Viewing the whole matter from the standpoint of the Pacific ports of the Americas, we see an absolute commercial advantage accruing to them all in the diminished distance to the Atlantic and Gulf ports of North America and to the ports of Europe.
Viewing the matter from the standpoint of the Atlantic and Gulf ports of North America—to fix our ideas we will say from the standpoint of New York—we see the same absolute advantage plus a competitive advantage, in that the reduction is greater for New York than for Liverpool (i.e., Europe).
As the world is at present constituted, steamers from New York and from Liverpool proceeding to these Pacific ports all pass Pernambuco, in Brazil, near the easternmost point of South America, not far south of the equator. This port is 4,066 miles from Liverpool and 3,696 miles from New York, so that, by sea, San Francisco is only 370 miles nearer to New York than to Liverpool. But Colon is 4,720 miles from Liverpool and only 1,961 from New York, so that viâ the Canal all the Pacific ports of the Americas are 2,759 miles nearer to New York than to Liverpool.
Let us next consider the Canal as the starting place for Transpacific voyages, the rôle for which it was originally projected in the sixteenth century. In those days the Isthmus of Suez was firmly held by the hostile Moslem, and even if a canal had then been open there, it would not have been available for the commerce of Christian Europe. Thus the discovery of a strait, or the cutting of a canal, at the Isthmus of Panama would at that time have opened to Europeans a shorter seaway to the Orient. But now that the Suez route has been opened for ships, the Panama Canal will not bring any port in Australia or the East Indies, nor any ice-free port in Asia or Asiatic Islands, nearer to any European port. Of all ports on the west, that is to say the Old World or "Oriental" side, of the Pacific, only those of New Zealand and some in Siberia will be brought nearer to Liverpool, and that to an insignificant amount.
LA BOCA, FROM ANCON HILL.
ANCON CEMETERY.
Distances are, however, much diminished between New York and both the northern and the southern ports of the Oriental Pacific coasts, as the following table shows:—