Christendom, the elder, that once held considerable portions of Asia and Africa, had been driven back inch by This chapter was contributed by HENRY STEVENS, GM B; FSA, 4 Trafalgar Square, London, May 10, 1869. |