Page 301 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

\

Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. 279

ation, that from the mouth of the Mississippi
westward to Cape Catoche-— the tip of the
Yucatan Peninsula — there is no harbor that
can be considered at all satisfactory for ships
of war of the larger classes. The existence of
many such harbors in other parts of the regions
now under consideration practically eliminates
this long stretch of coast, regarded as a factor
of military importance in the problem be-
fore us.
In each of these sheets of water, the Gulf
of Mexico and the Caribbean, there is one
position of pre-eminent commercial impor-
tance. In the Gulf the mouth of the Missis-
sippi is the point where meet all the exports
and imports, by water, of the Mississippi Val-
ley. However diverse the directions from
which they come, or the destinations to which
they proceed, all come together here as at a
great crossroads, or as the highways of an
empire converge on the metropolis. Whatever
value the Mississippi and the myriad miles of
its subsidiary water-courses represent to the
United States, as a facile means of commu-
nication from the remote interior to the ocean
highways of the world, all centres here at the