the administration of President Belzu, after reciting in a lengthy preamble the advantages to flow from such a result, declares—
(1) The Government, in consequence, has desired to call the attention of the entire world to the magnificent banquet of agricultural, mineral, and industrial productions, as rare as they are precious, with which these privileged regions greet the labor and civilization of man.
(2) That the south and east of the Republic incloses vast territories of prodigious fertility traversed by navigable rivers, which, flowing to the Amazon and the Plata, offer the most natural highways for the commerce, population, and civilization of these districts.
(3) That the navigation of these rivers is the most efficacious and certain [means] for the development of the riches of these lands, placing them in contact with the exterior, and applying to their wants the fructifying principle of liberty, as useful to the interests of the Republic as to those of the whole of humanity.
That these are no vain words is established by the explorations and publications of eminent scientific men. Preëminent among those who have confirmed this view of the Bolivian Government, is the eminent French naturalist, M. Alcide d'Orbigny, to whom reference has heretofore been made. In his "Descripción de Bolivia," published in Paris in 1845 for the Bolivian Government, in speaking of the falls of the Madeira, between Guajara-Merini and San Antonio, he says:
Once all these obstacles are overcome, whichever side is penetrated, be it by the river Paraguay or by the river Madeira, an immense labyrinth of navigable rivers present themselves upon that superficies, where ocean-going vessels and steamers of the greatest possible dimensions can navigate, everwhere developing commercial relations.
Colonel Church, in his report to the governments of Bolivia and Brazil in 1877, in commenting upon the views of this distinguished naturalist says:
If the mind of d'Orbigny thus measured the capacity of these rivers, that of the great savant, Lieut. M. F. Maury of the Washington Observatory, was none the less observant of their commercial importance.
And then he adds his own confirmation of these flattering re-
