Indian Archipelago--nothing of the productions of the mainland--nothing
of the extent to which colonization might be carried in the
neighbourhood. Without data of this kind it is impossible, with any
pretensions to accuracy, to estimate the probable future importance of
our settlement at Port Essington, the value of which does not depend on
the fertility of Cobourg Peninsula, any more than that of Gibraltar on
the productiveness of the land within the Spanish lines. Victoria, if we
regard its own intrinsic worth, might be blotted out of the list of our
possessions without any material detriment to our interests; but its
importance, as a commercial station, is incalculable. It is, indeed, to
the country behind--at present unvisited, unexplored, a complete terra
incognita--and to the islands within a radius of five hundred miles, that
we must look if we would form a correct idea of the value of Port
Essington to the Crown. At present it may seem idle, to some, to
introduce these distant places as elements in the discussion of such a
question; but no one who reflects on the power of trade to knit together
even more distant points of the earth, will think it visionary to suppose
that Victoria must one day--insignificant as may be the value of the
districts in its immediate neighbourhood--be the centre of a vast system
of commerce, the emporium, in fact, where will take place the exchange of
the products of the Indian Archipelago for those of the vast plains of
Australia. It may require some effort of the imagination, certainly, to
discover the precursor of such a state of things in the miserable traffic
now carried on by the Macassar proas; but still, I think, we possess some
data on which to found such an opinion, and I am persuaded that Port
Essington will ultimately hold the proud position I predict for it.

As steam communication, moreover, must soon be established between
Singapore and our colonies on the south-eastern shores of Australia,*
this port, the only really good one on the north coast, will be of vast