an five days; and from Malta to the extreme eastern coast of the sea d back again hardly ten days' sail.

a

Take the grand highway of nations to India. England has her places refreshment scattered all along it with almost as much regularity as pôts on a railroad. From England to Gibraltar is six days' sail; ence to Sierra Leone twelve days; to Ascension six days; to St. elena three days; to Cape Colony eight days; to Mauritius not more; Ceylon about the same; and thence to Calcutta three or four days. ing farther east, a few days' sail will bring you to Singapore, and v more to Hong Kong, and then you are at the gates of Canton. ark now that in this immense girdle of some twelve or fifteen thousand les there is no distance which a well-appointed steamer may not easily complish with such store of coal as she can carry. She may not, leed, stop at all these ports. It may be more convenient and economl to use sails a part of the distance, rather than steam. But, if an igency required it, she could stop and find everywhere a safe harbour. What is true of the East Indies is true of the West Indies. England as much power as America to control the waters of the Western lantic and of the Gulf of Mexico. If America has Boston and New ork and Pensacola and New Orleans and Key West, England has lifax and the Bermudas and Balize and Jamaica and Nassau, and a ›re more of island-harbours stretching in an unbroken line from the orida Reefs to the mouth of the Orinoco.

But it is not simply the number of the British colonies, or the evenness th which they are distributed, that challenges our highest admiration. e positions which these colonies occupy, and their natural military ength, are quite as important facts. There is not a sea or a gulf in world, which has any real commercial importance, that England has t a stronghold in the throat of it. And wherever the continents nding southward come to points around which the commerce of tions must sweep, there, upon every one of them, is a British settlement, d the cross of St. George salutes you as you are wafted by. There is rdly a little desolate, rocky island or peninsula, formed apparently by ature for a fortress, and formed for nothing else, but the British lion s it secure beneath his paw.

This is a literal fact. Take, for example, the great overland route om Europe to Asia. Despite its name, its real highway is on the ters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. It has three gates,-three one. They are, the narrow strait of Gibraltar, fifteen miles wide; that ace where the Mediterranean narrows between Sicily and Africa to 38 than a hunded miles wide, and the strait of Bab-el-mandeb, venteen miles wide. England holds the key to every one of ese gates-Gibraltar, Malta, and at the mouth of the Red Sea, not one it many keys. There, midway in the narrow strait, is the black, bare ck of Perim, sterile, precipitous, a perfect counterpart of Gibraltar; d on either side, between it and the main-land, are the ship-channels hich connect the Red Sea with the great Indian Ocean. This England ized in 1857. A little farther out is the peninsula of Aden, another ibraltar, as rocky, as sterile, as precipitous, connected with the main nd by a narrow strait, and having at its base a populous little town, a rbour safe in all winds, and a central coal depôt. This England ought in 1839. And to complete her security, she has purchased of me petty Sultan the neighbouring islands of Socotra and Kouri,

What a tremendous limitation this is! A passenger-boat, whose engines move with the utmost possible economy, having no cargo but the food of her inmates, will carry only coal enough for thirty-three or thirty-four days' consumption. This is the maximum. The majority cannot carry twenty-five days' supply. And when we add the armament and ammunition, and all that goes to make up a well furnished ship, you cannot depend upon carrying twenty days' supply. Put now, in time of war with a great maritime power, your ship where she would be most wanted, in the East Indies, and close against her the ports of the civilised world, and the sooner she takes out her propeller, and sends up her masts higher, and spreads her wings wider, the better for her. That is, under such circumstances, modern improvements would be worse than useless; a sailing ship would be the best possible ship. Or come nearer home. There is the Alabama, swift as the wind, the dread of every American merchantman. How long would she remain a thing of terror if she were shut out from all ports but her own, or if Northern ships were permitted to frequent British and French ports for her destruction? Or consider another case equally pertinent. We are told, and no doubt truly, that the loss of Norfolk, at the commencement of the war, was an incalculable injury to Northern America. That is to say, the removal of a place of naval supply and repair only the few hundred miles which divide the Chesapeake from the Hudson was an untold loss. Suppose it were removed as many thousand miles, what then? One single fact, showing what, under the best of circumstances, is the difficulty and expense of modern warfare, is worth a thousand theories. In 1857, then, it took two hundred thousand tons of coal to supply that part of the English fleet which was in the East,-two hundred thousand tons to be brought from somewhere in sailing ships. If ever a contest shall arise among great commercial powers, it will be seen that modern science has made new conditions, and that the first inexorable demand of modern warfare is coal depôts, and docks and machine shops, established in ports easy of access, and protected by natural and artificial strength, and scattered at easy distances all over the commercial world. In short, men will appreciate better than they do now, that the right arm of naval warfare is not mail-clad steamers, but well-chosen colonies.

