THE VICTORIA REGION. 51 



brief, may. be taken solely as applicable to the 

 question of products of which something can be 

 learned at present. But in a country like this, 

 one ought to assume a very large percentage of 

 export from those products and plantations which 

 can only arise when Europeans seriously begin to 

 develop the country. A Roman scientific traveller 

 reporting on London in the time of Julius Caesar 

 would probably have been able to point out that 

 the Thames was a navigable river and full of 

 salmon, that the natives were energetic, and so 

 on, but most of his report would be occupied 

 by such questions as whether woad could replace 

 the expensive Tyrian purple ; and the modern 

 African explorer is in the same question. It ap- 

 pears to me that the few products on which one 

 has enough data to speak are extremely favour- 

 able, but it is only when one turns to the ques- 

 tion of imports that one sees how very full of 

 promise the future of the country seems to be. 



