Atlantic and Gulf Ports, $1,939,000,000. Pacific Ports, $132,000,000. EXPORT AND IMPORT TRADE OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1900 ON THE TWO OCEANS. (These drawings of two boxes of goods represent, on the basis of linear measurement only, the difference between trade on the Atlantic and on the Pacific.) connected with the company, but officers of the French government and members of the Chamber of Deputies. Not until six years ago was the work again resumed, and then under different auspices. The Nicaragua canal project has been practically American from the first. An American company sent Col. O. M. Childs to make a reconnaissance in 1850. Later the United States government took up the work, and a party was despatched under Commander Lull, U. S. N., in 1872, to examine the Childs route. In 1880 and 1885, A. G. Menocal of the United States Navy, who was with Commander Lull, headed other government expeditions. The Maritime Canal Company was organized in 1889, and obtained a concession for ten years from the Nicaraguan government. Extensive surveys were undertaken and the company was ready to begin excavation when the panic of 1893 compelled the suspension of operations. Since that time the chief endeavors seem to have been to interest the government in the project. In March, 1899, congress authorized a commission of army, naval, and civilian experts to make a thorough investigation of all the routes across the isthmus, and appropriated a million dollars for their expenses. Without going into details, some comparisons of the rival Panama and Nicaraguan routes are in order. From ocean to ocean the Panama route is 463 miles, the Nicaraguan 174. But the Nicaraguan canal would encounter 42 miles of clear navigation through Nicaragua lake, thus materially diminishing the apparent inequality of length. It is also proposed to extend the lake level east and west by high dams so as to make that section about 149 miles out of the total of 174. The highest Panama level above the sea is 98 feet, corresponding with 110 feet as the maximum of the other route. The elevation in each canal would be made with three locks on the Atlantic side and a corresponding number on the Pacific side. The estimated time for passing through the Nicaragua canal is thirty hours, against only twelve hours by the shorter Panama route, a serious handicap for the northern rival. The Panama canal, notwithstanding the enormous waste of capital, has had millions of dollars expended upon it for actual excavation. The work even now is being prosecuted with vigor, and from three thousand to four thousand men are employed upon it. Yet it is estimated that from fifty-five to one hundred and fifty million dollars more must be expended before its completion. And even then there are those who question whether the upper canal will have sufficient water to admit of navigation at all seasons of the year. The Nicaragua canal is practically yet to be begun. Enormous dams must be built and provisions made for a rainfall that often reaches three hundred inches a year, six to eight times the average fall in the North Atlantic States. There is also (These drawings represent the increased tonnage, on the basis of linear measurement only.) the handicap of poor harbors at the terminals. The Greytown harbor, particularly, will require many millions to make it safe for shipping. The estimate of the present Isthmian Canal Commission is $200,000,000 for a canal thirty-five feet deep, with a bottom width of one hundred and fifty feet. Granted the solving of the engineering and financial problems, and granted a completed canal from ocean to ocean, what would be accomplished for the world's commerce? Naturally we turn for suggestion toward the canal that serves a like purpose for the eastern hemisphere. After ten years of building, a monument to the genius of De Lesseps and his associates, the Suez canal was ready for traffic November 17, 1869. It is 99 miles long, with a minimum channel depth of 26 feet. For 77 miles its width is 327 feet, narrowed to 196 feet for the remaining 22 miles. It furnishes a waterway from ocean to ocean without lock or other obstructions, save only those due to shallowness and comparative narrowness of channel. Twenty hours are required to make the journey, little enough when one considers the much longer time required to make the journey by the Cape of Good Hope. The original cost was about $80,000,000 and some $30,000,000 more has been spent from the revenues in making enlargements and improvements. The face value of the capital and bonds now outstanding is $90,000,000. About $9,000,000 a year is distributed in profits, and the stock is quoted at four times its face value. And this in only thirty years. Disraeli did one of the best things in his career when in 1875 he acquired a controlling interest in the canal for the British government. The traffic by way of the Cape of Good Hope in 1869, the year the canal was opened, was three and a half million tons. Curiously enough, with all the advantages the canal offers, that traffic today more than holds its own, amounting to three and three-quarter million tons. But note the growth in the Suez traffic. During 1870, the first full year after the opening of the waterway, 486 vessels passed through, and their net capacity was 437,000 tons. Now, more than 3,500 ships make the passage, with a net capacity of about 