Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/351

INTERCOLONIAL COMMERCE. 335 most imminent, from the Russians. Their establish- ment at Kamschatka is formed in a situation far re- moved from the effective power of the empire, and in a country by nature so sterile and inhospitable, that the European race can never become in it populous or powerful, nor can it ever therefore furnish the means of fitting out a great armament adequate to the conquest of Japan. The most imminent danger to the independence of Japan is from the western shore of America, either from the Anglo-Americans when they shall have spread to that coast, and when their settlements shall have become populous and powerful in that quarter, or, in a less distant time, perhaps, from the Spanish Americans of Chili, Peru or Mexico. These may yet avenge the wrongs, real or imaginary, which the Japanese did to their ancestors and to their religion. A powerful and ambitious people of Northern or Southern America would easily fit out a fleet on the Columbia at A- capulco, Lima, or Valparaiso, which, in a month's time, would invade Japan, unaware of what is passing in the rest of the world, and wholly unpre- pared to resist it. A¥hen the time comes that the Spanish Americans navigate the seas of India in numbers, they will probably not be without pretext. If one of their vessels, for example, should hap- pen to be shipwrecked on the coast of Japan, it is probable that, in obedience to the standing or- ders of the empire, which are inviolate, the crew