REPORT OF MR. HINTON.
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advantages to help to form a great city. The position of Vienna is unique, and had not the evil influence of a repressive governmental system checked private home or foreign enterprise, preventing everything like thorough development, Vienna must have been, at the present hour, second in importance to no continental city. It stands upon the confines of civilization and semi-barbarism, on the bank of a stream which receives into its waters no less than thirty-four navigable rivers, and which, connected as it is with the Rhine and the Maine by the Ludwig’s Canal, directly unites the German Ocean with the Black Sea. Of all European capitals it is nearest to those points where the Elbe, Weichsel, Oder and Dniester rivers become navigable; the nearest to the Adriatic (Trieste), the Grecian Archipelago (Piraeus), the iEgean Sea (Solonica), and the Black Sea (Constantinople, Varna, Kur- tange and Odessa). From Moscow or Petersburg to Italy ; from Moscow to Spain, France and England; from London, Edinburgh and Dublin to Constantinople; from Paris to Odessa; from North Germany to Stamboul or Athens,—the mad to be taken must run through Vienna; and that road must be the Austro-Hungarian Railroad, long in contemplation, and which will be built, if the Austrian executives pursue with vigor the path upon which they seem to have set out. Vienna is the greatest and most advanced outpost °f manufacturing industry on the* banks of the Danube; it is the natural depot of the raw produce furnished by the vast tract of country known as the Lands of the Danube, from ^hich it may be distributed to its proper destination for con- sumption ; the central mart for the corn, woollen, hide and leather trades, for wine and other agricultural produce of these territories by the Danube, is in Vienna. The numerous railroads radiating from the city are obvious proofs of the magnitude of the existing and expected commercial traffic.
The above is but a brief summary of the city’s natural and ac quired advantages.
The real struggle between the great powers of Europe to-day, lies in the endeavor to gain control of rivers and territories where commerce and industry can find the best P a ying return for their work.