Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/350

 33'^ INTERCOLONIAL COMMERCE. by any Asiatic people, whose want of maritime skill, judging from the experience of all history, will never enable them to equip a fleet equal to trans- port an army adequate to so great an enterprise. The Tartars, the only people of Asia who ever made extensive distant conquests, made an unsuc- cessful attempt on Japan in the year 1284, flushed with their success in the conquest of China, and with all the resources of that country at their com- mand, while the ports from which they sailed w^ere not above five or six days' voyage distant. The Eu- ropean race is the only one which can now effect distant conquests, and the very circumstance, the maritime voyage, which opposes an insuperable ob- stacle to the conquests of an Asiatic people, gives facility to theirs. Since the Japanese have shut up their empire, that race has been gathering round them. The Russians are, since then, colonized at Kamschatka, within a month's voyage. The Bri- tish empire has been established in Hindustan, not above six weeks' sail from them. A colony of the English has been founded in Australasia, destined to be a mighty empire, and not a month distant from Japan. Two great empires are established, or establishing, by the European race in the New World, the western shore of which cannot be above a month's voyage from Japan by the surest and easi- est navigation in the world. The danger is perhaps least from the quarter where, at first view, it appears