“There can be no valid reasons for anxiety in regard to the future of the kingdom so far--and that is very far indeed--as its prosperity and happiness depend upon a continuance of the supply of warm waters from the west.” The writer of this article in the _London Times_ had not realized, or had not heard of, the elevation of Cuba and the emergence of the broken range of keys between Cape Gracias de Dios and Jamaica, nor had he considered the “suctorial influence” of the Mexican current in the Pacific, southward on the west coast of Mexico and Central America upon the Atlantic areas, nor had he suspected the quantitative effect of a higher barometric pressure in the Atlantic over the pressure resident above the surface of the Pacific, a difference practically amounting to a push upon the surface distensions of the Atlantic in the direction of the Pacific, the very moment a _sensible_ union between them took place. And it was a _sensible_ union. His comparison of it to a pinhole was utterly misleading. Above a certain minimum, no matter what the size of the major bodies of water were, relatively, connection between them meant, under the circumstances, mixture, and a hole four hundred miles wide was much above that minimum. At the very moment when he penned this astute demonstration, the Gulf Stream had begun to throw its seething waters across the sunken isthmus. And the effects followed with startling rapidity. The author of the consoling reflections quoted, perhaps had hardly had time to have forgotten the obsequious reception his words received, when his admiring listeners were brought face to face with the worst consequences he had considered absurdly impossible.