NELSON.

Auckland Chronicle and New Zealand Colonist, Volume 2, Issue 56, 29 August 1844, Page 4

NELSON.

(From the Wellington Spectator.) Panama. —We are glad toseelthere is every probability of the Panama Canal project being carried out at an early period. The Neio Zealand Journal of the 20th of January has an article on the subject, from which it appears that the bouse of Solomon and Co.y of Panama,, who are the principal parties in the company who have formed to effect the undertaking, have received a grant of land for the purpose, on the route from ma to Chagres, from the government of New Grenada, and that surveys of the line have been made by them, which are now being verified by the French Government. By the survey of M. Morel, the engineer of the new company, the sum* mit elevation of the proposed route will be no more than 36 feet by one line, and 33 by the other, instead of about 700, asit has hitherto been reckoned, above the level of the Pacific. The total distance from sea to sea is about fifty miles ; but the length of the actual canal communication will not exceed twenty s five miles* in consequence of the ability of the rivers at the termini. The Journal. adopting the mileage expenditure on the Caledonian Canal, the most expensive work of the kind yet known (viz, — £l6,800,( calculates the total expense of construction, including the widening and dragging of the rivers and the necessary buildings and other woiks along the line, at £693,000; the annual expenses at £47,000 ; and the yearly profit to be di« vided at £152,390. Coal mines have been discovered at thirty or forty miles from Panama; a circumstance one would suppose, of some importance in connexion with'the proposed canal, and upon which the French engineer sent to verify M, Morel’s survey will likewise report. Immigration. —lt appears we may \ shortly expect the arrival of a second German expedition in this settlement,, By the last accounts from England, negotiations were on foot for the purchase of fifty allotments from the Company by Messrs Chapaurouge and Co., of Hamburg, the originators of the former German emigration to this place. A letter signed •« P. A. D. C.,” (we presume a. member of that house) appears in the New Zealand Journal of the 20th January wherein the writer observes—“l am happy to iuform you that I partially sue® ceeded with a high-spirited nobleman to have my contract system, submitted to you in July, admitted for the emigration of agricultural labourers. In the early part of next spring some 140 people will leave for New Zealand, under the superintendence of three inspectors, who will settle upon several allotments bought for, that purpose, under an engagement to employ these labourers at current colonial wages, and to give them land, for which the labourers will have to pay £3 per acre, and the cost of their passage with in. a given time.