10,000,000 tons. The traffic has multiplied nearly twenty-five fold in thirty years. Ten years ago 77 per cent, or more than threequarters of the tonnage, was British. Even today 68 per cent of the traffic is in British ships. Enthusiastic advocates of the American canal see an equally brilliant future for their project. They claim that the canal will be self-supporting from the first, and that shortly it will pay large returns upon its cost. But they seem to overlook some offsetting facts. The Suez canal is practically without railroad competition, whereas the railroad has come first in America. Eight transcontinental routes are already in operation on this continent, and several more are being rapidly pushed to completion. Where speed is the prime requisite, the railroads easily outclass the swiftest steamers. Even on lower grade goods the railroads are able to offer rates astonishingly low. Then, too, the Suez canal itself will be an important rival. European trade with the Orient will scarcely leave its present route through the Suez for the longer one through savings would be extreme. Europe would the Americas. Even New York will be no need the shorter route for American Pacific nearer Manila than it is now by the Suez. points, and would find it helpful in North The old Panama Canal Company, which could China and Japan. But the United States, never be accused of claiming less for its of all countries, would derive the largest advantage than the utmost stretch of gains. utmost stretch of gains. We are rapidly coming out of the imagination would warrant, estimated a elementary stage of foreign trade wherein traffic of 10,000,000 tons before the close our exports were chiefly raw materials. Our of 1900. At $1.70 a ton (the present Suez exports of manufactured articles have grown rate) the gross receipts would be $17,000,- from only $40,000,000 in 1860, to $432,000,000. Even with $3,000,000 expenses, this 000 in 1900, a gain of more than tenfold, would have left $14,000,000 to distribute to or three times as rapid as the increase in the stockholders, or over twelve per cent on export of raw materials. In general, the the original 600,000,000 francs stock. More world's international trade is the exchange. conservative estimates put the tonnage at of manufactured goods of the older countries from 3,000,000 to 7,000,000 tons for the for the raw materials of the newer, or else first few years after the completion of the the exchange of specialized manufactured canal, making it doubtful if much would be articles between the older countries. left for distribution to the stockholders at materials, as a rule, do not exchange against the beginning. From this latter point of raw materials. This accounts for the smallview it is little wonder that American capi- ness of the trade between the Pacific ports talists have hesitated at putting private of North and South America. Both are in means into the enterprise, and that the gov- the raw material stage, and both need the ernment is so strongly urged to take up the manufactures of the east. We sent nearly work. Raw The $94,000,000 worth of goods to South The American people do not need to be America last year, but only $11,000,000 of reminded of the notable journey of the battle- this to the Pacific countries. Think what ship Oregon. It emphasizes the wide separa- the change must be when the canal gives us tion of the two halves of our coast line. the practical monopoly of those markets! New York and San Francisco are nearly Eastern South America is almost as near to fifteen thousand miles apart by the shortest Europe as to New York. But western South water route, that around Cape Horn. Cut America, with the canal, is our own peculiar the isthmus, and 10,000 miles would be territory. saved. New Orleans, our chief city of the Japan needs our southern cotton. gulf, is equally far removed, fifteen thou- isthmian canal would bring New Orleans six sand miles from San Francisco by Cape Horn, thousand miles nearer that expanding marof which eleven thousand miles would be ket. California would no longer send her saved by going through the isthmus. Eng- wheat around the Horn, but would have a land, by the use of the Suez canal, has the European market nearer by eight thousand advantage over New York City by about miles. Much of her fruit would also be 2,700 miles for China, Japan, and Australia. forwarded by the same route. The state of The new canal would bring New York only a Washington has 175,000,000,000 feet of thousand miles farther than Liverpool from yellow and red fir yet uncut. Oregon has Hongkong and Central China. It would 25,000 square miles of timber land, and the bring New York nearer to North China, canal would place these forests 10,000 miles Korea, and Japan by 1,200 to 1,900 miles, nearer the Atlantic. The manufacturers of nearer to the western coast of South America the Atlantic and gulf states would have a by 2,700 miles, nearer Melbourne by 1,300 water route that would bring them 10,000 miles, and over 3,000 miles nearer New miles nearer China, Japan, and the Pacific Zealand. New Orleans and gulf ports would islands. Much of this trade would continue to have an advantage still better than New go across the continent by rail. But the more York for these points by from 700 to 1,000 bulky goods must find a cheap water route. miles. The advantages of the American canal are The chief advantages of