THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1880.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3526, 14 April 1880, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1880.

The English nation and several other European nations have gradually become more and more anxious to make fresh discoveries, inaugurate fresh scheme! of money making, and colonise in all parts of the Southern Hemisphere. Thii being undoubtedly the case, it is a great wonder that expeditions are not more frequent. Sir Julius Vogel, when writing to the New Zealand Government a short time ago, reverted to these faots, and stated it as his opinion that there would ultimately be a scheme adopted similar to the one proposed by him to the House some six years ago. It is surprising that enterprise is insufficient now to enable a project entailing fresh discoveries, both rich in a material and philosophical light, to be accomplished. The Western Islands in the Pacific Ocean, whose name is Legion, offer great advantages, and no small gain would be derived from settling them with industrious and painstaking colonists. As an example we may mention the high state of cultivation Pitcairn Island has attained through the industry of the mutineers of the Bounty, and we may point to the happiness enjoyed by the simple inhabitants on that solitary island. It will be remembered that they went to Norfolk Island for a change, in order to participate in the fertility that Nature has endowed that island with. Easter Island is also a fertile island, but it is a very long way to the west, being about 2000 miles from the coast of Chili—indeed the inhabitants of Easter Island bear the ondeaiable Chilian type of phvsiogno«*y. These are only isolated cases, but there are hundreds of islands which are comparatively unknown, but which only require cultivation and settlement to make them reproductive. A company started, with the object of colonising islands at present little known, would undoubtedly be repaid, although some necessarily heavy expenses would have to be borne at the outset. The fertile islands in the Pacific are either peopled by barbaric races, who have no notions beyond filling their pipes and ungodlies, when by industry they could raise for themselves flourishing settlements. In the face of existing ! things it is highly reprehensible ou our i part, that we should allow the thousand i islands given for our use bj the Divine Protector, to remain idly wnproduotive, while there are men and means to accomplish their successful settlement. It is really, a pity lhat the islands so bountifully bestowed upon us should be left to lie waste. It may be truly said of them that

" There dulness, universal dulness, reigns O'er brainless heads and desolated plains.'" In conclusion we would point out the uscessitT of disoofery. Thb is an

essentially go-ahead a~e, and if we allow these islands to remain unproductive, we shall have cause hereafter to be ashamed of not having initiated the colonising movement. When another nation takes it up and shows England the way to colonise, it will be indeed time for us as Britons to hide our diminished heads under the nearest bushel. Sir Julius Vogel, who is a very far-seeing man, and many others have advocated such a scheme, but their endeavours to enhance the value of insular possessions and dependencies, to add to the geological and mineralogical store of knowledge, and generally improve the condition of those islands, have been met with careless replies and in many cases derisive sneers. Be that so; the time will come when people who now laugh at Sir Julius's advanced ideas, will turn round and say that " They had always said that the colonisation of the islands was a certain fact to be accomplished."