ATTRIBUTES OF THE COLONIAL YOUTH.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1220, 31 January 1878, Page 3

ATTRIBUTES OF THE COLONIAL YOUTH.

Having quoted passages from a speech by Sir Hercules Robiusou which we recently reprinted, the " Melbourne Argus " says : We wish we could honestly assert that the youth of New South Wales enjoy a monopoly of this confident self-conceit and this unwavering convic!ion that wisdom was born and will die with the ruing generation, und that the hasty opinions and flippant judgments to which it is prono are incapable of correction by the experience of older men or by the lessons of history. We are afraid that it is an Australian, as it is also an American characteristic, for which an explanation, and perhaps also some extenuation, may be found in the circumstances and conditions of a young country. Something also is to be said ou the ground of climate. In newly-settled and fertile lands, where nature is so immensely productive and wealth is so easily acquired, those who cooperate with her in its creation are apt to overlook her co-efficiency, and to exaggerate the importance of their share in the work. It is no uncommon thing to hear men using language of this kind —" We have made the colony what it is. We have done this, that, and the other." As though they had seamed its soil with gold, had clothed its iiocks with their precious fleeces, had covered large areas of the land with the rich black and chocolate colored earths which were once vomited from volcanoes, and had bestowed upon the sunlight and the atmosphere their vivifying principles. And this spirit of ignorant boasting, which puts the human agent in the foreground, and thrusts the magnificent bounty and never-resting activities of nature completely out of sight, is eagerly adopted and extended by the young, in whom a feeling of intense self-reliance is stimulated by a bright exhilarating climate, and by the hopefulness and ardor naturally attaching to a colonial career. Then, again, there is an absence in Australia of those cheeks and restraints upon individual vanity and self-assertion which exist in older countries. Not; only is there political equality here, but our social and intellectual inequalities are much less considerable than in England, for example, There, in every grade of so iety, and in every department of mental effort, the most conceited and pushing youth is exposed to all kinds of salutary rebuffs, and is liable to have his self-love continually wounded by coming into contact or by exposing himself to comparison} with men who arc immeasurably his superiors. The goose will not pass muster for a swan, where there are so many of the nobler birds to "refute his pretensions and rebuke his vanity. But besides these depreying or repressing influences, the educational institutions of Q-reat Britain—her public schools and colleges —operate in restraint of conceit, not merely by the discipline they impose, but. by reason also of the traditions and associations which gather round them. When tho young Etonian culls to mind tho brilliant names of the warriors, statesmen, orators, and scholars who have passed through the school. '• Where t?r tjful science still adore) Her Henry's holy shade;" and when the freshman at Cambridge finds himself surrounded by mute memorials of men like Coke, Bacon, Milton, Newton, Bentloy, Barrow, Erskine, Pitt, Lyndhurst, and Maeaulaj, he must feel, however great his ambition, and however overweening bis estimate of his own powers, that these were giants compared with himsolf, and must be inclined to "sing small" accordingly. In Australia we have no such lofty standards of comparison, and our young men. are under many temptations to overrate themselves in consequence. Hence tho peculiar appropriateness of the advice which Sir Hercules Robinsou offered to the boys of the Sydney Grammar School: —"Don't blow ; don't think you know more than your grandmothers; and above all, be modest. Remember that of all charms of youth, modesty is the most, en* gaging and attractive."

