THE NEW PACIFIC

CHAPTER I

NOW AND THEN

A DOZEN lines of steamships, or thereabout, now cross the Pacific between America and Asia, where for two and a half centuries a single galleon made its slow and clumsy way forth and back from Acapulco to Manila once a year. Ships comprising scores of lines ply along shore, unite the islands and mainland, or sail direct for foreign ports. Thus Hawaii and California are linked; Australia with Asia and America and all the larger islands; North America with South America, Africa, and Europe; Japan and China with Southern Asia, the Philippines, Australia, India, and Europe; Alaska and Pacific ports, Mexico and Pacific ports, Central and South America, while the shores, islands, and rivers of Asia swarm with foreign vessels where half a century ago a timid commerce found for the most part sealed ports.

Sixty years ago vessels trading into the Pacific rounded Cape Horn or Good Hope, and creeping along the coasts of America or Asia called at the various points for traffic and made their exchanges, returning after an absence of one or two years. Now, all the important ports have their fast-running steamships, sailing on stated days, direct to or connecting with the chief cities of the world. At such places as Vladivostok, Yokohama, Tientsin, Shanghai, and Hongkong twenty-five or fifty steamers of the Pacific Mail, The Canada Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Oriental and California, the Oriental and Peninsula, the Transsiberian, and the Nipon Yusen Kaisha, or Japan Mail Steamship company, may any day be seen at anchor, or arriving and departing, the last named company alone, the largest but one in the world, operating hundreds of vessels, including eighty-three steamers, and

entering every commercial port of Japan, China, Korea, and Siberia, with lines to Calcutta, the Philippines, Australia, the Hawaiian islands, and America. Then, besides the swarms of native junks and river steamboats and fleets of sail, are thousands of foreign sailing vessels which likewise cross and recross from every point to every point, or pass along the shore, carrying the surplus products of one land to another to the benefit of all, and nearly all first appearing within the last half century.

Back of this was the time when small craft of forty and sixty tons seldom larger than three or four hundred tonssailed this sea on voyages of circumnavigation and discovery, sometimes of piracy or of pure adventure, sometimes of all together, now stealing stealthily along the shore with bloodyhanded cutthroat crew rifling towns and burning ships, or striking out boldly into the unknown with a recklessness unsurpassed by the mariners of any age or nation. To-day, the iron-bound battleship ploughs her majestic course with ponderous implements of destruction so nicely poised as to make the leviathan arbiter of human destinies alike on sea and land; one or more of these modern monsters being served on their way and at their destination by coal ships, supply ships, refrigerator ships, and distilling and repair vessels, so that every comfort and every advantage may be at hand for those who go forth to death or domination. With the application to navigation of electrical, or some yet to be discovered power, the voyage across the Pacific will occupy no more time than is now required in crossing the Atlantic.

Thirty years ago Japan's foreign trade was next to nothing; it is now $200,000,000 a year, more than half of which has sprung up within the last decade. An increase of China's trade at that rate would bring the amount to $2,000,000,000 in fifteen years. Aroused from the dead past to life and selfconsciousness, Japan is just now filled with a further sense of her capabilities from her success in the late war with her neighbor. Since her emergence from barbaric isolation, she has come to the front as a maritime power, meeting America more than half way in transpacific intercourse.

In their steamship service the Japanese have an advantage over their competitors in the small wages paid to seamen and the large subsidies received from their government. As long

as this state of things continues, and until our government sees fit to place our commerce on an equality with that of other nations, or until our merchants or ship-owners can devise some means to obviate the difficulty, we must expect to see our products transported across the Pacific to a great extent in foreign bottoms. Should the Chinese ever come forward as a maritime nation, which they are as able to do as were the Japanese, then indeed will Asiatic craft swarm upon the sea like bees in a field of flowers.

The Canada Pacific railway has its own steamship service from Vancouver to Asia and Australia. The Northern Pacific railway and the Oregon railway and Navigation companies both have connections with Asiatic lines from Seattle and Portland. From San Francisco the Occidental and Oriental Steamship company carry freight and passengers to Honolulu, Yokohama, Hongkong, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Shanghai, while the California and Oriental Steamship company from San Diego to Hawaii, China, and Japan facilitates the commerce of the southern United States with Asia. The Pacific Mail Steamship company offers service between San Francisco and Manila, and the Polynesian Steamship company has been organized by New York and Philadelphia capitalists for the establishing of a line to Manila, stopping at Honolulu, the Ladrones, and the Carolines. The spots of ground on which now stand Vancouver, western terminus of the Canadian Pacific railway and port for the Canadian transpacific steamers, and Vladivostok, Russia's Pacific metropolis and transsiberian railway terminus, at once the Petersburg, Gibraltar, and Odessa of the Far East, were forty years ago little better than primeval wilderness. From Tacoma, the Northern Pacific Steamship company has good service to Japan and China, one steamer sailing every fortnight. The Oceanic Steamship company has lines from San Francisco to Honolulu, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia. The Seattle-Honolulu Steamship company, and the British American line from Seattle to Honolulu and Hilo were organized and put in operation soon after annexation. South America, the South sea, Australia, and the far southeast all have ample steam and sail navigation facilities. Further than this, new transpacific lines are constantly springing up, and new vessels being added to the old lines.

