We wonder how many of our readers are aware of
the extent of "Fiji," as the colony is called. We certainly had in our own minds greatly underestimated it, and we venture to say most even of those who have watched the Colony with interest have done the same. The Lieutenant-Governor, Mr. Des Vceux, in his annual message, delivered to the Legislative Council on January 29th of this year, stated that most people thought the Islands about as important as the Scilly Islands, but "that a line drawn round the extremities of the colony would describe a figure of which the shortest diameter would be over 260 miles in length, the longest over 370 miles ; and a steam-vessel passing over this line at ten miles an hour would occupy little less than five days and nights on the voyage. Of the eighty or more inhabited islands enclosed by this line, one is about as large as Jamaica, and considerably larger than Cyprus ; second would contain Mauritius three times, and Barbadoes ten times ; and the aggregate area of the whole is greater than that of all the British West India Islands (Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Windward and Leeward Islands)." The islands will grow every subtropical product, and already, thanks to Sir Arthur Gordon's wise device of taking revenue in kind, as recently described in our columns, are already paying their own expenses.
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