With regard to India, the growth in the carrying-trade has been enormous since Vasco da Gama, four hundred years ago, found his way round the Cape of Good Hope to Calicut. For an entire century, down to 1600, the Portuguese monopolised the trade of the East, and as many as two and three hundred of their ships would often be gathered together in the port of Goa, taking in cargo for different Eastern and European ports. To-day, Goa is a deserted port, and the Portuguese flag is rarely seen--a ship or two per annum now being sufficient for all the trade between Portugal and India. In the century of Portuguese prosperity the English flag was hardly known in Eastern waters. It was the Dutch who drove out the Portuguese; and the reason why the Dutch were tempted out to India was because the rich cargoes brought home by the Portuguese could not be disposed of in Portugal, and had to be taken to Amsterdam, or Rotterdam, or Antwerp, where the opulent Dutch merchants purchased them for redistribution throughout Europe. This is how the Dutch came into direct relations with the Indian trade before the English, and why Barentz and others tried to find a near way to India for the Dutch vessels by way of the north of Europe and Asia. Failing in the north, the Dutch followed the Portuguese round the Cape, and reaching Sumatra, founded the wide domain of Netherlands-India. This occupation was effected before 1600; and between that year and 1670 they expelled the Portuguese from every part of the Eastern Archipelago, from Malacca, from Ceylon, from the Malabar Coast, and from Macassar. The Dutch in turn enjoyed a monopoly of the Indian trade for about a hundred years. Then with the rise of Clive came the downfall of the Dutch, and by 1811 they were stripped of every possession they had in the East. Later, we gave them back Java and Sumatra, with which Holland now does a large trade, reserved exclusively to Dutch vessels. But in India proper the Dutch have not a single possession, and it is doubtful if in all the Indian Peninsula there are now a hundred Dutchmen resident. Two immense streams of trade are constantly setting to and from India and Europe through the Suez Canal and round the Cape. Not only is the bulk of that trade conducted by the well-known Peninsular and Oriental, British India, City, Clan, Anchor, and other lines (though the Messageries Maritimes, North German Lloyd's, and other foreign lines have no mean share), but the whole coast-line of India is served by the steamers of the British-India and Asiatic lines; and British vessels conduct the most of the carrying-trade between India and Australia, China, Japan, the Straits, Mauritius, &c.