an isthmian canal not to be measured by the savings now posare, therefore, American. For traffic sible. Clear-headed prophets are looking between the eastern and western parts of our forward through the new century for vast country, between the Atlantic and Pacific commercial operations of which the present ports of South America, and between the aggregate, wonderful as it is, is but the North Atlantic and the South Pacific, the beginning. If this country can multiply its trade fifteen-fold in a hundred years, what will the end of another century disclose? The new canal is to be built, not for a decade, nor even for a century, but is to be a perpetual waterway between the world's two mightiest oceans. In the westward course of empire the Pacific has become the new theater in the struggle for the world's commercial supremacy. Today less than a tenth of the world's commerce is carried upon its waters. When China awakens, even as has Japan, when the Philippines begin to develop a tithe of their hidden wealth under the fostering influences of American leadership, when the Austral asian confederacy shall have conquered the Southwestern Continent, when our own empire beyond the Rocky mountains shall have attained some measure of its coming greatness, who can estimate the number of freighted ships that shall then traverse the Pacific? And this nation, which led the way in the first steps of the New World development, shall continue to hold the chief place in the succeeding stages. "Oceans do not divide continents, they connect them." A continent today divides the two oceans. The severing of that land barrier, which would complete the equatorial water belt around the world, would accomplish its full share in working out the results. GREEK WOMEN IN MODERN LITERATURE AND ART. G BY H. A. HARING. REEK history and literature have fundamentally influenced and shaped subsequent life and thought. Greek art, in current opinion, far surpasses in conception and execution all other art the world has produced. One is, therefore, not surprised to find that much modern literature and art is based on Greek ideals. Aside from direct influences which may be traced, literature and art abound in references and allusions to Greek life, thought, and heroeswhether mythical or historical. Although women played comparatively an insignificant part in Greek civilization, it is by no means an insignificant place which the women of Greece fill in modern literature and art. when combined with strength and activity, made a powerful appeal to the senses. Greek art was accordingly based on similar ARIADNE. principles. The Greek woman was much in the open air, always finding active employment, never allowing time to become a burden. Her strength and freshness of body produced a sweetness of temper and soundness of mind which serve as a charming background for literary or artistic treatment. Not a vicious woman appears in either "Iliad or "Odyssey. Hellas," the later name for Greece itself, was originally applied to one section of the country as an epithet for "land of the beautiful women," beautiful both in physical and personal elements. 66 Inasmuch as the Greek mind loved symmetry, Admetus, becomes the theme of Milton's form and beauty of person, especially sonnet on his "Deceased Wife." Robert Browning attempted in his "Balaustion's Adventure" to make a paraphrase of the "Alcestis" of Euripides, but while he maintains the classical spirit, in execution this is one of the sweetest original poems of modern times. William Morris has written a poem on "The Love of Alcestis," Mrs. Felicia D. Hemans on "The Death Song of Alcestis," W. S. Landor on "Hercules, Pluto, Admetus, and Alcestis," while F. T. Palgrave and W. M. W. Call have poems on 66 Alcestis." Forlorn Ariadne appears repeatedly in literature, either as the tragic center of the Theseus incident or in the phase of her goddess-existence after her marriage to Bacchus. Mrs. Browning has written a "Paraphrase on Nonnus (Bacchus and Ariadne)," and of other poems there are a number, of which we may mention Frederick Tennyson's "Ariadne" in "Daphne and Other Poems, R. S. Ross's" Ariadne in Naxos," and Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson's" Ariadne's Farewell. Titian, Tintoretto, and Teschendorff each have given us a painting of the maiden, the former two entitling theirs "Bacchus and Ariadne." Owned privately in Elmira, New York, is a Bacchus and Ariadne," with a seaport scene, in the foreground of which is the maid, her attention arrested by Bacchus, who is appearing cautiously from behind a tree. 66 This last painting has also been called "Ulysses and Nausicaa." The theme is said to be taken from the story of Ulysses being awakened by the princess and her maidens playing at ball, he in turn surprising them, as told by Homer. It will be seen that either of these two titles is a possible one. Mr. E. J. Poynter painted "Nausicaa and Her Maidens" for Lord Wharncliffe, portraying the ball game on the green near the seashore, the story which immediately precedes the waking of Ulysses. Mr. Poynter's painting of this subject is one of a series of four productions executed for Lord Wharncliffe, each illustrating a story of Greek women. The other three are taken from the Venus myths. They are "Venus and Esculapius," "Psyche," and "Atalanta's Race," wherein the wise Hippomenes won the race, and his bride, by tempting her |