Excerpt from The American Inter-Oceanic Ship Canal QuestionCircumstances which occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago, brie¿y mentioned in the following paper read before the American Geographical Society of New York, fixed my attention on the question of the possibility of the construction of an inter-oceanic ship canal across this continent.Owing to the approaching struggle into which we soon passed, and the perturbation which preceded and followed it, no possibility of making further explorations Occurred for years.In the early part of the winter of 1866 I was in Washington, in command of a vessel of war. At my request, rear-admiral Chas. H. Davis, Superintendent of the Naval Observatory, prepared a map on a large scale of the narrow part of this continent for General Grant, with whom I had the pleasure Of discussing what was then known and what was still in doubt respecting the topography of that region. This led to one or more visits to Mr. Seward, then Secretary of State, whose reception of the subject of making further explorations at that time made General Grant averse to seeing him further in relation to this matter.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.