It may be profitable for enthusiasts jumping at the conclusion that the American canal will pay from its opening, to study the returns of the Suez enterprise, the first full year of whose operation (1870) showed gross takings of only $1,031,365 from tolls levied upon 486 vessels. Speaking generally, a shipper sends his cargo by way of Suez only when 3,000 miles at least of ocean steaming may be saved--this is the approximate economy effected by the great turnstile between West and East, counting time, fuel, wages and other expenses. It may be accepted as a concrete fact that the employment of any canal by commerce must ever depend upon economic considerations. Already acknowledging our commercial predominance, Europeans are not blind to the real purpose of the Panama Canal. But it should be borne in mind that whenever it is an open choice between the canal toll and the equivalent of time at sea, the Briton will be slow to decide in favor of contributing to the resources of a nation rising in brief time to commercial premiership; and Frenchmen, economists by nature, will take a similar view, as will Germans, and shippers of other nations. Expressed in the fewest words, the employment of the Panama route will be governed exclusively by self-interest, computed from the standpoint of material economy; sentimentality will bring not one ship to Uncle Sam as a patron--unless it be an American ship. Suez will always be favored by European shipmasters determining routes for cargoes in which Panama and Suez present advantages practically equal; probably the expense of a few hundred miles additional travel would not cause them to break from the old route, by which there is no risk of accident or delay from canal-locks. A considerable percentage of the oversea carrying trade controlled by British bottoms is geographically independent of canals, and will always be. For example, the bulk of traffic to and from the west coast of South America--the rich nitrate trade of Iquique and Valparaiso--will not ordinarily be altered by the Panama Canal. The economy of distance from the latter port to England and the Continent by the canal being only about 1,500 miles, this traffic, except under unusual circumstances, will continue as long as it goes in British vessels to round the extremity of South America.