Nitrate, minerals, wheat, barley, wool, hides--these are the main exports of the Pacific west, the returning imports being cotton goods, machinery, steel rails, woollens, coal, and all sorts of miscellaneous manufactures and supplies. But, as I said, the trade has been almost wholly with Europe, England enjoying a very predominant position. The United States have competed with Europe at great disadvantages. The trade has been mostly carried on in sailing vessels. Now such craft, to get from New York to South America, have been obliged to sail eastwards almost as far as the Canaries in order to catch the trade winds and weather Cape St. Roque on the coast of Brazil. The sailing vessel from Europe, on the other hand, sails right past the Canaries, and can give the American ship ten days' start in the journey to any part of South America south or west of the most easterly point of Brazil. If the reader will turn back to the chapter on the new distances he will see how the little streak of blue water at Panama will alter all this. Take one little fact to illustrate the change. Callao, on the coast of Peru, is, before the opening of the canal, farther by steam from New York than is the South Pole, but the Panama Canal will bring the city 1,000 miles nearer to New York by steam than San Francisco will then be. The canal will reduce the distance from New York to the Chilean nitrate port of Iquique by 5,139 miles (nautical), to Valparaiso by 3,747, to Coronel (farther south) by 3,296, to Valdivia (about 1,000 miles north of Magellan's Straits, nearly at the farthest southern limit of the commercially important part of western South America) by 2,900. Take Iquique, an important North Chilean nitrate port. By Panama this place is 4,004 miles from New York, but 6,578 from Liverpool. Their respective distances _via_ Magellan were 9,143 and 9,510.