A great centre of commerce. It was a great
centre as long ago as when the Phoenician traversed it, and, passing
through the Straits of Hercules, sped on his way to distant and then
savage Britain. It was a great centre when Rome and Carthage wrestled in a
death-grapple for its possession. But England is as much at home in the
Mediterranean as if it were one of her own lakes. At Gibraltar, at its
entrance, she has a magnificent bay, more than five miles in diameter,
deep, safe from storms, protected from man's assault by its more than
adamantine rock. In the centre, at Malta, she has a harbor, land-locked,
curiously indented, sleeping safely beneath the frowning guns of Valetta.
But from Southampton to Gibraltar is for a steamship an easy six days'
sail; from Gibraltar to Malta not more than five days; and from Malta to
the extreme eastern coast of the sea and back again hardly ten days' sail.

Take the grand highway of nations to India. England has her places of
refreshment scattered all along it with almost as much regularity as
depots on a railroad. From England to Gibraltar is six days' sail; thence
to Sierra Leone twelve days; to Ascension six days; to St. Helena three
days; to Cape Colony eight days; to Mauritius not more; to Ceylon about
the same; and thence to Calcutta three or four days. Going farther east, a
few days' sail will bring you to Singapore, and a few more to Hong Kong,
and then you are at the gates of Canton. Mark now that in this immense
girdle of some twelve or fifteen thousand miles there is no distance which
a well-appointed steamer may not easily accomplish with such store of coal
as she can carry. She may not, indeed, stop at all these ports. It may be
more convenient and economical to use sails a part of the distance, rather
than steam. But, if an exigency required it, she could stop and find
everywhere a safe harbor.

What is true of the East Indies is true of the West Indies, England has as
much power as we have to control the waters of the Western Atlantic and of
the Gulf of Mexico. If we have Boston and New York and Pensacola and New
Orleans and Key West, she has Halifax and the Bermudas and Balize and
Jamaica and Nassau and a score more of island-harbors stretching in an
unbroken line from the Florida Reefs to the mouth of the Orinoco. And if
our civil war were ended to-day, and we were in peaceable possession of
all our ports, she could keep a strong fleet in the Gulf and along our
coast