Page:The Panama Canal Controversy.djvu/15

 Canal schemes, and refer you to a map which shows the material localities. You will find that the geographical position of the Canal throws some light on the construction of the Treaty.

The advantages of some waterway for sea-going ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific has been recognized from the earliest times, indeed it is but necessary to glance at an atlas to realize the immense commercial importance of some direct connexion between the two oceans. Here is this great continent stretching across the face of the globe from North to South forming an impenetrable barrier to the traffic of the world as it goes from East to West or from West to East. There is no way round that barrier to the North, for there the relentless ice forbids the passage of shipping, and the only possible way for vessels to pass from one to the other side of the American continent has been the route which, by a détour sometimes double or more in length to the direct line across the Isthmus, but always substantially longer, circumnavigates the Southern extremities and takes its way round Cape Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. Europe has made for herself another outlet to the East: she has broken through the land barrier which separated the Mediterranean from the Eastern Seas, and can send her traffic to India, to China, to Japan, or to Australia by means of the Suez Canal. But that route cannot serve the Eastern ports of the American continent. Traffic from Oriental countries to those ports, whether to Montreal or New York, to New Orleans or the West Indies, or from them to the Orient, must travel by sea round the South of the continent, and that is still the only means of communication by ship between the Western and