The sagacity of England was never more clearly shown than in the foresight with which she has provided against such an emergency. Let war come when it may, it will not find England in this respect unprepared. So thickly are her colonies scattered over the face of the earth, that her war-ships can go to every commercial centre on the globe without spreading so much as a foot of canvas to the breeze.

There is the Mediterranean Sea. A great centre of commerce. It was a great centre as long ago as when the Phoenician traversed it, and, passing through the Straits of Hercules, sped on his way to distant and then savage Britain. It was a great centre when Rome and Carthage wrestled in a death-grapple for its possession. But England is as much at home in the Mediterranean as if it were one of her own lakes. At Gibraltar, at its entrance, she has a magnificent bay, more than five miles in diameter, deep, safe from storms, protected from man's assault by its more than adamantine rock. In the centre, at Malta, she has a harbour, land-locked, curiously indented, sleeping safely beneath the frowning guns of Valetta. But from Southampton to Gibraltar is for a steamship an easy six days' sail; from Gibraltar to Malta not more

than five days; and from Malta to the extreme eastern coast of the sen and back again hardly ten days' sail.

Take the grand highway of nations to India. England has her places of refreshment scattered all along it with almost as much regularity as depôts on a railroad. From England to Gibraltar is six days' sail; thence to Sierra Leone twelve days; to Ascension six days; to St. Helena three days; to Cape Colony eight days; to Mauritius not more; to Ceylon about the same; and thence to Calcutta three or four days. Going farther east, a few days' sail will bring you to Singapore, and a few more to Hong Kong, and then you are at the gates of Canton. Mark now that in this immense girdle of some twelve or fifteen thousand miles there is no distance which a well-appointed steamer may not easily accomplish with such store of coal as she can carry. She may not, indeed, stop at all these ports. It may be more convenient and economical to use sails a part of the distance, rather than steam. But, if an exigency required it, she could stop and find everywhere a safe harbour.

What is true of the East Indies is true of the West Indies. England has as much power as America to control the waters of the Western Atlantic and of the Gulf of Mexico. If America has Boston and New York and Pensacola and New Orleans and Key West, England has Halifax and the Bermudas and Balize and Jamaica and Nassau, and a score more of island-harbours stretching in an unbroken line from the Florida Reefs to the mouth of the Orinoco.

But it is not simply the number of the British colonies, or the evenness with which they are distributed, that challenges our highest admiration. The positions which these colonies occupy, and their natural military strength, are quite as important facts. There is not a sea or a gulf in the world, which has any real commercial importance, that England has not a stronghold in the throat of it. And wherever the continents trending southward come to points around which the commerce of nations must sweep, there, upon every one of them, is a British settlement, and the cross of St. George salutes you as you are wafted by. There is hardly a little desolate, rocky island or peninsula, formed apparently by Nature for a fortress, and formed for nothing else, but the British lion has it secure beneath his paw.

