navies.  So far as national inclinations, as distinct from the cautious actions of statesmen, can be discerned, in the Mediterranean at present the Sea Powers, Great Britain, France, and Italy, are opposed to the Land Powers, Germany, Austria, and Russia; and the latter dominate action.  It cannot be so, in any near future, in the Caribbean.  As affirmed in a previous paper, the Caribbean is pre-eminently the domain of sea power.  It is in this point of view—­the military or naval—­that it is now to be considered.  Its political importance will be assumed, as recognized by our forefathers, and enforced upon our own attention by the sudden apprehensions awakened within the last two years.

It may be well, though possibly needless, to ask readers to keep clearly in mind that the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, while knit together like the Siamese twins, are distinct geographical entities.  A leading British periodical once accused the writer of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Caribbean Sea, because of his unwillingness to admit the name of any other state in connection with a body of water over which his own country claimed predominance.  The Gulf of Mexico is very clearly defined by the projection, from the north, of the peninsula of Florida, and from the south, of that of Yucatan.  Between the two the island of Cuba interposes for a distance of two hundred miles, leaving on one side a passage of nearly a hundred miles wide—­the Strait of Florida—­into the Atlantic, while on the other, the Yucatan Channel, somewhat broader, leads into the Caribbean Sea.  It may be mentioned here, as an important military consideration, 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 before us.

In each of these sheets of water, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, there is one position of pre-eminent commercial importance.  In the Gulf the mouth of the Mississippi is the point where meet all the exports and imports, by water, of the Mississippi Valley.  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 communication from the remote interior to the ocean highways of the world, all centres here at the mouth of the river.  The existence of the smaller though important cities of the Gulf coast—­Mobile, Galveston, or the Mexican ports—­does not diminish, but rather emphasizes by contrast, the importance of the Mississippi entrance.  They all share its fortunes, in that all alike communicate with the outside world through the Strait of Florida or the Yucatan Channel.