have observed, whether I am correct or not in my opinions, I
shall venture to lay them before my readers.

How it is that until lately we have never taken any notice of this
immense archipelago it is difficult to say, unless we are to suppose
that, up to the present, the other portions of the inhabited globe have
been found sufficient to consume our manufactures as fast as they could
be produced. It does appear strange that an assemblage of islands,
which, large and small, amounting to about 12,000 in number, equal in
territory to any continent, and so populous, for the inhabitants,
including the more northern islands, are estimated at fifty millions,
should have hitherto been unnoticed, and, at all events, have not
attracted the attention of our government. Moreover, there are such
facilities of communication, not being compelled, as with the Chinese,
to confine ourselves to five or six ports, at which the whole trade is
centred in the hands of a monopoly, taxed with the expences of
land-carriage, port duties, and other exactions. Here, on the contrary,
from the division of the territory into so many portions, we possess all
the advantages of inland navigation, if I may use such a term, for the
straits and channels between them serve as large rivers do on the
continents to render the communication with the interior easy and
accessible. And yet, although we have had possession of the East Indies
for so many years, this archipelago has been wholly neglected. At all
events, the discovery of it, for it is really such, has come in good
time, and will give a stimulus to our manufactures, most opportune, now
that we have so much increased them, that we are in want of customers.
Still we have, almost unknown to ourselves, been advancing towards it
step by step. The taking possession of the island of Sincapore was the
first and greatest stride towards it. Had it not been that we had
founded that settlement, we probably should not have been nearer to
Borneo now, than we were fifty years ago. Sir T. Raffles conferred a
great boon upon this country, and is entitled to its gratitude for
pointing out the advantages which would accrue from this possession.
Till we had made a settlement there, we knew no more of the eastern
archipelago, than what had been obtained by our circumnavigators, or of
the produce of it, further than that Borneo was the country from which
could be obtained the orang-outang.

Latterly we have been at some tro