good harbors. And it requires no prophet's eye to see, that, when England
needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the innumerable
green coral islets which stud the Pacific.

Turn now your steps homeward, and pause a moment at the Bermudas, "the
still vexed Bermoothes." Beautiful isles, with their fresh verdure, green
gems in the ocean, with airs soft and balmy as Eden's were! They have
their homely uses too. They furnish arrowroot for the sick, and ample
supplies of vegetables earlier than sterner climates will grant. Is this
all that can be said? Reflect a little more deeply. Here is a military and
naval depot, and here a splendid harbor, land-locked, amply fortified,
difficult of access to strangers,--and all this as near to the whole
Southern coast as Boston and New York are, all this within three or four
days' sail of any one of the Atlantic ports North or South. England keeps
this, no doubt, as a sort of halfway house on the road to her West Indian
possessions; but should we go to war with her, she would use it none the
less as a base of offensive operations, where she might gather and hurl
upon any unprotected port all her gigantic naval power.

We have asserted that England holds all the Southern points in which the
continents of the world terminate. Examine this statement, and see how
much it means. Take your map of the world, and you will find that the
land-surface of the globe culminates at the south in five points, no
more,--America at Cape Horn,[5] Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, Asia in
Ceylon and the Malayan peninsula, and Australia in the island of Tasmania.
Is it not surprising that these wedges which cut into the steady flowing
stream of commerce, these choice points of mercantile and naval advantage,
are all in the hands of one single power? Can it be of chance? Or rather,
is it not the result of a well-ordered purpose, which, waiting its time,
seizing every favorable opportunity, has finally achieved success?

[Footnote 5: It is not absolutely true that England holds Cape
Horn; for the region is unfit for the residence of civilized man.
And were it not so, the perpetual storms leave no secure
anchorage. But Great Britain does hold the nearest _habitable_
land, the Falkland Islands,--and notwithstanding the rudeness of
the climate, Stanley, the principal settlement, does a
considerable business in refitting and repairing ships bound round
the Cape.]