Western Pacific

“ The wide Pacific now stretches beneath us,—away, away, till it touches the Eastern World, covering with its vast sheet of waters nearly one half of the earth's circumference, and separating the Western continent from the Old World by a much wider gulf than on the Atlantic side, as if to represent the greater difference in race and character between its inhabitants and the Asiatic tribes,—and as if, also, to mark the great boundary of the world's territory, and to show that here the circle of the habitable earth is complete. ”

“ We need hardly allude to the commercial advantages of the territory. Its happy position for trade with China, India and the Western Coast of America. The growing importance, however, of the islands of the Pacific is not so generally known or appreciated. ”

“ Extending nearly ten degrees of latitude along the Pacific, and embracing the only safe and commodious harbors on that coast for many hundred miles, with a temperate climate and an extensive interior of fertile lands, it is scarcely possible to estimate its wealth until it shall be brought under the government of our laws and its resources fully developed. From its position it must command the rich commerce of China, of Asia, of the islands of the Pacific, of western Mexico, of Central America, the South American States, and of the Russian possessions bordering on that ocean. ”

“ It is not simply that the east of Canada and the United States, as representing Western civilization, is brought much closer to China and Japan; that the passage from West to East which the early navigators vainly sought is now thrown open. The important thing is that the Pacific is going to be the scene of commercial and political rivalries in which the slowly awakening people of China and the already wide-awake people of Japan will take part. All the Pacific Ocean westward to 160 degrees of longitude east of Greenwich is brought nearer to England and the western coasts of Europe. ”

“ From the stake-driving of the engineers to the spike-driving of the track-layers was a full decade. For hard times overtook the Western Pacific at Midland City, eighty miles to the eastward; while the State capital, two days' bronco-jolting west of Dry Creek, had railroad outlets in plenty and no inducements to offer a new-comer.
But, with the breaking of the cloud of financial depression, the Western Pacific succeeded in placing its extension bonds, and a little later the earth began to fly on the grade of the new line to the west. ”

“ My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladrones had set my mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores are believed to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so evidence came to me steadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were the last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still to the sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of the rulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under the rising waters of the Pacific. ”

“ Extensive researches were now made in the Pacific. The route led by New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, Torres Strait, the Banda Sea, and the China Sea to Hong Kong. The western Pacific was then explored northward to Yokohama, after which the “Challenger” struck across the ocean by Honolulu and Tahiti to Valparaiso. ”

“ The waters of the archipelago's northern islands are among the most biologically diverse in the Western Pacific and include the greatest diversity of seamount and hydrothermal vent life yet discovered. ”

“ It is needless here to do more than refer to that other chain of maritime possessions—Halifax, Bermuda, Santa Lucia, Jamaica—which strengthen the British hold upon the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Isthmus of Panama. In the Pacific the position is for them much less satisfactory—nowhere, perhaps, is it less so, and from obvious natural causes. The commercial development of the eastern Pacific has been far later, and still is less complete, than that of its western shores. ”

“ The original Central Pacific Railroad ran from 5 miles west of Ogden to Sacramento. In 1870 this company consolidated with the Western Pacific Railroad, operating between Sacramento and San José via Stockton, the San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda Railroad, which connected the Western Pacific with the city of Oakland, the San Joaquin Valley Railroad branch from Lathrop to Goshen, and the California and Oregon Railroad, which left the main line [141] of the Central Pacific near Roseville, and ran in a northwesterly direction to Redding toward the Oregon boundary. ”

“ The boisterous Pacific was among the new discoveries of our American adventurers. Had their expedition been to the warm climate of Africa, or to South America, they would have been sure of plenty to eat; but in the western region, between the Rocky Mountains and the great river of the West, the case is far otherwise.
It is devoutly to be wished that truth may prevail respecting those distant regions. ”

“ In 1860 the project was taken up by a group of local capitalists of more than ordinary energy and resources, contracts were let, and four years later a line to San José was actually in running order. It was to these capitalists that the Central Pacific transferred its rights in the Western Pacific, and it seems to have been expected that the San Francisco and San José and the Western Pacific together would form the western end of the transcontinental line. ”

“ The western shores of Oregon are washed by the placid {173} waters of the Pacific, which bring the 360,000,000 of China, the many millions of the vast Indies and of Australasia, and lay them at our doors with opening hands to receive our produce; which, with the numerous whale ships that literally whiten the Northern Pacific, calling not only for provisions, but harbors to winter in, must ever afford one of the most extensive markets in the world for all kinds of produce, and one concerning which there need be but little fear that it will ever be overstocked. ”

“ In the working out of the problems of the Pacific, Japan is the farthest from our ken. Our relations with Australia and New Zealand and with Canada—apart from Great Britain—are already more or less intimate. Just as Japan is beginning to realize that she must make China her friend, so must we four Western nations on the Pacific realize the fullness of the possibilities in coöperation. ”

“ The Philippine Islands and their history as a part of the history of the Pacific ocean area; The north-western states, British Columbia, and Alaska in their relations with the Pacific ocean; Spanish-America and the Pacific ocean; Japan and Australasia. There is an index that seems to be unusually complete.
“Among the addresses those by H. Morse Stephens on the Conflict of European nations in the Pacific, by Rafael Altamira y Crevea on the Share of Spain in the history of the Pacific ocean, and by Theodore Roosevelt on the Panama canal are noteworthy. ”

