The Sun.
London, England, 1857-02-19 00:00:00

BLYTH AND TYNE.

hof-volithr meeting of this company was held at
Newcastle-on-Tyne on Monday; Mr. J. Carr in the chair.
A dividend of 10 per cent. on preference and 8 per cent.
on ordinary and extension shares was declared. Messrs.
George Cruddas and Joseph Laycock were re-elected direc-
tors, and Robertson auditor. the proceedings then ter-
minated. •

RAILWAY TRAFFIC RETURNS.
LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAlLWAY.—Traffic
return for the:week ending Feb. 15, 1857 256,465 0 0
Corresponding week last year .. 53,333 0 0
GREAT NORTHERN RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for the
week ending Feb. 8, 1857 £19,277 5 4
Corresponding week last year 18,014 0 8
CHESTERAND HOLYHEAD RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for
the week ending Feb. 15, 1857 £3,993 0 0
'Corresponding week last year 3,923 0 0

Increa,ge in 1857 ....
_ __

--- -
LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAlLWAY.—Traffic re
turn fur the week ending Feb. 15, 1857 £21,753 1 8
Corresponding week last year 19,419 7 9
CORK AND BANDON RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for week
ending Feb. 14, 1857
Corresponding week last year l9O 5 3
GREAT LUXEMBOURG RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for the
week ending Feb. 15, 1857 £BO2 6 9
Coireapoudiug week last year 3OO 16 6
LONDON GENERAL OMNIBUS COMPANY.—Traffic re-
turns fur the week ending Feb. 14, 1857 £10,503 11 5

THE NEW LINE OF CONTINENTAL

COMMUNICATION.

There is, says Solomon, nothing new under the sun ;
and however hard it may be to accept an axiom like this
in this day of ours, when electric telegraphs, railways,
steam, and gas seem to be revealing the hidden secrets
of nature, we are, and not very seldom, compelled to ac-
knowledge its truth by the return to the way which our
ancestors trod some 800 to 1,000 years ago. Elec-
tricity and its management have brought distant com-
munities into Ruch close proximity, that the world is
not content now with circuitous passages, when others
more direct can be obtained. It is from this feeling that
the new route to Holland North and Central Germany,
and thereby the south, east of the Jura rarge of moun-
tains to Trieste, has been devised. There is no doubt of
the advantage to be obtained by this way of progress,
for the gain of time alone amounts to two days between
London and the Adriatic, by way of Harwich, Rotter-
dam, and the Dutch-Rhenish Railway ; and after
that by Vienna to Trieste. To say nothing of this
gain of time, in the great majority of instances of com-
mercial intercourse the saving of expense in the mul-
tittide of transits which make up the traffic of passen-
gers and goods between England, Holland, Germany,
Turkey, and India, at the very first will be perceived
to amount to a sum equal to the revenues of a kingdom,
and a saving in mercantile transactions equal to the pro-
fit on a shipping business. Of this the Liverpool mer-
chants are fully sensible, and have accordingly joined
themselves largely to the undertaking ; and there can he
no hesitation in saying tbat there is baldly a loor of rai'-
way in the midleud, the eastern, and the southern dis-
tricts of the country which will not reap a very consider-
able advantage by the opening of the means of tran-it
proffered by the London, Harwich, and Continental
Strain-packet Company.
The port of Harwich lies sixty-eight miles north-east
of London, is safe from every wind, lies due west of Rot-
terdam, and as far up in the North Sea as to be beyond
any of the coefi.cting ocean currents which act so
strongly nearer to the entrance and in the entrance of
the British Channel. Toe passages, therefore, between
the two ports are effected with more ease, spee,i, and
safety than between any other ports of equal distance
from each other. This is one and certainly nut an unit -
important consideration, but it is only a minor for ,
ministers to another of far higher interest. To the com-
mercial public of the metropolis the route is so short
wad speedy compared with the long, and what we
have learned to consider the tedious, estuary of the
Thames, by which a vessel to Rotterdam, Hamburg, Ica
the Baltic ports has first to go seventy miles out of her
course, beat against the head winds which check her
rounding by the Essex coast, and then make another
hundred miles in order to gain the very ground which
she would have reached so long before it she had started
oft transithe l
ess
certainly
n ly Harwichfor
from Harwich.
mulstt ise evrehraypsevbidyendtegthreaets,thbe ayutw
not
that, secure in the end the whels of the traffic between
London, Holland, Hanover, Si.xonYt and Central Ger-
many, for it will be both cheap and
nothing of any other portion of merchandise,speedy. T°
say
illustrate the observation by a
reference we may
to the vast
amount of treasure which is almost daily
from London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
and Hamburg,
the great danger to which arises from its pas4tge over
the sea, and for which the insurance
alone to London by
the Thames would pay nearly, if not entirely, the whole
of the carriage. As the traffic Pass
must of necessity _
over the Eastern Counties Railway, the shareholders of
that property are surely as much interested in the suc-
cess of the steam k Rotterdam
c ets passing between
and Harwich,the hold in the
as proprietors who only
London, Harwich, and Continental Steam PacksotcCoon
pany, and therefore the whole interest of that aesnsesvictoim.
may be reckoned upon for the promotionsen
b'ect on the
party. That, it is true, is only taking t,
but that, we
narrow ground of the value of the share
tso. rudent men.
presume, is not a matter of indifference_
Liverpool,t,
of and
We have said that the reerchante, _