Such are a few of the circumstances that would appear to have encouraged an increase of population on Java. They furnish no precise data on which to estimate its rapidity, or to calculate the period within which it would be doubled, but they allow us, if tranquillity and good government were enjoyed, to anticipate a gradual progress in the augmentation of inhabitants, and the improvements of the soil for a long course of time. Suppose the quantity of land in cultivation to be to the land still in a state of nature as one to seven, which is probably near the truth, and that, in the ordinary circumstances of the country, the population would double itself in a century, it might go on increasing for three hundred years to come. Afterwards the immense tracts of unoccupied or thinly peopled territories on Sumatra, Borneo, and the numerous islands scattered over the Archipelago, may be ready to receive colonies, arts, and civilization from the metropolis of the Indian seas. Commercial intercourse, friendly relations, or political institutions, may bind these dispersed communities in one great insular commonwealth. Its trade and navigation might connect the centre of this great empire with Japan, China, and the south-western countries of Asia. New Holland, which the adventurous _Búgis_ already frequent, and which is not so far distant from Java as Russia is from England, might be included in the circle, and colonies of Javans settled on the north, might meet with the British spreading from the south, over that immense and now uncultivated region. If we could indulge ourselves in such reveries with propriety, we might contemplate the present semi-barbarous condition, ignorance, and poverty of these innumerable islands, exchanged for a state of refinement, prosperity, and happiness.