Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 | Page 4

last
glass went off to your health. Sister Charlotte wishes you public and
private happiness during this bustling winter, and hopes that you are
not determined to forsake the English part of your family for ever. I
received your letter of the 24th here two days ago, and should most
undoubtedly desire you to send me your votes, if I had not already
engaged my old friend at the Secretary's office to do it; but I beg early
intelligence of your parliamentary proceedings, about which I am very
anxious. I do not believe there is the smallest foundation for believing
that Junius is Wedderburn. I had, a few days ago, great reason to guess
at the real Junius: but my intelligence was certainly false; for sending to
inquire in a more particular manner, I discovered the person hinted at to
be dead. He was an obscure man; and so will the real Junius turn out to
be, depend upon it. Are Shannon and Ponsonby and Lanesborough still
stout against Augmentation? or must the friends to the measure form a

plan that they like themselves? A letter from Colonel Hall, of the 20th
regiment, this evening, informs me that General Harvey is come from
Ireland, and is very impatient to see me: if his business is to consult me
upon the utility of this military plan, I am already fully convinced of it:
but nobody knows less than I do how to get it through your House of
Commons,--I only hope by any means rather than a message from the
king. Perhaps the measure is taken, and I am writing treason against the
understanding of our own ministers. God forbid! but I do not approve
of letting down the dignity and power of the chief governors of Ireland
lower than they are already fallen, to quarrel with a mountebank at a
custard feast. Adieu, my dear little fellow.
Yours ever, most sincerely, R. R.
[Footnote 1: T. Andrews, Provost of Trin. Col., Dublin.]
* * * * *
ISTHMUS OF DARIEN.
As public attention is now much directed to the canal across the
Isthmus of Darien, one end of which is proposed to communicate with
the harbour which was the site of the ill-fated attempt {352} at
colonisation by the Scotch about 150 years ago, the subjoined extract,
giving an account of that harbour, by (apparently) one of the Scotch
colonists, may be interesting to your readers. It is taken from a paper
printed in Miscellanea Curiosa, vol. iii. p. 413., 2nd edit., entitled "Part
of a Journal kept from Scotland to New Caledonia in Darien, with a
short Account of that Country, communicated [to the Royal Society] by
Dr. Wallace, F.R.S.":
"The 4th [November] we came into the great harbour of Caledonia. It is
a most excellent one; for it is about a league in length from N.W. to S.E.
It is about half a mile broad at the mouth, and in some places a mile
and more farther in. It is large enough to contain 500 sail of ships. The
greatest part of it is landlocked, so that it is safe, and cannot be touched
by any wind that can blow the harbour; and the sea makes the land that
lies between them a peninsula. There is a point of the peninsula at the

mouth of the harbour that may be fortified against a navy. This point
secures the harbour, so that no ship can enter but must be within reach
of their guns. It likewise defends half of the peninsula; for no guns
from the other side of the harbour can touch it, and no ship carrying
guns dare enter for the breastwork at the point. The other side of the
peninsula is either a precipice, or defended against ships by shoals and
breaches, so that there remains only the narrow neck that is naturally
fortified; and if thirty leagues of a wilderness will not do that, it may be
artificially fortified in twenty ways. In short, it may be made
impregnable; and there are bounds enough within it, if it were all
cultivated, to afford 10,000 hogsheads of sugar every year. The soil is
rich, the air good and temperate; the water is sweet, and every thing
contributes to make it healthful and convenient."
C. T. W.
* * * * *
NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.
Mechal is from the mint of Thomas Heywood; but, like many other
words of the same stamp, it continued a private token of the party who
issued it, and never, as far as I am aware, became current coin. Four
times, at least, it occurs in his works; and always in that sense only
which its etymon indicates, to wit, "adulterous." In his "Challenge for
Beauty:"
"... her own tongue Hath publish'd