408 The National Geographic Magazine 



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Foreign /1894 

 Commerce\l904 



|$223,084-,000 



$356,139,000 



Railways Constructed and Proposed in China 



merce and exploration,, became at once 

 its highway. It gave a new stimulus 

 to the efforts to find an all- water route 

 by which to reach the commercial prize 

 of the Orient, and the result was, first, 

 the discovery of the American continent, 

 and a little later two all-water routes to 

 the very doors of the Orient, one of 

 these by the Portuguese, around Africa 

 and across the Indian Ocean, and the 

 other by the Spanish, around South 

 America and across the Pacific. 



But the knowledge that the Orient 

 could be reached by sailing around the 

 continents at the south did not satisfy 

 the people of northern Europe. The 

 Portuguese, as the first explorers of the 

 Indian Ocean, claimed the exclusive 



right of navigation in those waters, and 

 the Spanish claimed a similar monopoly 

 of the waters south of the American 

 continents. As a result, the English 

 and Dutch devoted their attention to 

 efforts to find other water routes to the 

 Orient, along the northern coasts of 

 the continents of America and Eurasia. 

 The Dutch sent expeditions to fight 

 their way through the ice along the 

 northern coasts of Europe and Asia ; 

 and England sent vessel after vessel to 

 explore the northern coast of North 

 America, each in the vain hope of find- 

 ing a passage to China. For years the 

 merchants of northern Europe waited 

 in vain for the opening of a northwest 

 passage to the Orient, until it finally 