“ The Western Pacific wanted to be towed out of danger—a matter of forty miles. Transferring anybody was out of the question, for the sea was terrific. No boat could live in it. Both captains were pretty anxious. Finally Owen ran the Shearwater right up under the lee of the Western Pacific and threw his searchlight on her. She was all right, sea anchor out and riding fairly easily. But when Harry Owen laid down his binoculars he was a different man. ”

“ We are therefore justified in regarding the island groups of the Western Pacific as having always retained their insular condition, situated, as they are, in a region of upheaval, and separated, as they are, from each other and from the Australian continent by depths of from 1,000 to 2,400 fathoms. I have already pointed out that the volcanic rocks of the large islands of the Solomon Group are geologically ancient. Their elevation and the great subaerial denudation which they have experienced afford indications of the insular condition having been preserved from remote ages. ”

“ These nations are at present the British, whose possessions of Canada secures them access to the north-western desert of America, the Americans, who have free access to the wilderness that lies between their territories and the Pacific Ocean, and the Russians, whose immense empire borders on the north-west coast of America, giving them ample opportunities, which they have duly improved, of establishing settlements on its shores ”

“ That influence is already felt, both for good and for evil, in the neighbouring islands of New Zealand, situated within six days' sail of Sydney, and containing a native population of upwards of half a million of souls. It will ere long be felt over the ten thousand populous isles of the Western Pacific, as colonization extends to the northward on the Australian continent. ”

“ The inhabitants are tall, fine-looking people, but most debased savages and terrible cannibals. Here sandal-wood is to be had in abundance, and very fine, so that Golding is highly delighted, and declares that it is the finest country he has yet been in. More than once, however, our suspicions are aroused with regard to the natives, who are, we think, meditating an attack on us on board, or when we go on shore to bring off the wood. While here I will write down a brief account of some of these numberless islands in the Western Pacific, among which we are cruising. ”

“ For it had not been ascertained whether that extensive region, which is called Terra Firma, separated the Western Ocean [the Atlantic] from the Eastern [the Pacific] ; but it was plain that that continent extended in a southerly direction, and afterwards inclined to the west. ”

“ The primary mistake is in considering the Coast Cordilleras as the principal chain. The great rampart of the Andes in places is hundreds of miles across. Productive plains and fertile valleys lie on the western side of the Continental Divide as well as on the Atlantic slope. Besides, there are many bifurcations of these lofty ranges which must be pierced toward the Pacific. The mineral belt with its incalculable wealth, after centuries only partially exploited, has its basis of profitable production and export by means of the water transport of the Pacific. ”

“ In addition to its contract with the Southern Pacific, the Western Development Company undertook certain miscellaneous construction, including work on the Northern Railway, and the San Pablo and Tulare Railroad, the building of steamers for the Central Pacific, bridges and buildings for the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific, general repairs for the various companies controlled by the associates, and even finally private residences for Hopkins, Stanford, and Crocker. ”

“ Territorial averages, however, made up of returns from small companies and from large, from local and from through concerns, may reasonably be expected to be higher than averages which apply only to large systems. The Southern Pacific received more on the average than its competitors, and almost as much as the group in which it lay, in spite of the fact that it enjoyed a through business in which a great many of the small western lines had no share. ”

“ When men learned that instead of finding a short route to China they had come upon two great continents that shared the Western Ocean, they turned their thoughts to discovering what was known as the Northwest Passage. They hoped to find a way by which ships might sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean north of America. The great English explorers in particular were eager to find such an ocean route, and this search was the real beginning of the fur-trading around Hudson's Bay, the cod-fishing of Newfoundland, and the whale-fishing of Baffin Bay. ”

“ It is thought that a military post, to which our ships of war might resort, would afford protection to every interest, and have a tendency to conciliate the tribes to the North West, with whom our trade is extensive. It is thought also that by the establishment of such a post the intercourse between our Western States and Territories and the Pacific and our trade with the tribes residing in the interior on each side of the Rocky Mountains would be essentially promoted. ”

“ For many years these laws served as a bulwark without which the Page 255 sparse population of our Western States would have been swamped by the influx of Asiatics. In early days it was easier for the Chinese to cross the ocean than for the people of our Eastern States to cross the Continent. Now, however, the completion of railroads has reduced the continental transit to five or six days, in lieu of many months; and the population of our Pacific Coast is so considerable that there is no longer any danger of its being overrun by immigrants from the Far East. ”

“ The movement westward, which began before the earliest written history, and has continued ever since, has now reached a stage upon which the West meets the East, and the East and the West are one. It has come about through extension of the domain of the United States to the shores of the Pacific, through extension of European influence into countries of the Orient and through various movements that have begun the development of commerce on the Pacific Ocean, on a scale large already, and destined to an infinite expansion. ”

“ It is most surprising that so little is known of the great islands and the long line of coast from Puget’s Sound to Sitka, ample as its resources must be even for recruiting the transient commerce of the Pacific, independent of its immense intrinsic value. To the region bordering the Northern Pacific the finest maritime positions belong throughout its entire extent; and no part of the West of Europe exceeds it in the advantages of equable climate, fertile soil, and commercial accessibility of the coast. ”