Terminating these two great Eastern routes we have in Australasia King George's Sound, Thursday Island, Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland, which may be regarded as positions of primary naval importance. Some of these are already fortified, others have their defensive works in progress. Secondary, and yet important, are Hobart, Adelaide, Brisbane, Wellington, Lyttleton, Dunedin, and other ports. Westward across the Atlantic, Halifax, Bermuda, St. Lucia, and Jamaica furnish adequate naval bases for the protection of the vast British commerce which traverses this ocean. The harbours of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence and Newfoundland, and of several West India islands, supplement these strongly fortified positions. On the Pacific Coast Esquimalt and Vancouver {67} furnish stations from which may be protected the new route of trade and travel opened to the far East, and the projected route to Australasia. Finally, the Falkland Islands, to which it has now been decided to give adequate fortifications, furnish a coaling place for ships in times of urgent necessity, and a point from which trade can be defended in the long voyage between Britain and Australia by the Cape Horn route. They also serve as a base of protection for our large trade with the Western coast of South America. It will be seen that the map illustrates another group of facts which we must consider before we can fully grasp the relation of this geographical distribution of the Empire to naval power in an age of steam. On the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Canada, in New Zealand, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland, in India, Borneo, and South Africa, coal is noted as among the products of these countries, and in them all, there are, in fact, great coal deposits forming in each corner of the globe, a wonderful complement to those of the mother-land. Here, then, is the outline of a maritime position such as no people ever enjoyed before. North and South, East and West, we bold the great quadrilateral of oceanic power. It is not an undue strength of position, for it has to match the greatest commercial expansion that history has known. The security of each part of the system seems essential to the security {68} of the whole, and therefore should be guaranteed by the united strength of all. And it is clear that under modern steaming conditions it is this very diffusion of the Empire over every part of the world which constitutes its greatest advantage for giving safety to a world-wide commerce. The conditions, however, under which this maritime position is maintained, and the vast and growing commerce of the Empire now enjoys security present some anomalies which cannot possibly have in them conditions of permanency.