Page 78 - The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future
P. 78
THE ISTHMUS AND SEA POWER.
June, 1893.
FOR more than four hundred years the
mind of man has been possessed with
a great idea, which, although by its wide
diffusion and prophetic nature resembling
one of those fundamental instincts, whose
very existence points to a necessary fulfil-
ment, first quickened into life in the thought
of Christopher Columbus. To him the vis-
ion, dimly seen through the scanty and inac-
curate knowledge of his age, imaged a close
and facile communication, by means of the
sea, that great bond of nations, between two
ancient and diverse civilizations, which cen-
tred, the one around the Mediterranean, the
birthplace of European commerce, refinement,
and culture, the other upon the shores of
that distant Eastern Ocean which lapped the
dominions of the Great Khan, and held upon
1 The Map of the Gulf and Caribbean, p. 271, will serve for
geographical references of this article.
