The Canal considered as an American Project exclusively—Currents and Winds—Resources of the Basins of the Rivers of the Gulf and Caribbean Sea—Their Productive Capacity compared with the Mediterranean Basins.

Let the reader refer to Berghaus’s map of winds and currents, and any map of the alluvial basins of the river systems of Europe and America. He will observe that the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico constitute but one sea, partially divided by the West Indies and Cuba, which, stretching toward Yucatan, is separated from that part of Central America by a channel 100 miles wide and 6000 feet deep.

The equatorial current, crossing the ocean with the trade-winds, enters the Caribbean Sea, and, passing between Cuba and Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico, flows out through the Strait of Florida. Ships from the east following this current are led in the path of favorable winds, both going and returning.

The Pacific trade-winds and equatorial current are equally favorable to the outward and homeward bound voyager. The skillful navigator shapes his course north of the equatorial current when returning from China to San Francisco or Panama.

The Humboldt and Mexican currents aid the coastwise trade. Thus, by the converging winds and currents, this great intertropical sea seems to be designated by nature as the future commercial center of the world.

The two American seas have been styled by Lieut. Maury as the heart of the continent. Its two compartments have been compared to the auricle and ventricle of the human heart, through which, in regular pulsations, by unceasing systole and dyastole, the ocean currents find constant entrance and exit, and circulate through all the world-arteries their vivifying influence.

Pursuing the analogy, the two continents, from their general shape and the alimentary part they perform, may not inaptly be compared to the lungs, which convert the blood of commerce into the nutrient and productive elements which contribute to the health and growth of the nationalities of two continents.

The rivers having their natural outlet in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, bring into commercial union two regions producing all the commodities of the globe. The rivers of North America bear to the Gulf the successive harvests of the temperate zone, and receive in return the fruits, woods, dyes, drugs, spices, coffee, cotton, and tobacco of intertropical America.

No part of the globe combines so many natural advantages as are found united around this body of water. Its shores present every advantage of soil, climate, vegetation, and convenient harbors likely to attract an enterprising and commercial people. The table lands of Mexico, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and Columbia afford the most salubrious climate, scenery of the rarest beauty and sublimity, equable temperature, and an endless succession of fruits and harvests. Mountains of perpetual snow look down on plains of unceasing verdure. All that is requisite for the support of life grows spontaneously.

The descriptions of Humboldt represent the table lands as suitable to the highest development of the race. One wonders that the tide of immigration, guided by the rational instinct for superior advantages, has not filled every bay and estuary and overspread the plains; or, sweeping down from the north, the Anglo-Americans have not taken possession, as the hardy races of the North of Europe overran the degenerate mixture of nations which overspread the northern shores of the Mediterranean.

Those portions of the world which possess the finest climate, whose soil returns the largest yield from the least amount of labor, are held by degenerate and effete representatives of a moribund civilization.

In America no alpine barrier interrupts communication with the interior, but an indefinite expanse of plains, prairies, and table lands stretch away to the north, or form broad plateau, as in Central and South America.

Millions of square miles of arable lands are intersected by rivers of unrivaled extent. The Mississippi, rising in such proximity to the northern lakes as to make their shores tributary to the trade of its valley, flows through twenty degrees of latitude before reaching the Gulf of Mexico. The Amazon, nearly at right-angles with the Mississippi, developing its course chiefly in longitude, bears the varied products of its valley to the ocean, where the equatorial current makes it tributary to the Caribbean Sea. The Amazon is more directly connected with this sea by the Orinoco, with which it is united by the Rio Negro. Humboldt surveyed the channel joining the two rivers, and ascertained the feasibility of a navigable channel between them at high water.

The different positions of the main commercial arteries of the two continents—the one extending through temperate latitudes, the other through tropical longitudes—supply the greatest variety of commodities for commercial interchange. The Mediterranean system, finding its most extensive development in longitude, is limited in the variety of its products by the climatic uniformity of one zone. While American rivers flow through twenty-five degrees of latitude, the European rivers of the Mediterranean extend through but ten degrees.

Berghaus’s map supplies data for a comparison of the river system of the two great continent-bounded seas of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres:

Area of basin of the river system of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea is 4,245,000 square miles, a productive area nearly double that of the Mediterranean, which it exceeds by 1,835,000 square miles.

In the extent of its navigable rivers, the difference is proportionately large. The Mississippi and its tributaries constitute a continuous channel for steam navigation of 12,000 miles in extent, which would be nearly doubled by reckoning the length of the navigable channels at the period of high water.

The river system of the Mediterranean, Euxine, and the Caspian, to which may be added that of the Nile, will not together exceed 5000 miles, or less than half the length of navigable channels of the American system.

The natural advantages of the Mediterranean of America may be summed up as follows: with double the productive area, it has capacity for a greater variety of products, by reason of its variety of climate; it has double the extent of navigable rivers, which pour their bounties into the same sea; and not only are the rivers and continents tributary to this region, but the ocean currents and winds, converging at the same point, bring the products of the Orient to exchange for those of the New World.

In a letter addressed to Mr. Rockwell, M. C., at that time secretary of the special committee to whom was referred a resolution of Congress, asking for information respecting routes to the Pacific, Lieut. Maury has, with signal ability and in not too glowing language, sketched the future of the American Mediterranean, (which is destined to surpass its European prototype,) whose fine harbors will become the marts of an opulent trade and the centers of a higher standard of civilization.

These desirable ends will be greatly accelerated by the intermarine canal between the two seas, by which the trade of China and Japan may meet the commodities of Europe—

“Argosies of stately sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales,”

and the products brought down by the Mississippi and the Amazon into the Gulf of Mexico.