and lumber, fish, wool, furs, and other commodities of the Pacific North-west will reach the markets of the world in increasing quantities by means of the canal.

It

I have indicated elsewhere that the sections of the United States which would be most benefited are the Pacific Slope and the Southern States, more especially the Mississippi Valley. A lengthened stay in the States a couple of years ago forced on me the conviction that in the South are best combined the advantages of all other sections, without their greatest drawbacks. The Mississippi region embraces over one-third of the total area of the United States, has 15,000 miles of navigable water, and a population of nearly 30,000,000 people. contains 70 per cent. of the swine, nearly 60 per cent. of the milch cows, 55 per cent. of the cattle, and 40 per cent. of the forest lands found in the entire country. It produces also four-fifths of the corn (two-thirds wheat), valued at about £160,000,000 ($800,000,000) annually, while the live stock has an average value of £140,000,000, ($700,000,000). The "cotton belt," raising 3,500,000,000 pounds of raw material annually, is tributary to the Mississippi basin, of which New Orleans is the chief outlet for the exports, amounting to £500,000,000 ($2,500,000,000). Coal, iron, cotton, lumber, phosphates, all the foundations for vast manufacturing industries, are there in such proximity and abundance as may be found nowhere else in the world.

The progress made in the South during the past ten years has been striking. In 1880 the South mined 6,000,000 tons of coal; in 1893 the output was nearly

28,000,000 tons. The coal-fields of the Mississippi basin cover an area of 175,000 square miles, and produce over 85,000,000 tons of coal annually. In the production of pig iron in the United States, Alabama now stands third, and Illinois fourth, Pennsylvania and Ohio first and second. Of the total amount produced, the Mississippi basin yields over 80 per cent., while in the manufactures of steel (including rails), Pennsylvania and Illinois alone produce four-fifths of the output. Ten years ago the agricultural, manufacturing and mining products were in value about $1,200,000,000 a year; they are now nearly $2,000,000,000, and are annually increasing. The increase in the population of the South has been very slight, yet the production in ten years has increased by nearly $800,000,000. The railroad mileage has more than doubled, and the traffic quadrupled; the iron and coal production and the cotton mills have added nearly $2,000,000,000 to the assessed value of property, and more than doubled banking capital. Fifteen years ago the cotton seed was a waste product; now nearly 300 cotton seed oil-mills represent an investment of about $40,000,000. Such, briefly, is the record of the South during a period of almost overwhelming obstacles.

In Western Spanish-America the Southern States will, by means of the canal, gain access to an important field, at present commercially nearer to Europe, though physically further off. A straight line drawn down the

The chief articles consumed by the Spanish-American countries, excepting those in the far south-western portion of South America, where the climate is temperate, are flour, provisions (comprising meat

Mississippi basin through Lake Nicaragua skirts practically the whole western coast of South America. Buyers in this region have hitherto taken from the States only such articles as could not be got from Europe, but the Nicaragua Canal will give a direct avenue to this great market.

As regards the Far East, the enormous saving in distance and in time would place the Southern States in a position to share in the business of those Eastern countries which are such large consumers of cotton goods, at present mostly made in Great Britain.

In America the trend of development is no longer west, but south. The Southern States only require opening up by internal and external communications to have their marvellous resources developed. With the improvement of the internal water-ways, with "direct trade" established by steam communication to Europe, and finally, but most important of all, with the opening of the Nicaragua Canal, no limit can be set to the future. progress and prosperity of the South. The "direct

trade" movement is growing in favour throughout the South and South-west. It is evident that there is something wrong with the methods of transporting the products

and dairy products), articles of furniture, wood and its manufactures, carriages, agricultural implements, iron and steel and manufactures of these, oils, soaps, drugs and chemicals, coal, fancy articles, leather and its manufactures, paper and stationery, malt liquors and spirits, manufactures of wool, gunpowder and other explosives; earthen, china and glassware, flax, hemp, and their manufactures. Among the products of the Southern States are quantities of cotton goods and manufactures of

cotton.

of the whole South to the markets of the world. They have too long been forced to seek the northern seaboard ports by long and expensive railway hauls across country, costly both to producer and consumer. The people of the South seem at last determined to make an effort to direct their commerce to its natural outlets--the Gulf ports and those on the South Atlantic coast.

The future in store when the valleys of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, and the Amazon are completely reclaimed and cultivated up to the capacity of production is "such that no limner can draw, no fancy can sketch,” said Maury, in treating of his favourite Mississippi, to which he could find no parallel in the whole world. Of the Caribbean Sea, Maury was fond of repeating that never was such a concentration upon any sea of commercial resources, never was there a sea known with such a back country tributary to it. "A straight line drawn from the headquarters of the Amazon to the headquarters of the Mississippi measures a quadrant of the globe," he said. "In the small compass of the West Indian Sea are crowded together the natural outlets of the ocean, from mountains, plains, and valleys that embrace every variety of production, every degree of latitude and climate, from perpetual winter to eternal spring. Here are included both hemispheres; when it is seed time in one basin, it is harvest in the other. In this southern sea there is always a crop on the way to market from one or the other of its basins. It has for a back country a continent on the north, another on the south, and a world both to the east and west. It is contiguous to the two first, and