describe it with compass upon the map, will be seen, on the
west and south, to pass through the outer fringe of the system of
archipelagoes which, from Australia and New Zealand, extend to the
northeast toward the American continent. Within the circle a few
scattered islets, bare and unimportant, seem only to emphasize the
failure of nature to bridge the interval separating Hawaii from her
peers of the Southern Pacific. Of these, however, it may be noted that
some, like Fanning and Christmas Islands, have within a few years been
taken into British possession. The distance from San Francisco to
Honolulu, twenty-one hundred miles--easy steaming distance--is
substantially the same as that from Honolulu to the Gilbert, Marshall,
Samoan, Society, and Marquesas groups, all under European control,
except Samoa, in which we have a part influence.

To have a central position such as this, and to be alone, having no
rival and admitting no alternative throughout an extensive tract, are
conditions that at once fix the attention of the strategist,--it may be
added, of the statesmen of commerce likewise. But to this striking
combination are to be added the remarkable relations, borne by these
singularly placed islands, to the greater commercial routes traversing
this vast expanse known to us as the Pacific,--not only, however, to
those now actually in use, important as they are, but also to those
that must be called into being necessarily by that future to which the
Hawaiian incident compels our too unwilling attention. Circumstances,
as already remarked, create centres, between which communication
necessarily follows; and in the vista of the future all discern,
however dimly, a new and great centre that must largely modify existing
sea routes, as well as bring new ones into existence. Whether the canal
of the Central American isthmus be eventually at Panama or at Nicaragua
matters little to the question now in hand, although, in common with
most Americans who have thought upon the subject, I believe it surely
will be at the latter point. Whichever it be, the convergence there of
so many ships from the Atlantic and the Pacific will constitute a
centre of commerce, interoceanic, and inferior to few, if to any, in
the world; one whose approaches will be watched jealously, and whose
relations to the other centres of the Pacific by the lines joining it
to them must be examined carefully. Such study of the commercial routes
and of their r