The position of the various stores of coal in the Pacific is of extreme importance as an index to the future distribution of power in that portion of the world; but it is not enough to know where coal is to be found without looking also to the quantity, quality, cheapness of labor, and facility for transport. In China (in the Si Shan district) and in Borneo, there are extensive coal fields, but they lie “the wrong way” for trade. On the other hand, the Californian coal--at Monte Diablo, San Diego, and Monterey--lies well, but is bad in quality. The Talcahuano bed in Chili is not good enough for ocean steamers, but might be made use of for manufactures, although Chili has but little iron. Tasmania has good coal, but in no great quantity, and the beds nearest to the coast are formed of inferior anthracite. The three countries of the Pacific which must, for a time at least, rise to manufacturing greatness, are Japan, Vancouver Island, and New South Wales, but which of these will become wealthiest and most powerful depends mainly on the amount of coal which they respectively possess so situated as to be cheaply raised. The dearness of labor under which Vancouver suffers will be removed by the opening of the Pacific Railroad, but for the present New South Wales has the cheaper labor; and upon her shores at Newcastle are abundant stores of a coal of good quality for manufacturing purposes, although for sea use it burns “dirtily,” and too fast, the colony possesses also ample beds of iron, copper, and lead. Japan, as far as can be at present seen, stands before Vancouver and New South Wales in almost every point: she has cheap labor, good climate, excellent harbors, and abundant coal; cotton can be grown upon her soil, and this, and that of Queensland, she can manufacture and export to America and to the East. Wool from California and from the Australias might be carried to her to be worked, and her rise to commercial greatness has already commenced with the passage of a law allowing Japanese workmen to take service with European capitalists in the “treaty-ports.” Whether Japan or New South Wales is destined to become the great wool-manufacturing country, it is certain that fleeces will not long continue to be sent half round the world--from Australia to England--to be worked, and then round the other half back from England to Australia, to be sold as blankets. The future of the Pacific shores is inevitably brilliant; but it is not New Zealand, the center of the water hemisphere, which will occupy the position that England has taken in the Atlantic, but some country such as Japan or Vancouver, jutting out into the ocean from Asia or from America, as England juts out from Europe. If New South Wales usurps the position, it will be not from her geographical situation, but from the manufacturing advantages she gains by the possession of vast mineral wealth.