United States were once multiplying, they will have grown at the rate of 50,000,000, while the whites by an impossible rate of progression will only number 12,000,000. Under these circumstances, can we conceive any large part of the continent where the whites will be able to settle down, and develop an industrial civilisation, such as is found in any part of America and in Australia?

In all this discussion it has been assumed, for purposes of argument, that our imaginary European immigrants will be able to spread and establish themselves everywhere. No one can seriously expect this. There must be large tracts more or less like Senegambia and the parts about Sierra Leone, where only white men of exceptional constitutions, and submitting to a very strict regime, can live and do work. In the struggle for existence the African race, which can flourish everywhere in its native habitat, is bound to have an advantage over the race that can only thrive in the best parts of the continent.1

It has seemed important to argue out the case of Central Africa at some length, because no other part of the world is supposed to furnish so magnificent an outlet to the teeming myriads of Europe. The assumption is, that it is to be another Australia, an assumption which leaves out of account the fact that the Australian aborigines have been weak and few, and that the climate of the settled parts of Australia is magnificent. Next in importance to Africa for

1 "The really appalling mortality of Europeans is a fact with which all who have any idea of casting in their lot with Africa should seriously reckon. The malaria spares no man. no prediction can be made beforehand as to which regions are haunted by it and which are safe."-Drummond's Tropical Africa, p. 44.

..

western Europeans are the islands of the Malay Archipelago, which cover an extent of land equal to half Europe, and which are at present most imperfectly peopled by a population which may be roughly put at between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000. It cannot be extreme to say, that an additional 200,000,000 might easily settle in those of the islands which, like Celebes, Sumatra, New Guinea, and Borneo, are not peopled up to one tithe of what they could support.1 It is almost equally certain that these colonists cannot be white men. After holding Java for centuries, the Dutch are still nothing more than a garrison, a civil service, and a collection of foreign traders. They number about 30,000, while the native population has more than quadrupled during the century, and is now nearly 20,000,000 Settlement by Dutchmen in Java is not prohibited, and a good many old employees live in the hills; but the climate is better suited for natives, and this is even truer of Borneo and New Guinea, the countries which offer most attraction to immigrants. These, except in favoured parts, have the hot damp climate which is deadly to the native of the Temperate Zone. That any great number of European immigrants could be acclimatised in them seems more than doubtful; that even if they came

1 The four islands specified have alone an area of 837,000 square miles, and a population roughly estimated at about 8,000,000. Java and Madura with less than a sixteenth of this area have a population of 20,000,000. But besides these islands, there is Luzon, as big as Ireland; "eighteen more islands are on the average as large as Jamaica" (4193 square miles); "more than a hundred are as large as the Isle of Wight" (135 square miles).—Wallace's Malay Archipelago, p. 3. Five years ago, Obi Major, with an area of 600,000 acres, and "apparently both fertile and healthy," was still uninhabited. -Guillemard's Cruise of the Marchesa, vol. ii. p. 235.

they could compete with the Chinese labour, which follows the English rule everywhere in Malaysia, is not to be believed. The work of the European in this archipelago is to organise government, maintain peace, make roads, and form plantations.

There is a vast tract of country in Central Asia that offers great possibilities for settlement. Eastern Afghan, and Western Turkestan, with an area of 1,500,000 square miles, have a population which certainly does not exceed 15,000,000, or ten to the square mile. Were they peopled as the Baltic provinces of Russia are—no very extreme supposition— they would support 90,000,000.1 It is conceivable that something like this may be realised at no very distant date, when railroads are carried across China, and when water—the great want of Turkestan—is provided for it by a system of canalisation and artesian wells. Meanwhile, it is important to observe that whatever benefit is derived from an increase of population in these regions will mostly fall to China. That empire possesses the better two-thirds of

1 Marvin in the second chapter of his book on Merv brings evidence to show that the districts between the Atrek and Goorgan, and the Atrek and Sunbar rivers, the country between Astrabad and Meshed, and between Meshed and Herat, are for the most part eminently fertile. He adds on good Russian authority that great parts of the steppes that are called desert could be transformed into excellent pasture by irrigation. Schuyler says of the valley of Shahrisubs: "Kitab, Shaar, and even Yakrbak and Tchirakahi with their surrounding villages looked like forests rather than cities from the number of gardens and orchards" (Turkistan, ii. p. 62). Of the district between Bukhara and Varganzi, a distance of thirty miles, he says: "The whole road led through well-cultivated gardens and fields" (Turkistan, ii. p. 114). Bukhara, however, is one of the least promising parts of Turkestan; and Schuyler notes elsewhere that the desert is gaining upon the cultivable land (Turkistan, ii. p. 312). Of Eastern Turkestan, a region containing at least 250,000 square miles, and only 1,000,000 inhabitants, Boulger says that it has been called "the garden of Asia" (Life of Yakoob Bey, p. 2).

Turkestan, and can pour in the surplus of a population of 400,000,000. Russia can only contribute the surplus of a population of about 100,000,000; and although the Russian is a fearless and good colonist, there are so many spaces in Russia in Europe to be filled up, so many growing towns that need workmen, so many counter-attractions in the gold-bearing districts of Siberia, that the work of peopling the outlying dependencies of the empire is likely to be very gradual. Indeed it is reported that Russia is encouraging Chinese colonists to settle in the parts about Merv.

Thus far the argument has aimed at showing that the most highly civilised races of the world, being those at present which are more or less purely Aryan, are not likely to wrest any large tracts of territory from half-civilised or savage peoples. That the races which now occupy the United States and Canada will people the countries they are in, with some possible exceptions to be noted hereafter, seems scarcely to be doubted. It may be hoped that this population will be numbered by hundreds of millions. That France and Italy will gradually Europeanise Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli seems very possible. It may even be that Morocco will be absorbed. These countries are rich and sparsely inhabited, and their native populations of Arabs and Kabyles may easily be assimilated to their European conquerors. In the south-east of Europe it seems certain that the Turk will sooner or later die out or cross back into Asia. His failure to establish himself permanently is incidental evidence how hard it is to change the population of a country. The Osmanli made life almost unendurable to the subject people for centuries,

but though he depopulated the country, and paralysed its progress, he stopped short of extermination. The inevitable result has been that the industrial races have increased, while the military race has declined; so that the Turks proper in Europe, who were numbered at from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 in the reign of Solyman I. (1520-1566),1 can only now be estimated at a little more than a million and a half. The succession of the Turk at Constantinople is certain to devolve upon a civilised people, and whether it fall to Russia, Austria, or one of the emancipated states, will mean that the higher race has entered again upon part of its natural habitat, from which it had been irregularly expelled. Beyond this it is possible that Russia may contribute a large immigration to Western Turkestan; that English settlers may reinforce the white population of the Cape, so as to keep it dominant; and that the Australian feeling against Asiatic immigrants may keep Northern Australia free from any overwhelming influx of Chinamen or Hindoo coolies.

Meanwhile, the small triumphs which the Aryan race may achieve in these directions are likely to be more than balanced by the disproportionate growth of what we consider the inferior races. China is generally regarded as a stationary power which can fairly hold its own, though it has lost Annam to France, and the suzerainty of Upper Burmah to England, and the Amoor Valley to Russia, but which is not a serious competitor in the race for empire. There is a certain plausibility in this view. On the other hand, China has recovered Eastern Turkestan from Mahommedan rule and from a Russian protectorate,

1 Creasy's History of the Ottoman Turks, p. 199.