But in Japan one may find an example of the possibilities of the Pacific in the years to come. When China, with its 400,000,000 people, awakens as Japan has awakened, and builds up an international trade in proportion to that of Japan, it will send a commerce across the seas unprecedented in volume. When it buys and sells as Japan buys and sells, the waters of the Orient will vie with those of the Occident in the size of their fleets of commerce. The opening of the Panama Canal promises to be one of the factors in hastening the day when the Orient will become as progressive as the Occident, and when sleeping nations will arise from their lethargy and contribute uncounted millions of tons of traffic to the Pacific Ocean, making it a chief theater of commerce as well as of world events. In our own country the course of empire has been sweeping toward the Pacific. Where once the center of most things lay east of the Mississippi River, now we find its agriculture, its mining industries, and its commercial activities gradually moving westward. The center of cotton production, once in those States celebrated in the melodies of the Southern plantation, has moved westward and to-day in Texas, Oklahoma, and even Southern California, cotton is grown in a way which shows that King Cotton has caught the spirit of the age and is extending his territories westward toward the Pacific. And all of this means a growing business and an expanding traffic through the Panama Canal. On the Atlantic side there are signs without number that many nations will be up and doing in the reformation of the commercial map of the world. The islands of the Caribbean form a screen around the Atlantic end of the canal, and the majority of them are British possessions. Many of their cities will be situated upon the new international trade routes that will be called into being by the opening of the Panama Canal. At Kingston, Jamaica, great improvements are projected, coaling stations are planned, and other steps are being taken which will enable the British Government to reap what advantage it can from the construction of the canal. With its splendid diversity of climate, brought about by the wide range of elevated land, the fruits of the temperate zones may be grown, as well as those of the Tropics, and, as John Foster Fraser expresses it, Jamaica may become the orchard of Great Britain.