Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1870-08-05
THE ERR OF GR.E.vD E.yTER-
PRESES.

The ago in which we live is magnificent,
not merely for the splendor and magnitude
of the triumphs that it has actually dchicucd
over matter, but even much more so for the
transcendant grandeur of those new and |
daring projects which it suggests. The Pa
cific Railroad and the Suez Canal have fol-
lowed swiftly in the wake of the submarine
telegraph; the Mount Gents Tunnel is a
mere matter of a little additional time; the |
railroad ferry across the English Channel, |
and the Euphrates Railway, intended to
unite the British East Indies directly with
Europe, overland, are under advisemcnt;
and Central American or Panama or 18th
mus canal is so actively agitated that, had
the typographical surveys already made
proved satisfactory, it would have been
practically started ere this. In the works
enumerated, we see the barriers OF inter-
vening seas, mountains and desert sands
all equally set at naught, and the inter
course and operations of mankind facilitat-
ed in a remarkable degree. We are trans
acting business between points accessible
| by telegraph and steam in a small fraction
of the time it required when men now only
in the bloom of life were children, aud tho
| 0rbater llAHUlluut Vi lllt NOIh hOut kttlS
| pace with its superior celebrity. Orders are
transmitted by cable and wire in the morn
i"e' and the goods are forwarded by and
steamer III the afternoon. No more waiting
Tor weeks to get reply to your dispatches,
| or Tor months i'll order to receive your mer-
chandise. click or two of tho wires on
TINS side, answered by another click or two
any number of thousand miles away, ns
a1,fs l.g. i i
peace proclaimed, and the fate Of empires
made known to the world.
Yet, all that we have done seems but the
merest preparation for what is coming, and
coming Immediately. ship canals are now
proposed to traverse, not narrow neclls Of
land only, but entire states and parts Of
continents, as we see in the plan to connect
the Zuyder Zee with the upper Rhine, A.
cross the main land of Holland; the mouths
of the Rhine with the Atlantic ocean, by
way of the Lot and the Garonne, thus en-
tirely avoiding the circumnavigation of
Spain, and the Persian Gulf with the Red
Sea, leading directly across Arabia.
In tunneling, a practical Italian engineer
proposes something absolutely novel in q
plan to sink a submarine passage under
the Straits of Messina, between the Italian
mainland and the Island of Sicily thereby
enabling the trade of all the opulent Italian
provinces TO he intermingled with sucl
speed and completeness as TO immensely
enhance values on both sides of the Straits
Should this scheme prove successful in on,
place, it would be applied in others, and {
difficult and dangerous navigation would
} cease to be one of the obstacles in the way
of swift progress.
, Again, we perceive by the European sci
l entific journals, that the problem of eria
| navigation has, at last, been taken up by
, practical hands with, as first result, re
) markable simplification of all details in tn
: machinery hitherto devised, and reduc
5 ton of the problem to such narrow limit
, as to render the promise of a genuine sue
; cess brighter than that of the dagucrreo
2 typo or the electric telegraph for man.
t years after Daguerre and Morse first begu
Q to hint ut their discoveries. One gram
l. point about all these advancing steps is tina
c each one is cotemporaneous with hundred
of minor discoveries in chemistry an
v physics that Immediately become aids
them, and render easy what, but shol
l. time before, seemed impossible. Thus III
inventor can look at what he proposes wit
10 stronger hope, in each succeeding yea
@ that if some special appliance that he r'
qurcs today be lacking, lie will be sure
10 find it ready to his hand after but n lit
t. waiting. Looking at things in this ligh
v we may anticipate far moro for every su
10 ceeding year in an epoch when all Il
l. wonders of oden times are eciPsed by Il
ordinary results of scientific research. III
d, word "impossible' is rapidly becomiI
in obsolete Mercantile journal.