Isthmus of Panama. In the Pacific the position is for them much less
satisfactory--nowhere, perhaps, is it less so, and from obvious natural
causes. The commercial development of the eastern Pacific has been far
later, and still is less complete, than that of its western shores. The
latter when first opened to European adventure were already the seat of
ancient economies in China and Japan, furnishing abundance of curious
and luxurious products to tempt the trader by good hopes of profit. The
western coast of America, for the most part peopled by savages, offered
little save the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, and these were
monopolized jealously by the Spaniards--not a commercial nation--during
their long ascendency. Being so very far from England and affording so
little material for trade, Pacific America did not draw the enterprise
of a country the chief and honorable inducement of whose seamen was the
hope of gain, in pursuit of which they settled and annexed point after
point in the regions where they penetrated, and upon the routes leading
thither. The western coasts of North America, being reached only by the
long and perilous voyage around Cape Horn, or by a more toilsome and
dangerous passage across the continent, remained among the last of the
temperate productive seaboards of the earth to be possessed by white
men. The United States were already a nation, in fact as well as in
form, when Vancouver was exploring Puget Sound and passed first through
the channel separating the mainland of British America from the island
which now bears his name. Thus it has happened that, from the late
development of British Columbia in the northeastern Pacific, and of
Australia and New Zealand in the southwestern, Great Britain is found
again holding the two extremities of a line, between which she must
inevitably desire the intermediate links; nor is there any good reason
why she should not have them, except the superior, more urgent, more
vital necessities of another people--our own. Of these links the
Hawaiian group possesses unique importance--not from its intrinsic