Page 57 - The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future

38 Hawaii and our Future Sea Power.

the Caribbean, and the 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 monop-
olized jealously by the Spaniards — not a com-
mercial 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