text:  Some of our most eminent public writers of the day anticipating the advantages likely to result from the emancipation of Spanish America considered the opening of a passage across that isthmus as one of the mightiest events which could present itself to the enterprise of man; and it is well known that during Mr Pitt's administration projects on this subject were submitted to him--some of them even attempting to show the feasibility of cutting a canal across sufficiently deep and wide to admit vessels of the largest class