are the surplus of the products which these countries reject. The local sup ply being a surfeit, consumers must be sought for elsewhere-in the East, in the South Seas, in the remote Indies, or on this continent. But for all the productions that are borne to or from the gulf, there is a market almost at hand. Brazil, the Plata States, Central America, Equador, Venezuela, and the West Indies, need of the products that are carried down the Mississippi; and New Orleans, Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New-York and Boston require for domestic consumption and exchange the bulk of the products that are sent forward by the rivers of South America into the gulf. It is no departure from truth to aver, that the basins tributary to the Gulf of Mexico are more extensive, prolific in natural productions, and the productions more varied in character and of greater agricultural value, than may be said of all the basins in the world beside. The annexed table will serve to illustrate this fact, so far as square miles are concerned:" Basins in the World, drained by Rivers, having a Sea or Ocean Outlet. journey may be made by land from Genoa to Venice in a few hours, and from Durazzo to Salonica in two or three days. To make the voyages between these ports with a sail-vessel, requires the lapse of many weeks, and sometimes the delay of months. On the contrary, the journeys soonest made from one port to another on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, are those which are undertaken by sea-voyages. A vessel proceeding from the Atlantic up the Mediterranean, and taking a cargo in the Black Sea of the productions of Western Asia or Central Europe-or at the mouth of the Nile, of the productions of Egypt or at the port of Venice, of the productions of France or Germany, cannot clear the Straits of Gibraltar on a return trip under two months. The sinuosities of shore-line measure 14,000 miles; the shore-line of the Gulf of Mexico-clear as it is of projections and other interruptions to navigation-measures but 5,500 miles. While a vessel coasts along a shore-line of 14,000 miles, collecting a promiscuous cargo of the production of 2,000,000 square miles, a vessel may make the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico, (5,500 miles,) receive a cargo of the productions of 4,000,000 square miles, and be under way, in the Basin of the Mediterranean. broad ocean, nine thousand miles in advance of the other; or, a vessel in the gulf may take in a cargo on the coast and deposit it in the port of New-Orleans, return and deposit a second cargo, before a vessel, sailing up the Mediterranean, can again make the Atlantic and spread its sails in search of a market. Key West and Gibraltar are Basin of the Mississippi the gateways that interlock the granaries of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. East and west of these is the Atlantic, and it is only on its heaving billows that the strife of rivalry begins. The seas locked within are The valley of the Amazon is but a the recipients of the elements of com- continuation of the valley of the Missis merce-nothing more-and that sea sippi; and its waters, by the laws which which has the advantage of proximity to govern tides, are caused to flow, not into the ocean, of greatest extent of bound- the ocean first, but into the gulf. The ing country, of variety and quality of Orinoco, which is an arm of that majesproduction, and superiority of inland tic flood, empties into the Caribbean navigation, is the sea that does, and al- direct. Hence the valley of the Amaways must, take precedence of all others. zon is but a continuation of the basin of Such is the Gulf of Mexico. There is, too, the Mississippi; and their draining rivers this point to be considered: The pro- all fall into the gulf before they flow ducts of Southern Europe, of Western out into the Atlantic. But it is needless Asia, and of Northern Africa, which to dwell longer on the external value of seek the ocean by the Mediterranean, the two seas. Any farther comparison THE OLD WORLD. Nile 1,160,000 sq. m. 520,000 66 196,000 66 66 312.000 66 66 Ganges. 432,000 46 66 Irawaddy 331,000 46 66 66 Physical Character of the Mississippi Valley. 531 may be confined to a few words. The bowels-is reached and disseminated productions brought down from the ba- through the vast basins which thus sins of the old world, do not return to stretch, on meridian and latitudinal lines them. The staples of the Indus and far north and south of the tropics, into Ganges make long voyages to Europe the temperate zones. or Eastern Asia; the surplus products of the basins of Western Europe are borne to markets far beyond the Indian seas; and the products of the valleys drained by the rivers that pour into the Mediterranean, are conveyed oceanward thousands of miles to all hemispheres. The great basins of the Americas are all drained towards the gulf; and the ocean market is then at hand. Whatever causes supervene to deprive the Mississippi, as a burden-route, of its proper downward share of the domestic products of the country-whether trade is