"America is geographically a connecting link between the continents of Europe and Asia, and not a monstrous barrier between them. It lies in the track of their nearest and best connection; and this fact needs only to be fully recognized to render it in practice what it unquestionably is in the essential points of distance and direction."[R]
Another English writer says:—
"It is believed that the amount of direct traffic which would be created between Australia, China, and Japan, and England, by a railway from Halifax to the Gulf of Georgia, would soon more than cover the interest upon the capital expended.... If the intended railway were connected with a line of steamers plying between Victoria (Puget Sound), Sydney, or New Zealand, mails, quick freight, passengers to and from our colonies in the southern hemisphere, would, for the most part, be secured for this route.
"Vancouver's Island is nearer to Sydney than Panama by nine hundred miles; and, with the exception of the proposed route by a Trans-American railway, the latter is the most expeditious that has been found.
"By this interoceanic communication, the time to New Zealand would be reduced to forty-two, and to Sydney to forty-seven days, being at least ten less than by steam from England via Panama."[S]
Lord Bury says:—
"Our trade [English] in the Pacific Ocean with China and with India must ultimately be carried through our North American possessions. At any rate, our political and commercial supremacy will have utterly departed from us, if we neglect that great and important consideration, and if we fail to carry out to its fullest extent the physical advantages which the country offers to us, and which we have only to stretch out our hands to take advantage of."[T]
Shanghai is rapidly becoming the great commercial emporium of China. It is situated at the mouth of the Yangtse-Kiang, the largest river of Asia, navigable for fifteen hundred miles. Hong-Kong, which has been the English centre in China, is nine hundred and sixty miles farther south.
With a line of railway across this continent, the position of England would be as follows:—
| To | Shanghai | via | Suez, | 60 | days. |
| " | " | " | Puget Sound, | 33 | " |