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In the present volume I shall have little to say of Colombia, for though the Isthmus of Panama is the reception-room of that country, the Canal is to be considered jointly with relation to the Caribbean and the Pacific shores. I include Bolivia because, while as a political division it is not ocean-bordering, geographically it is a Pacific coast country on account of its outlet through Chilean and Peruvian seaports.

Population in South America is not marked by periods of phenomenal increase. Henry Clay, in his generous pleas for the recognition of the struggling Republics, was led in the warmth of his imagination to foresee the day when they would have 72,000,000 and we would have 40,000,000 inhabitants. The population of the United States was then less than 10,000,000. Clay spoke when the resources of the Louisiana Purchase were still distrusted by many conservative public men, and long before Daniel Webster had delivered his celebrated philippic against the Oregon region as a worthless area of deserts and shifting sands. Mindful of the slow growth in the Southern Hemisphere, I make no predictions of sudden leaps, but merely seek to indicate what proportion of the present and future inhabitants comes within the sphere of the Canal.

The population of western Colombia and of Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia is approximately 11,000,000, dwelling chiefly along the seacoast. It has been assumed that only this long slope of almost continuous mountain wall from Panama to Patagonia is subject to the direct influence of the Canal, and that the barrier of the Andes makes all the rest of the South American continent dependent on Atlantic outlets. The assumption is presumptuous. It is based on an unflattering lack of geographical knowledge and on a complete ignorance of political and economic conditions.

The primary mistake is in considering the Coast Cordilleras as the principal chain. The great rampart of the Andes in places is hundreds of miles across. Productive plains and fertile valleys lie on the western side of the Continental Divide as well as on the Atlantic slope. Besides, there are many bifurcations of these lofty ranges which must be pierced toward the Pacific. The mineral belt with its incalculable wealth, after centuries only partially exploited, has its basis of profitable production and export by means of the water transport of the Pacific. And greatest of all the facts is the certainty that railways will bore through the granite ramparts in a westerly direction. The central spine or backbone of the Intercontinental or Pan-American trunk line is not all a dream, and from its links spurs will shoot out toward the Pacific. It would have been as reasonable to imagine that the Rocky Mountains could forever shut in the region between them and the Sierra Nevadas, barring all outlet to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, as to suppose that the Pacific Ocean from Panama south is everlastingly restricted to the fringe of coast for its commerce. This is in the industrial sense and aside from the reasons of national polity which by railway enterprises on the part of the various governments are causing the Andes to disappear.

The grain fields and pastures of Argentina lie close to the Pacific. How close? Within less than 200 miles. The pampas of the western and northwestern provinces are from 500 to 1,200 miles distant from the Atlantic seaboard. The pressure of the agricultural population is westward. A generation—perhaps a decade—will bring it to the slopes of the Andes. The first railway to join the Atlantic and the Pacific, that from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso, will be completed by means of a spiral tunnel long before vessels are propelled through the Canal.

But Valparaiso is far south, so far that, in the opinion of some authorities, it is the limit of the Canal radius. Let this be granted momentarily while the map is scanned. Place the thumb on the Chilean port of Caldera, 400 miles north of Valparaiso; the index finger on Tucuman, and the middle finger on Cordoba. The lines forking from these Argentine cities forecast the next chapter of railway expansion. Let it be known also that Nature, in kindly mood, has formed a saddle in the mountain range in this section, and that engineering surveys of routes through the depression are the basis of projects which only await a larger agricultural area under cultivation in order to become railway enterprises with an assured commercial basis. Both Cordoba and Tucuman will be in rail communication with the Pacific coast some years before the waterway is finished. Nor are these the only trans-Andine lines in prospect. They serve the purposes of illustration, so that a description of the others may be omitted. I cite the first two in order that it may be known there is an Argentine relation to the Canal, and a highly important one as to population and as to the exports and imports which are the foundation of maritime and rail traffic.

If this suggestion is new and strange, I follow it by a more startling proposition. As one result of the Panama Canal, a measure of Amazonian commerce will flow to and from the Pacific.

To begin with, there is the nearness. By several trans-Andine routes the navigable affluents of the Amazon are less than 300 miles from the coast. Steamships of 800 tons navigate as far as Yurimaguas on the Huallaga River, which was the historic route of the Spaniards over the Continental Divide. Steam vessels also go up the Marañon from Iquitos, 425 miles to the Falls of Manserriche, which by several practicable railway routes are within less than 400 miles of the Bay of Paita. Minor Peruvian ports below Paita are able to offset its shipping advantages by shorter trails. Not more than 225 miles of difficult railway construction are necessary to open to a large section of the vast Amazon region the commerce of Callao, Peru’s chief port.

In relation to the Amazon as a feeder, it has to be recognized that the Andes form a greater obstacle than in Argentina, and that the river basins will be populated much more slowly and never so densely as the Argentine pampas and sierras. But the mighty stream is within the sphere of the Canal, as I shall have occasion to explain more fully in subsequent chapters. For the present purpose a single illustration, perhaps fanciful, will answer.