forced from its banks to the northern ports by enterprise and artificial mediums, or the foreign demand for our staples, by way of New-Orleans, is on the wane-of one thing we may be certain, that it needs but the effort to make We have next to consider the physi- that city one of the greatest entrepots cal character of the countries through on the globe. Its commercial position which our rivers course. The Missis is unrivaled, and its climate daily imsippi River, which is peculiarly our own, proves. The continent, south of it, is is the ventricle of the Union. It is capa- yet to be explored, its resources to be ble of absorbing and digesting all the developed, its riches and their variety products of labor that may be poured to be unfolded. Three hundred millions into it. Taking its rise in the lati- of people ask to be admitted to commutude of fifty degrees north, in the re- nion and intercourse with six hundred gion of snows and exalted mountains, millions west of us, who are shut out by where the climates are suited to the an isthmus, only twenty-six miles in growth of wheat and barley, and the width. A hundred millions of dollars hardy cereals-in the region of valuable have already been expended or devoted forests and animal furs-it runs south, to the work of leveling this barrier, of crossing thirty degrees of latitude, and constructing rail-roads from the Atlantic changing with every mile its tempera- to the Pacific, of tunneling mountains, ture and the character of the staples that are produced on its banks. "Having," says an eloquent writer, in speaking of this noble river, "left behind it the regions for peltries, wheat, and corn; for hemp and tobacco; for pulse, apples, whisky, oil and cotton; and having crossed the pastoral lands for hogs, horses, and cattle, it reaches, near the thirtieth degree of latitude, the northern verge of the sugar-cane. Thence expanding out in the gulf, with all these productions on its bosom, it passes on to Key West and the Tortugas, and delivers up to the winds and waves of the ocean the fruits of its teeming soil and multitudinous climes." Then comes in the valley of the Amazon. Taking up the agricultural productions and staples which the Mississippi had just reached, and pushing the variety beyond the equator, it increases, and far down in another hemisphere diversifies the wonderful assortment, until sugar and rice, coffee and indigo, drugs and spices, cocoa and cotton, cochineal and tobacco, india-rubber, dyewoods, peltries, flax and wool-everything, in short, that is grown on earth, or produced from its digging canals, clearing out once navigable streams, of building highways which are to penetrate into and traverse the interior, and of laying the foundations of Anglo-Saxon cities on the sites of Indian villages. Steam has commuted time, and brought about a speedier and nearer relationship of Europe with America, and both with the East, than could have been accomplished by the ordinary sailing-vessel for a hundred years later. By a census of the Central and South American states, the increase of Caucasian population thereof, for seventy years was not greater than has been the increase of pure white population within the three years last past. And the influences that will inevitably work a restoration of the political, moral, and social condition of the South American states (and they have much to redeem)—that will lead to advancement in the arts and sciences, and to physical progresswill operate with the same results in the West Indies and the islands which belong to the continent. Let once the seed of Anglo-Saxon enterprise be sown, as it has been, to some extent, in Central America and south of the Amazon, it Raw New 804,277 239,482. 25,711 296,111. .111,072... 65,997 Cis. Re- Arg. Re Granada. Venezuela. Brazil. public. public. Chili. gallons.. 574.. 1,361.. Peru. Equados. 2,849.. 60.. 280.. 2,041.. 540.. Wood, manufactured.....value..$82,267.. Provisions, &c...... Breadstuffs Soap and candles. .value.. $70,507.. 34,203.. Cotton manufacture ......value..$74,340.. 95,410.. 613,403.. 289.. 84,512..850,703..38,279.. .25,111.. 33,842.. 8,926..13,252.. .$30,415.. 8,699.. 24,573.. 745.. 5,959.. 11,670.. 1,035.. The Amazon and its Tributaries-Interoceanic Route. 533 "Stern winter smiles on this auspicious clime, The Amazon is the ventricle of South America, as the Mississippi is of the United States. It takes its rise in ten degrees thirty minutes south latitude, in the lake Launchoca, and flows for a distance in two branches-the Tunguragua From the twentieth degree of south and the Ucayale-until, forming a junc- latitude to the twelfth degree of north tion, and uniting with it other rivers, it latitude, all the rivers of South America, at last empties into the Atlantic, almost except such as drain the narrow strip of under the equator. Its entire distance land on the Pacific, bounded on the east has been computed at 4,700 miles, and by the Andes, flow, as we have said, into it has an inland navigation, by connect the Gulf of Mexico. Nor is there a ing tributaries, of over 70,000 miles! basin in the world, in