certain preponderating influence of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South Sea, we have no reason to be even slightly jealous of the step our neighbours have taken. They have accepted a little of the responsibility which attaches itself to all efforts at colonisation, and though I confess I am no great believer in French efforts in this direction, still it is far better to know the exact position France occupies in the Pacific; and it is quite possible that with an enlightened Government at Papeete, the Society Islands would soon become no despicable rival to the Fiji Group, especially if British or American energy was welcomed by the authorities. By the last census there are 230 British subjects and 144 citizens of the United States in Tahiti, as against 830 Frenchmen; so even at present we are not hopelessly out of the race. What more can be done by Anglo-French co-operation remains to be seen.

French influence in all human probability will be for a long time to come confined to the Society, Marquesas, and Tuamotu Groups, while (though nominally an independent kingdom protected by Great Britain and America) the Sandwich Islands in the North Pacific are virtually controlled by the United States.

England's sole existing colony is that of Fiji; but as an immediate step in the right direction, whether considered from a political or commercial standpoint, Great Britain is in my opinion morally bound to assume the sovereignty of the Samoan and Tongan archipelagoes. If, as I suggest in a later chapter, British colonisation in the Pacific assumes a very definite character, it will almost assuredly follow that other annexations, which in no way would affect in

juriously European powers, would have to supplement those of Tonga and Samoa; but the speedy incorporation of the groups referred to would be a piece of philanthropic statesmanship which in the years to come, when the Australian liners head for the Pacific Canal at Panama, will certainly prove its wisdom. Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa should at present be the British Polynesian Dominion; and if, with the certainty of the Inter-oceanic Canal before us, we commercially realise to-day the importance to us as an Imperial as well as a trading people of the islands of the great South Sea, our children will, I apprehend, have to build on the foundations we have laid.

A glance at the chart of the Pacific will show how the course I recommend would centralise British influence in Polynesia. 'Neutral Tonga' is, it is true, an independent kingdom, but I am convinced its inhabitants would welcome the Protectorate of Great Britain as a preliminary step to annexation.

The state of Samoa at the present time is one of hopeless chaos, and the only hope of the group is annexation to this country. The rights of the United States to the harbour of Pango-Pango would have to be respected, but, unless I am much mistaken, the authorities at the White House would prefer the rule of Mother England to a state of affairs which benefits nobody. Central Polynesia as a British dominion would mean in 'the future in the distance' more than I care to say.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FUTURE IN THE DISTANCE.

WE had left Apia and were well inside the Fiji Group, and in a few hours, Jackson said, would sight Ovalau. Early one morning, some hours before breakfast, we were lounging on the deck for the first time for a few days, as we had had a succession of choppy seas and a quantity of rain, and we were discussing, as of yore, Polynesia, its peoples and its future. On this occasion Jackson was more than usually communicative on the commercial side of the question, and I learned a great deal about the trade of islands the existence of which is almost unknown to the world, and he especially urged the necessity of inter-insular steam navigation, at any rate between the more important centres of Polynesian trade.

'I am afraid,' said he, 'that I know very little of the actual soundings of the Pacific, but it seems to me a pity that, if it were possible, no telegraphic cable exists from San Francisco to New Zealand. You see it would connect Honolulu with California, then it could strike Samoa and Tonga, and so reach Fiji and New Zealand, and thus place the Australasian colonies in direct telegraphic communication with London,

the wires all passing through English-speaking countries or where the English-speaking race is dominant. Perhaps it would not pay at once, but it would pay handsomely by-and-by. The trade of Australia and New Zealand, not to mention these islands, will soon become so important that a duplicate line will be wanted, and, if it can be done, this is the way it should come.'

'You look a long way ahead, Jackson.'

'That's the only way of fighting the battle of life,' was his reply. If you don't see a little before your nose, if you can't judge a little of God's natural law of development, and learn what part you can take in the execution of that decree, you are not the man I took you for.

'When the Californians projected the trans-continental railroad of America, do you think they thought that it would pay directly from the passenger travel? No, sir; they took good care to secure some land on either side of the road, and waited patiently for the westward march of emigration.

'The shanties of stations you saw as you came to San Francisco from that St. Louis about which you seem so wonderfully infatuated, will in fewer years than you think become the centres of living townships, and then the founders of the Union and Central Pacific Railways, or their sons, will reap the gigantic harvest they deserve, that is, if they haven't already reaped it.'

'Some of these days they'll do the same thing in Australia,' was my rejoinder. 'I met a gentleman named Lowndes at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco,

about a year or so ago, who had the whole thing down to dots, and he told me they only wanted a little money to stir up the Colonial Governments and get them to make the needful land concessions; but I confess it seemed to me an almost hopeless task, knowing, as I do, the absurd jealousies which exist among the Australasian Colonies. At any rate, they might unite in a trans-continental railroad, which would open up a magnificent field for emigration. It is not all "American Desert" across Australia,' I continued, ' and the track, so Lowndes said, has been thoroughly surveyed from end to end.'

'It'll come,' said Jackson, and one of these days Pullman cars, or perhaps something better, will leave Melbourne for Port Darwin. Leland Stanford was called a visionary dreamer, but Leland Stanford drove the spike into the last rail of the trans-continental railroad on Promontory Mountain in May, 1869.

"The Panama Herald has a good motto,' continued Jackson. 'I don't know where the lines come from, but they have go in them, any how:

"For the right that wants assistance

'Gainst the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance,

For the good that we can do."

That's my motto,' said the skipper. 'I believe in the future of this life, and also in that of eternity; little things make up time, and big things here which we shall think little things up above, will also have their value when you and I have grasped the secrets of electricity.'