It cannot be said that the two American peoples know very much of each other. The aloofness is partly from geographical, partly from racial causes. Enormous distances separate their respective principal centres of life. New York and the city of Mexico, for example, are several thousand miles apart, although linked by more than one railway system. Huge deserts intervene, those dreadful wildernesses of Northern Mexico, on whose existence, indeed, an early president of Mexico, who distrusted the northern neighbour, was wont to congratulate his country, summing up the sentiment in his aphorism of "Between weakness and strength--the Desert!" As for communication by sea, it may be recollected that Europe is more accessible to, for example, Brazil and Argentina, than is New York. On the Pacific side of the continent the greater part of a hemisphere intervenes between the large centres of population of North and South America. From San Francisco, or other great seaports, to Callao and Valparaiso the steamer voyage occupies far more time than is necessary to cross the Atlantic. The people of Peru and Chile or Ecuador, and the people of California or Oregon are little more than names to each other, inhabitants of another world. Great stretches of undeveloped territory intervene, and through communication by rail has not yet been established, as the Pan-American Railway remains still on the lap of the future. Among those nations which in the future may be reckoned upon as likely to display a desire for closer relations with Spanish America are the Chinese and the Japanese. The Mongolians seem to have--as before remarked--some affinity with the American Indian race, possibly by reason of some very ancient kinship or common ancestry, for it is held by ethnologists that America may have been very early peopled by Mongolians. In Peru, for example, the Chinaman readily establishes himself in business in the smaller villages (and often surrounds himself with several wives or female companions from among the Indian women). The Japanese have long cast eyes upon the upper reaches of the Amazon basin, or Montaña, of Peru and Brazil, for purposes of settlement and industry, and of late a company from Nippon has acquired a large tract of land there, with such an object. These folk are not unwelcome, or not so far, by the South Americans, who are desirous of seeing these vast and sparsely inhabited regions brought to life. This possibility of a modern Mongolian "invasion" into the heart of South America is one which may take on greater importance in the future.