to be shown that freight costs via Panama, whether east or west, will be, as regards the Americas, cheaper than those of transcontinental railways. Other matters which have been urged against the canal are the difficulties of its maintenance. It has been said that these will be greater than those of construction, and that the lock-type of canal in this region will be subject to the danger of floods, swollen rivers, bursting dams, earthquakes and other matters. On the other hand it is urged that all these are imaginary difficulties which engineering science can overcome. So far from the canal not being of general utility it might be necessary, with the rise of the Pacific Ocean as a world centre, to duplicate it; and then perhaps it will be the turn of Nicaragua to lend its isthmian route to the spade, or even that of Tehuantepec. It is to be recollected that, long ago, a United States commission reported that a Tehuantepec canal would be a natural prolongation of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean! Remarkable it seems, in this connection, that the idea of the ship-railway has died out. Probably it must recur, if the prophesied commercial rise of the Pacific takes place. The project has never had justice done to it. There is probably no mechanical impossibility in running a ship into a dock and running ship and dock and all across a solidly-constructed tramway from sea to sea, which a ship-railway might essentially be. It might prove even less costly and difficult than making the ship climb a lock-stairway, such as the Panama Canal will be. The future shall decide all these matters of the utility of this great canal; for the present we are content that man's ingenuity has called for it and is accomplishing it.

In considering the future of much of this Great Coast, climate must be taken into account. The climatic conditions of the Pacific littoral of both North and South America are generally superior to those of the Atlantic littoral. British Columbia and Alaska, with their temperate, habitable regions, are in great contrast to the ice and fog-bound coasts of Labrador; California, with its delicious climate, to the extreme of heat and cold of New York; and Peru and Chile, dry and temperate, to the hot and humid climate of Brazil, as I have shown elsewhere. If the coast is restricted by the Cordillera it at least offers the traveller or dweller a choice

of climate in a day's march, ranging from tropical to arctic, according to the elevation he may choose. The malaria encountered upon the coast, from California to Chile, is not malignant, and is easily susceptible to remedy. Indeed, the region provided its own remedy-the cinchona, or quinine of commerce, which Peru gave to the world when the wife of a viceroy fell ill of a tertian fever in 1630, and was cured with doses of the bark. Yellow fever and bubonic plague are now of restricted occurrence, and improved sanitation and quarantine measures are rendering these scourges less troublesome day by day.

Many staple articles are produced upon the coast, to supply all its own wants and for large export trades. Thus, in their places I have described the timber of British Columbia, Oregon and California; whilst the forests of Chihuahua in Mexico, and of the south of Chile contain vast areas of commercial wood: yet all these sources are being denuded; no one, save on a small scale the United States Government, is troubling themselves with replanting, and exhaustion will loom up within few generations. Wheat is the real "gold" of the North Pacific-British Columbia and Oregon and inland thence-but we shall not forget that the Chinaman has gone home with the taste of wheat in his mouth, and has talked about bread to the yellow hordes of rice-eating Asia. Will they ask soon for American wheat? Let them do so; there are unbounded areas for the produce of maize, rice and bananas, and nature has so disposed it that none shall starve if they bestir themselves. Cotton in Peru can supply all comers, sugar in Peru and Mexico also; wine from California and even north of that, and from Peru and Chile can supply all demands. Chocolate from Ecuador, as it is, largely feeds the world with that valuable product, and coffee from Guatemala is a famous staple; cocaine from Peru supplies the world's markets. Fruit from all the countries of the littoral is produced in infinite variety. Indeed, it is one of the most remarkable conditions of British Columbia and California-the development of horticulture; and in their different sphere the tropical countries are lavish producers of fruits. Of minerals we have the largest copper and nitrate deposits in the world, facing the Pacific Ocean, in Peru and

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Chile respectively; while the gold, silver, coal, and other essential matters of commerce are household words of all the countries of the littoral. Water-power is another gift of the great Cordilleras, from north to south. The heart of man may take comfort from all this wealth, a large part of which is lying fallow, waiting for him to come and take it.

And thus, kind reader, we bid farewell to our Great Coast a giant who is but rubbing his eyes from the slumber from which the Columbian age awoke him. There rise before us the works of man and the works of nature blended in our retrospect. The white cliff-like tower-buildings of San Francisco, Seattle or Los Angeles, set by the heaving Pacific waves; the white, glorious snow peaks of the Cordilleran ranges, from Alaska to Peru and Chile. Smoking volcanoes there are, set between them; fire disputing the realm of ice. Lost in the profound forest of the north we have been, and we have traversed high bare steppes above the line of treelife in the south. Vast stretches of desert we have toiled over, coming down to coasts surf-beaten for thousands of miles, between the few, desired havens. Framed between our horses' ears are the blue distances and the hills, and our footprints are blown from the sand as we pass. We have stood upon the water-parting of America, at its highest summits, and with veneration have laved our hands in the headwaters of its mightiest rivers. Much of satisfaction there is in having compassed it; much of pleasure we feel as we contemplate it. And whenever our eyes seek the far horizon towards which our faces are ever set we recollect that we are all travellers, whether in the abstract or the material world, or both; travellers in a vast field where every earnest footstep serves to set the confines of the known farther and farther forward.

THE END