Among the islands of Puget sound, and thence north along the broken shore and south to Mexico; on the lakes and streams, from the Auguschuki river of the north southward to the Fraser, the Columbia, the Sacramento, and the Colorado, where seventy years ago not a craft of any kind was seen save tule rafts and Indian canoes, are now hundreds of sail boats and steam boats, flitting hither and thither, from point to point, through all the intricate way of strait, bay, and island channels. So late as 1894 the ships of the Pacific states for the previous decade increased 499 in number and 121,690 in tonnage, while those of the Atlantic and gulf states decreased 710 in number and 135,000 in tonnage.

For numberless ages the frozen Yukon has held its slow course for 2,000 miles and more, uncovering its waters to the wild-fowl from the south for three months in the year, unruffled by any craft save the kyaks of the Eskimos. Now there are towns on its banks, and hundreds of boats, large and small, on its surface, and thousands of gold-seekers going up and down its course, their number increasing, and the region never again to lapse into its former frozen silence. It was only ten years ago when transportation throughout all Alaska was mainly by light boats of the natives in summer, and by sledges and snow-shoes in winter. The presence of gold to any great extent was not known. Now there are some forty lines of steamers and steamboats to and on the one great river of the north alone, with railways and telegraphs, and millions of money output from the mines.

Thus on the water, ships; on the land roads and railroads in place of trackless forests or Indian trails.

First, for railways, the American transcontinental lines, the Central and Southern Pacific; the Great Northern, the Northern and Canada Pacific, and the Santa Fé; the railroads of Mexico and Central America; the transalpine and littoral railways of South America, and the various lines of Australia and the Asiatic southeast. These with the short lines round the Pacific count up a hundred or more. In the new Northwest of farthest America, until lately deemed uninhabitable for civilization, a dozen railways are either finished or in course of construction, as those of the Pacific and Arctic railway and Navigation company; the British Columbia and Yukon railway; the roads from Skagway to Fort Selkirk, from

North Vancouver to the Lake Atlin gold fields, via Bridge river and Lillooet; from Robson to Midway, a branch of the Columbia and Western, while the Anglo-Alaskan Syndicate, limited, has organized the Northern Bay and Yukon railway and Navigation company for the construction of a railroad from the Unalaklik river to the Yukon, at the mouth of the Koltag, connecting with the company's steamboats.

In the far southeast, in China and in Japan, railway construction is active. The Brice syndicate has in hand a line carrying with it political significance, from Hankau, near the Russian sphere of influence, through the rich section which enjoys the English sphere of influence, to Canton, on the border of the French sphere of influence. Then there are the Tientsin and Peking railway, whose locomotives were built in Philadelphia; the Wusung and Shanghai, the first railway opened in China; the Tientsin-Chinkiang-Hangchau line, and the connection of Burmah with southwestern China; the Mandalay-Kunlon ferry line; the overland railway from Burmah; and the Pakhoi-Nanning line under consideration.

The Siberian railway has cost the Russian government thus far about $200,000,000. Trains run over the completed part; and if the rolling stock and sleeping and dining cars are not of the best, a chapel-car attached to every train, to many persons more than compensates. It was greatly to her satisfaction that Russia obtained the extension of the Siberian railway into Manchuria, thus giving her a still stronger hold on China.

Three months were formerly occupied in a journey across Siberia; by the Siberian railway, when completed, one can go from Paris to Japan, including the sea voyage from Vladivostok to Nagasaki, in fifteen days. A writer in the Fortnightly Review says: "Within three years a man will be able to get into the train at Ostend and travel straight through to Port Arthur. In five years a person will be able to travel in a railroad carriage from the Cape to Alexandria. There is yet a third great world line from Constantinople via Palestine, Persia, India, and Burmah to Hongkong. The importance of these three great lines of communication cannot be sufficiently dwelt upon; it can certainly not be exaggerated."

Telegraphs attend the pathways of commerce, both on land and water. There are many transcontinental and coast lines, and two or three transpacific cable lines in contemplation,