When the shipping of the world goes through the Canal, it will have direct access to a remarkable coast line which heretofore has been so isolated that it could only be reached from the eastern part of the United States and the western part of Europe by the long journey around South America. The coast line which is made immediately accessible by the Canal reaches for eight thousand miles from the California-Mexican line south to Cape Horn, three thousand miles from Panama northwest to San Diego in California and five thousand miles south from Panama to Punta Arenas. This coast, without the Canal and in its isolated position, conducts now an average foreign commerce valued at four hundred million dollars ($400,000,000). With the opening of the Canal this should be doubled or trebled in the next ten years. It is a safe prediction that the Panama Canal will have the same influence upon the western shore, comprising the following countries: Mexico, Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, which the construction of the transcontinental railways had upon the Pacific coast of the United States. The fact that their population and their commercial and industrial development to-day is somewhat limited is no argument against their possibilities in the future. There was a time when the best experts and judges in the public and official life of the United States declared that the Pacific coast of the United States was not only of little value but never would be of great consequence. There were, however, some wise men like Seward who recognized the mighty potentialities of our Pacific coasts and of the Pacific seas. There is every reason to believe that western or Pacific Latin America, in view of its varieties of resources and climate, will, under the influence of the Panama Canal, experience a development and progress that will astonish the world.