The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-11-24
THE WEST AND SOUTHERN AND TROPICAL

| Commercial people in the West are begin
ming to realize the vast importance of the
Southern market and of the tropical trade to
the future prosperity of Western interests
The great cities in that section, cities which
have been still more ambitious than great
and in some respects still more infatuated and
bipoted than ambitious, are learning at length
that the railways connecting them with the
Atlantic seaboard at points on the same
parallels of latitude, have in reality added
nothing to their permanent elements of
growth in population, wealth or widening
scope of trade. Even Chicago suspects that
she is no exception to the general fact that
the tendency of the Northern railway system
is to centralize capital and enterprise at its
ocean termini, and to subtract proportion
ately from the commercial resources of towns
at interior termini and on interior transits.
Nothing has thus far saved the chief West
ern cities from the operation of this inexora-
BILE law but their fortunate relation to those
two fresh water seas, the Mississippi on the
one hand, the Great Lakes on the other hand.
Strike these from existence tomorrow, and
in no long time Chicago and st. Louis,
Cincinnati and Louisville would be almost
literally swallowed up by New York and Phil
adelphia, Baltimore and Norfolk. They
would survive in geographical sense, to be
sure, but only as suburban appendages and
tributaries to metropolitan centers. The fact
is that the effect of railways, as feeders for
Eastern seaports, is as though some monster
should rise from the deep, and extend arms
as tough as iron and as resistless as steam, to
draw from the land every living thing to its
Unsuitable jaws. In so far as any Western
city has assisted eastern railways to nullify its
natural advantages as the port of fresh
water sea, it has co-operated to bring about
the eclipse of its own metropolitan des-
tiny. 1t is no less true that in so far
as any western community has aided
to disorganize industry and obstruct
material prosperity at the South, it has helped
to dry up the richest source on this continent
from which Western agriculture and COM
merce could hope for profit and aggrandize-
ment. There are some cheering indications
that the more thoughtful and enterprising
classes are awakening to lively appreciation
| of these truths. As an evidence of the In
creased interest which they feel in the vital
| question of the relation of Western interests
to the Southern market and to tropical trade,
may be mentioned the care taken by leading
Cincinnati papers to report In full and in
conspicuous manner o lecture recently deliv-
cred by Professor Fontaine, at the chamber of
| commerce in that city, on the subject of sd-
vancing the interests of the West by extend
| ing and improving its means of trading with
the Southern portion of the Mississippi val
ley and with the tropical countries. This
lecture, well stored with a variety of interest
ing facts, though it may contain little that
would appear new to an intelligent New
Orleans reader, possesses some features which
to the Western public will doubtless prove
both novel and suggestive. And such we
conceive to be the character Of the subjoined
passage:
The Amazon ard The Mississippi rivers, and all
the great rivers which empty into the caribbean
Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, between their mouths;
are most singulary connected by the equatorial
| current which forms the gulf stream; and their
connection indicates the commercial relations and
reciprocal ties which ought to bind together the
vast regions through which they flow. The
| Amazon runs from west to east almost directly
under the equator. and its great tributaries rise
both sides of it and pour the tropical rains into it,
whether the sun is on Cancer or Capricorn. The
| Mississippi flows from north to south, almost at
| right angles 10 it. The Rio Negro, the largest
| northern afiinent continues its course from the
Emerald river south into the Amazon. The
| Emerald river divides into two equal portions. one
/ half of which makes the Csssiquiare river which
flows into the Rio Negro, and the other branch
| empties into the Or0noco, which mouths on the
| northern shore of South America. Both these great
forks of the Emerald river are navigable for large
j vessels, and connect the Amazon and 0ronoco by
] natural ship canal from their mouths, through the
most fertile regions Of that great continent From
| the mouth of the Amazon TO the mouth Of the
Mississippi, the equatorial current flows against
! the eastern shores of South and North America
! touching the mouths of the 0ronoco, the Magda-
lena, the San Juan, Rio Grande and Brazos.
| Bottles thrown out at the mouth of the
| Amazon are always stranded on Galveston Is
land, or Terrebonne parish or some other parts of
the coasts of Texas or Louisiana. A vessel, with.
out hosting SAIL may steer with bare poles from
the mouth Of the Amazon to the Mississippi: and,
| on this singular voyage, it might touch at every
part OF GUIANA Venezuela, New Granada, Costa
| RIGA, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Texas,
and bring specimens of their costly productions 10
exchange with those of this valley. The Amazon
| rushes into this tropical current with one great
mouth, without bar. The Mississippi is strug
| Cling TO get In the same condition. Remove the
distractions at the mouth, and there will be moth
| ing 10 hinder the direct internsvgation between
these great rivers. which were formed by nature
to exchange their products.
We trust that the Western mind will con-
tinue steadfastly, and with increasing earnest
ness, in the direction indicated The West,
unless it renounces the grandeur of its future,
must find the secret of its great destiny in
frankly recognizing the truth that whatever
makes for Southern prosperity makes for
Western prosperity, and that the same tide of
tropical trade which will augment the volume
of commercial activity at New Orleans, will
still more greatly enrich st. Louis and Gin
cinnati. Our part of the Mississippi valley is
to yours, merchants and farmers of the West,
like Corsican twin. You cannot be indiffer-
ent to our wrongs and our hurts. Nature
will not let you. Our prosperity is to yours
as the right ventrcle is to the left ventricle of
the heart. Obstruct the one, or poison its
blood, and stiffness and death must inevitably
come over both. Were the West and South