This is a literal fact. Take, for example, the great overland route from Europe to Asia. Despite its name, its real highway is on the waters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. It has three gates,-three alone. They are, the narrow strait of Gibraltar, fifteen miles wide; that place where the Mediterranean narrows between Sicily and Africa to less than a hunded miles wide, and the strait of Bab-el-mandeb, seventeen miles wide. England holds the key to every one of these gates-Gibraltar, Malta, and at the mouth of the Red Sea, not one but many keys. There, midway in the narrow strait, is the black, bare rock of Perim, sterile, precipitous, a perfect counterpart of Gibraltar; and on either side, between it and the main-land, are the ship-channels which connect the Red Sea with the great Indian Ocean. This England seized in 1857. A little farther out is the peninsula of Aden, another Gibraltar, as rocky, as sterile, as precipitous, connected with the main land by a narrow strait, and having at its base a populous little town, a harbour safe in all winds, and a central coal depôt. This England bought in 1839. And to complete her security, she has purchased of some petty Sultan the neighbouring islands of Socotra and Kouri,

giving, as it were, a retaining-fee, that though she does not need them herself, no rival shall possess them.

As we sail a little farther on, we come to the Chinese Sea. What a beaten track of commerce is this! What wealth of comfort and luxury is wafted over it by every breeze! The teas of China! The silks of farther India! The spices of the East! What ships of every clime and nation swarm on its waters! The stately barks of England, France, America, and Holland! And mingled with them in picturesque confusion, the clumsy junk of the Chinaman, the Malay prahu, and the slender darting bangkong of the Sea Dyak! Has England neglected to secure on a permanent basis her mercantile interest in the Chinese Sea? At the lower end of that sea, where it is narrow and bends into Malaccca Strait, she holds Singapore, a little island mostly covered with jungle and infested by tigers, which to this day destroy annually from two to three hundred lives,- a spot of no use to her whatever, except as a commercial depôt, but of inestimable value for that, and which under her fostering care, is growing up to take its place among the great emporiums of the world. Half-way up this sea is the island of Labuan, whose chief worth is this, that beneath its surface and that of the neighbouring mainland are hidden inexhaustible treasures of coal, which are likely soon to be developed, and to yield wealth and power to the hand that controls them. At the upper end of the sea is Hong Kong, a hot, unhealthy, and disagreeable island, but which gives her what she wants, a depôt and a base from which to control the neighbouring waters. Clearly the Chinese Sea, the artery of Oriental commerce, belongs far more to England than to the races which border it.

Even in the broad and as yet comparatively untracked Pacific she is making silent advances toward dominion. The continent of Australia, which she has monopolised, forms its south-western boundary. And pushed out from this, six hundred miles eastward, like a strong outpost, is our own New Zealand; itself larger than Great Britain; its shores so scooped and torn that it is a very paradise of commodious bays and safe havens for the mariner; and lifted up, as if to relieve it from its island tameness, are great mountains and dumb volcanoes, worthy of a continent, and which hide in their bosoms deep, broad lakes. Yet the soil of the lowlands is of extraordinary fertility, and the climate, though humid, deals kindly with the Anglo-Saxon constitution. Nor is this all; for, advanced from it north and south, like picket-stations, are Norfolk isle and the Auckland group, which, if they had no other attractions, certainly have this great one, good harbours. And it requires no prophet's eye to see, that, when England needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the innumerable green coral islets which stud the Pacific.

Is

Turn now homeward, and pause a moment at the Bermudas, "the still vexed Bermoothes." Beautiful isles, with their fresh verdure, green gems in the ocean, with airs soft and balmy as Eden's were! They have their homely uses too. They furnish arrowroot for the sick, and ample supplies of vegetables earlier than sterner climates will grant. this all that can be said? Reflect a little more deeply. Here is a military and naval depôt, and here a splendid harbour, land-locked, amply fortified, difficulty of access to strangers, and all this within three or four days' sail of any one of the Atlantic ports north or south. England keeps this, as a sort of half-way house on the road to her West