"The thought of uniting the two great oceans by means of a canal across the American isthmus sprang up, as is known, from the moment the conviction was reached that the passage which, from the days of Columbus, was thought to exist towards the Southern Sea, was not a reality. … Nevertheless the first survey of the land was not carried out until the year 1581, when, in obedience to superior instructions, Captain Antonio Pereira, Governor of Costa Rica, organized an expedition and explored the route by way of the San Juan river, the lake, and the rivers emptying into Gulf Nicoya, Costa Rica. Thirty-nine years later Diego de Mercado submitted to King Philip III his famous report of January 23, 1620, suggesting the route by the river and lake, and thence through Costa Rican territory along the Quebrada or Barranca Honda to Salinas Bay, then called Puerto del Papagayo. Either because the magnitude of the undertaking was at that time superior to the necessities of trade, or, as was said, because Spain considered the canal antagonistic to her interests, the era of independence arrived without the execution of the project ever having been entered upon. After independence the Congress of Central America, in which Costa Rica and Nicaragua were represented as States of the Federation which succeeded the Colonial Government, enacted on June 16, 1825, a decree providing for the construction of the canal, and in that same year Don Antonio José Cañas, Diplomatic Representative of Central America in Washington, addressed the Secretary of State, Mr. Henry Clay, informing him of this resolution and stating that: 'A company formed of American citizens of respectability was ready to undertake the work as soon as a treaty with the United States insuring the coöperation of the latter was signed; that he was ready to enter into negotiations for the treaty, and that nothing would be more pleasant for Central America than to see the generous people of the United States joining her in the opening of the canal, sharing the glory of the enterprise, and enjoying the great advantages to be derived from it.' The Government of Central America could not carry the undertaking into effect, notwithstanding that among the means employed to reach the desired result there figures the arrangement concluded with the King of Holland in October, 1830. But, though the hopes centered in the undertaking were frustrated, to the honor of Central America the declarations of that Congress, which constitute, like the concession for the canal itself, one of the loftiest public documents ever issued by any nation of the earth, have become a matter of record. The Central American Federation dissolved, this important matter attached to Nicaragua and Costa Rica directly, and the boundary line between the two republics having been determined