which the naIts basin-although we have adopted the vigable streams are so numerous, so common estimate of 1,796,000 square diverse in their courses, so available in miles-is said to exceed 2,400,000 square dispensing with artificial mediums of miles. Rising at the eastern base of the intercourse and communication. The Andes, within sixty miles of the Pacific, Orinoco, which is an arm of the Amain the heart of Peru, one branch of this zon, takes up in its course the upper majestic river follows a course due north waters of New-Granada and Venezuela; to Jaen, in the State of Equador, thence and far down, beyond the equator, the through the southern provinces of Equa- Paraguay and the Parana, whose sources dor, eastwardly, until a junction is form- almost connect with the sources of the ed with the Ucayale, gathering in its Madeira, bear the rich fruits of Buenos way the rivers and streamlets of the Ayres and Uruguay to the mouth of the Andes, and draining a country-yet Plata. It is impossible to conceive that almost in a state of nature-among the the basins of South America, teeming richest in precious metals and agricul- with mineral treasures and agricultural tural fertility on the globe. The Ucayale products, overflowing with rivers and runs northeast, through the southern lakes, and enjoying every degree of provinces of Peru, and in its course is also fed by numerous tributaries. After its junction with the Tunguragua, they roll together their floods, connecting the navigable streams of Bolivia, Peru, Equador, New Granada, and the Guianas; and finally they receive the voluminous waters of the Madeira, a river of the first class, which takes its rise in Three miles of cutting through a levthe vicinity of Potosi, and courses in el and marshy country on the southsolitude through the unexplored regions, eastern frontier of Bolivia, would give unpeopled valleys, and dismal forests of to the former the command of an interBrazil, until it is discharged into the oceanic route of four thousand miles. Amazon, two thousand miles from its One outlet would be the mouth of the source. Thence the three branches, Plata; the other, the mouth of the united, pursue their way in majesty to Amazon. Three miles of cutting would the ocean. This union is the Amazon. allow of a vessel of light tonnage to Absorbing in its swollen bosom the head start from the mouth of the Orinoco, on streams of Paraguay, and the whole the Caribbean, and navigate through range of country bounded by the Andes, Venezuela, New-Granada, and down the the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean, Amazon to its mouth; up the Amazon affording a navigation of 70,000 miles, to Peru, and down through the northern this great river is entirely shut up to provinces of Brazil to the Madeira; and foreign commerce, and is still, at the down the Madeira to the Paraguay, and option of the Brazilian government, to down this river to Montevideo; and up be opened to the enterprise and rivalry again to the Parana; and up the Paraof nations. Of the countries which it na through southern Brazil, to within drains, it may be more truly said than sixty miles of Rio Janeiro, inland. But of any other: three miles of cutting is required to temperature and salubrity, can long remain under the sole dominion of a semicivilized people, or be the exclusive habitation of half savages, who luxuriate in indolence, or rove over the pampas and llanos in predatory hordes. Every impulse of reason combats such an opinion. open the whole of South America to ship navigation, and to bring its entire products into the Gulf of Mexico. The export trade of these countries is in its infancy. It does not exceed $10,0000,000 per annum, viz: Domestic exports of Mexico, (annual average). Domestic exports of New-Granada Brazil..... ever, might still be carried on with foreign nations, by exchanging, (instead of silver and platina,) cochineal, indigo, leather, sarsaparilla, vanilla, jalap, soap, logwood, pimento, &c., for fabrics and merchandise, which the nation cannot dispense with, but which are principally $18,000,000 smuggled into the state, causing a loss 2,800,000 of revenue to the national treasury, and 4,000,000 still contributing to the prostration of the 4,000,000 country. The moral, political and com900,000 mercial condition of Mexico is despe9,000,000 rate in the extreme. What it may be 6,500,000 come under future dynasties, the hereaf8.000,000 ter will reveal. 3,000,000 43,000,000 The trade of Central America, and its The trade of Mexico is declining, rapid augmentation, is an evidence of owing to the exhaustion of her precious the spirit of enterprise that has been inmines, her inability to pay for foreign fused into it by Anglo-Saxon contact and goods, the frightful contrabandism that example. The commerce of the states, prevails, and the political instability of foreign and coast wise, is estimated at the supreme government, still further $20,000,000 annually; the domestic exweakened by the constant defection of ports alone amounting, as stated, to its provinces. A splendid traffic, how- $4,000,000, namely: |