8. Nearly all Japan, Shanghai, Hong-kong, the Philippines, New Guinea, all Australia (save a far western strip), and all New Zealand are brought nearer the Atlantic and Gulf ports of the United States and the Atlantic ports of Canada.
9. The relative distances from New York and Liverpool to the Atlantic coast of South America (nearly all way down), to Africa, and to Asiatic ports south of Hong-kong are unchanged.
10. It is New York and not Liverpool which is now nearer to Yokohama, Sydney, and Melbourne. Wellington, in New Zealand, formerly equidistant between the two great ports, is now 2,739 miles nearer to New York than to Liverpool. Sydney, which was formerly over 1,500 miles nearer Liverpool (via Suez) than New York (via Cape of Good Hope), now becomes 2,424 miles nearer New York (via Panama) than Liverpool (via Suez).
11. Nearly the whole of the Atlantic seaboard in the Old World and the New is brought nearer to the Pacific ports of the United States and Canada.
12. The Panama Canal cannot invade the main traffic field of the Suez route—the countries of Southern Asia, East Africa, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. The competitive region of the two canals lies east of Singapore.
THE ISTHMUS of PANAMA
The reader will gather from the last proposition that the scene of the new battle of the routes will lie in the Western Pacific, and this probably will also be the scene of the main industrial and commercial competitions of the future. It is in these regions, Australasia and the countries along the Pacific Asiatic coasts, that the traffic zones of the Suez and Panama Canals touch or overlap. The positive effect on relative distances from American and European ports is of great importance to commercial developments in these regions. Let us look at the geographical results of the Panama Canal a little more closely. On pages 252, 253 are two tables transcribed from the official report of 1912 on Panama Canal Traffic and Tolls, by Mr. Emory R. Johnson.