A DiBIEN CANAL. [From (.ho " Times," September 22.] Fitly or sixty schemes have at various times j been brought, forward for the purpose of I uniting the Pacific aud tho Atlantic, but the ; two routes which are at present in greatest favour are those by Nicaragua and by Darien. j Some time since the Paris Geographical . Society and the Society of Commercial Geoj Si* u phy proposed an international association for the purpose of taking" steps to carry out the important project. Meantime, however, ■with the approval i.f these bodies, an independent society whs formed in France for the purpose of sending out an expedition to survey the ground, as a preliminary to forming conclusions as to the best route. The leader (Lieut. Wyse) of the expedition pent out by this society recently gave a report of the results to the Paris Geographical Society, and an abstract of this may be of interest to our readers. The proposed plans by Nicaragua ' all require a number of locks to raise the canal to the level of the lake of that name and the creation of two ports under specially expensive and difficult conditions. The relations, moreover, between the two States of Nicaragua and Costa Rica give rise to other difficulties with respect to this route. It is in ,the United States of Columbia that, the lowest gradients and narrowest isthmuses are formed, and the political and other conditions are, besides, rather more favorable there than in any other of the Central American States. It was these considerations which induced the society to which we have referred to select tho Columbian territory as that most suitable for exploration with a view to canalization. The Central Government of Bogota having, in 1867, granted certain privileges to the Panama Railway Company, as far as the line which joins Cape Tiburon to Garaehine Bay, it was only to the south of this line that new explorations could be undertaken ; and it was, in fact, in the southern region of Darien that the Columbian Government, in May, 1870, authorised the society to undertake a survey with reference to the project of a canal. The ground to be explored was therefore reduced to comparatively narrow limits. The committee of direction of this Darien echeruo was definitely constituted on October 2nd, 1876, under the presidency of General Turr, and the command of the expedition was conferred on Lieutenant L. A. B. Wyse. The latter was provided with detailed instructions which had been submitted to and approved by M. de Lesseps. Tin; commission appointed to accompany Lieutenant Wyse was a large one, composed largely of engineers, with two delegates from the Columbian Government. The equipment was elaborate and ample, every means being provided for carrying out the survey. The commission left St. Nazaire on November 7th last year, and Lieutenant Wyse having resolved to commence operations from the Pacific side, entered, December 11th, the Gulf of San Miguel, at the mouth of the Tuyra, opposite the Gulf of Darien. This river, the lower part of which was examined, Lieutenant Wyse states could be utilised for large ships for a considerable distance up. The head-quarters of the expedition were established at Ph.agana, on the Upper Tuyra, on December 14tb. From here as a centre the work was carried on by detachments formed of the various members of the expedition. One party made a geological exploration of the route above this locality, and found that it lay through alluvia and vari-colored clays which might be utilised for the manufacture of bricks. Another party took preci-e levellings alony the course of the Tuyra and its principal aflluent the Paya. Lieutenant Wyse himself made a survey of the ground between the Pay a and the Caquirr, a stream south-east of the former, and running into the Afrato, which discharges i'self by several mouths into the Gulf of Darien. He has succeeded by these and other surveys in making some important corrections in the geography of this region. Proceeding southeastwards to the Caquirri, Lieutenant Wyse and a companion entered the Ativito, sailing down the latter by the Uraha mouth to the Atlantic. Tho region is an inhospitable one, and the two explorers were glad to return to Paya, a village on the river of that name. As the prospect of constructing a canal by this route did not appear favorable, Lieut. Wyse resolved to examine other likely lines in the conceded territory-, and especially the narrow 'but completely desert and unknown region which separates the limit of the tides in Tuyra. and its tributary the Chucanaque from the Atlantic coast. This line takes a northeastern direction from the Chucanaque, a little above its junction with tho Tuyra, to Port Gandi or Aoanti, on the Atlantic coast. From a variety of causes a complete examination of this district could not be accomplished, but tho data collected seem to show that there would be comparatively few difficulties in making a canal in this direction. The chief engineer, Celler, in his report, concludes that it would be impossible to make a canal by the Tuyra and Caquirri, even with the aid of a tunnel. As then* is, however, abundance of water along this line, Lieut. Wyse thinks it might be accomplished by a series of locks and reservoirs. Still, Lieutenant Wyse is convinced that, from the nature of the ground and shortness of the course, the direct canal—it is a straight line—from the Chucanaque north-east to Port Gandi will be much more satisfactory than that by the Tuyra and the Caquirri. This route, he states, will have the [advantage, which will be appreciated by sailors and practical men, of being completely level, and presenting only relatively narrow masses of earth to be removed, should it be decided to form a tunnel. The cost he calculates would not be more than £OOO,OOO per kilometre. Lieutenant Wyse is confident that an interoceanic canal, and that by way of Columbia, will soon be an accomplished fact. However this may T be, the expedition of which he had charge has collected a large mass of facts valuable both from a scientific and a practical point of view.