From the earliest records of what has been termed profane history, down to the present day, we have been accustomed to regard Europe as the centre of civilisation and of wealth. From Asia, Greece and Rome in early times, and the commerce of European nations more recently, exacted tribute and rich products. Two centuries ago the precious metals and tropical yield of South America and the West Indies excited the rapacity of adventurers from this and other countries; and towards the close of last century we had to recognise the germs of a great Anglo-Saxon power occupying the Atlantic shores and territory of North America, which we now see competing actively with us for a share in influencing the affairs of the world. Still both Asia and the American continent were regarded as merely the feeders of the commercial and political greatness of Europe. Africa was and remains comparatively an unknown continent, whilst the inhospitable regions of the north are shunned by all, save the hardy mariners engaged in the pursuit of the whale and the seal, the former for its industrial usefulness, and the latter as affording us articles of comfort and luxury. The extreme southern hemisphere had, indeed, been explored by Cook, Vancouver, Fourneaux, and others; and its clusters of islands were laid down in our charts, and some of them claimed as calling-stations for the shipping employed in our commerce with India, whilst others were appropriated for their valuable tropical productions. But beyond this the Southern Pacific and Antarctic Oceans were comparatively unknown and unvalued. Below the latitude of Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Indian Ocean, their waters were an unbroken solitude, save that occasionally a ship bearing the British flag might be seen steering for our penal settlement of Australia, there to deposit its living freight of criminal outcasts beyond reach of contact with the populations of the civilised world; and more recently with a few adventurous colonisers going out to cultivate its untrodden wilds, and, amidst privations and arduous toil, to wring from its soil the means of living, which they had been jostled out of on that of their own densely peopled fatherland.