individual value.  It is just so at sea.  While in itself the ocean opposes no obstacle to a vessel taking any one of the numerous routes that can be traced upon the surface of the globe between two points, conditions of distance or convenience, of traffic or of wind, do prescribe certain usual courses.  Where these pass near an ocean position, still more where they use it, it has an influence over them, and where several routes cross near by that influence becomes very great,—­is commanding.

Let us now apply these considerations to the Hawaiian group.  To any one viewing a map that shows the full extent of the Pacific Ocean, with its shores on either side, two striking circumstances will be apparent immediately.  He will see at a glance that the Sandwich Islands stand by themselves, in a state of comparative isolation, amid a vast expanse of sea; and, again, that they form the centre of a large circle whose radius is approximately—­and very closely—­the distance from Honolulu to San Francisco.  The circumference of this circle, if the trouble is taken to describe it with compass upon the map, will be seen, on the west and south, to pass through the outer fringe of the system of archipelagoes which, from Australia and New Zealand, extend to the northeast toward the American continent.  Within the circle a few scattered islets, bare and unimportant, seem only to emphasize the failure of nature to bridge the interval separating Hawaii from her peers of the Southern Pacific.  Of these, however, it may be noted that some, like Fanning and Christmas Islands, have within a few years been taken into British possession.  The distance from San Francisco to Honolulu, twenty-one hundred miles—­easy steaming distance—­is substantially the same as that from Honolulu to the Gilbert, Marshall, Samoan, Society, and Marquesas groups, all under European control, except Samoa, in which we have a part influence.

To have a central position such as this, and to be alone, having no rival and admitting no alternative throughout an extensive tract, are conditions that at once fix the attention of the strategist,—­it may be added, of the statesmen of commerce likewise.  But to this striking combination are to be added the remarkable relations, borne by these singularly placed islands, to the greater commercial routes traversing this vast expanse known to us as the Pacific,—­not only, however, to those now actually in use, important as they are, but also to those that must be called into being necessarily by that future to which the Hawaiian incident compels our too unwilling attention.  Circumstances, as already remarked, create centres, between which communication necessarily follows; and in the vista of the future all discern, however dimly, a new and great centre that must largely modify existing sea routes, as well as bring new ones into existence.  Whether the canal of the Central American isthmus be eventually at Panama or at Nicaragua matters little