are of
contracted extent when compared with great oceans, and, in consequence
of these common features, both present in an intensified form the
advantages and the limitations, political and military, which
condition the influence of sea power. This conclusion is notably true
of the Mediterranean, as is shown by its history. It is even more
forcibly true of the Caribbean, partly because the contour of its
shores does not, as in the Mediterranean peninsulas, thrust the power
of the land so far and so sustainedly into the sea; partly because,
from historical antecedents already alluded to, in the character of
the first colonists, and from the shortness of the time the ground has
been in civilized occupation, there does not exist in the Caribbean or
in the Gulf of Mexico--apart from the United States--any land power at
all comparable with those great Continental states of Europe whose
strength lies in their armies far more than in their navies. So far as
national inclinations, as distinct from the cautious actions of
statesmen, can be discerned, in the Mediterranean at present the Sea
Powers, Great Britain, France, and Italy, are opposed to the Land
Powers, Germany, Austria, and Russia; and the latter dominate action.
It cannot be so, in any near future, in the Caribbean. As affirmed in
a previous paper, the Caribbean is pre-eminently the domain of sea
power. It is in this point of view--the military or naval--that it is
now to be considered. Its political importance will be assumed, as
recognized by our forefathers, and enforced upon our own attention by
the sudden apprehensions awakened within the last two years.

It may be well, though possibly needless, to ask readers to keep
clearly in mind that the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, while
knit together like the Siamese twins, are distinct geographical
entities. A leading British periodical once accused the writer of
calling the Gulf of Mexico the Caribbean Sea, because of his
unwillingness to admit the name of any other state in connection with
a body of water over which his own country claimed predominance. The
Gulf of Mexico is very clearly defined by the projection, from the
north, of the peninsula of Florida, and from the south, of that of
Yucatan. Between the two the island of Cuba interposes for a distance
of two hundred miles, leaving on one side a passage of nearly a
hundred miles wide--the Strait of Florida--into the Atlantic, while on
the other, the Yuc