"When the almost unbounded capacity for trade of the basins of the La Plata and Amazon is taken into view, embracing as it does a great variety of useful products which may be advantageously exchanged for the manufactures and agricultural productions of our own country, the mind is at a loss what limit to assign to the trade to which civilization and the extension of commercial facilities must eventually give rise. Nor are the advantages of this great prospective commerce to be confined to the immediate intercourse between this country and the regions to which we refer. While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. Heretofore the policy of the governments which occupy the regions watered by the La Plata and the Amazon, and their respective tributaries, has been so exclusive in its character as to trammel, if not entirely prevent, their intercourse with distant nations. The different sovereignties which have sprung into existence since South-America became independent of European control, have been so jealous of each other that they have appeared to try which should be most succesful in expelling foreign commerce, lest it might bring to some one of them benefits which others did not and could not possess. A wiser policy, however, appears to be about to prevail since the fall of Rosas, and there is good reason to believe that, hereafter, the commerce of those communities with the rest of the world, will be placed upon a more liberal foundation. Should such be the case, Rio de Janeiro can not fail to become the great centre of a largely increased trade in the southern hemisphere." "Should it be preferred to limit the extent of the American line to Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, the largest river in the world, there is at present a Brazilian line between that point and Rio de Janeiro, which, with the lines between Rio and the mouth of the La Plata, will render the connection complete.