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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7661, 20 June 1896, Page 2

Her Majesty tub Queen enters upon the COth year of her reign to-day. The men who can remember a King of England are now but few and grey-headed, and those who are able to look back upon that time must be awed with the wonderful march of civilisation during Her Maj 'sty's reiga. The Empire, too, has expanded in a wonderful manner. In India our arm of territory and population have doubled. The blanks on the map of Africa have been filled up and mostly colored red. Australia and New Zealand have almost entirely been peopled and developed during the Queen's reign. The ludian territory added since 1837 includes 275,000 Bquare miles — an area larger than Austria ; 80.0C0 Lquare miles of the rest of Asia, a space as vast as Great Britain, has been acquired ; South African possessions measure 200,000 square miles, the size of Germany ; East Africm, 1,000,000 square miles, or about half the extent of European Russia. The British Empire now embraces 10,000,000 square miles of territory, and is truly a dominion on which the sun never sets. Nearly one person out of every four on the earth owes allegiance directly or indirectly to the Queen, and it is very doubtful whether Cbiua with all her horde 3 supports so many people as the British Empire. When one considers the vast changes which have taken place during the last 59 years, it must bo conceded that the Queen's reign, now almost the longest ot any British sovereign, is the moat remarkable in the annals of English history.