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 ture in the vicinity of the various mining centres soon came to be the chief reliance for miners' suppHes. Later the development of Alaska as a new El Dorado brought much benefit to Northwestern agriculture; the Hawaiian Islands' trade increased, and a partial market for food stuffs was opened in the Asiatic countries.

Yet, all in all, the Pacific Northwest has suffered in its agricultural development from the stupendous fact that nature had made the region tributary to the Pacific rather than to the Atlantic. The markets of the world for the products of our farms and ranches are in Europe, and access to the European markets was seriously hampered by transcontinental freight charges on the one hand and on the other by the length and difficulty of ocean trade routes. Not until the opening of the Panama Canal can this region be said to have entered fully into the common benefits of the world market for American farm products. Now the handicap is removed and the whole Pacific slope shares the European markets with the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic sea-board.

Economic reasons for slow growth. The absence of adequate market facilities during the greater part of our history is one of the main reasons for the comparatively slow growth of population in these states. While the progress shown by the population totals, given above, is certainly considerable, still the growth in other groups of western states has been very much more rapid than in ours. For example, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were settled up