All that was necessary was that his energy should take a proper direction, and a proper direction Paterson undertook to give.
His esoteric project was the original project of Christopher Columbus, extended and modified.

Columbus had hoped to establish a communication between our quarter of the world and India across the great western ocean.

But he was stopped by an unexpected obstacle.

The American continent, stretching far north and far south into cold and inhospitable regions, presented what seemed an insurmountable barrier to his progress; and, in the same year in which he first set foot on that continent, Gama reached Malabar by doubling the Cape of Good Hope.

The consequence was that during two hundred years the trade of Europe with the remoter parts of Asia had been carried on by rounding the immense peninsula of Africa.