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:
SQUARE MILES.
Area of the Mississippi basin, including the basins ┐
of its tributaries, the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, ├ 2,231,000
Red River, etc. ┘
Rio del Norte 180,000
┌ Magdelina 72,000
South American basins ┤ Orinoco 250,000
└ Amazon 1,512,000
—————————
Entire area of basins which drain into the Gulf of
Mexico and Caribbean Sea 4,245,000
_Area of the Basins of the Mediterranean Systems of Rivers._
SQUARE MILES.
European, Euxine, and Caspian 1,890,000
Basin of the Nile 520,000
—————————
Area of basins of the Mediterranean rivers 2,410,000
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.