St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1873-10-03
A Gigantic Work.

The world no longer wonders at any
thing. At least that may he said of the
reading and thinking portion of the
community, which has within the past
few Years witnessed the achievement of
tcats in art and science which half
century ago would have been deemed
impossible. Chief among them have
been those great engineering works i'll
various parts of the world. called out
hy the necessities of travel and trans
pDrtation, which have made neiGhbOrs
of distant countries, and broken down
the barriers of time and space. Hardly
more than dozsn wears ago the tray
cllcr who iouIneycd from SueZ to Cairo
across the desert held his way among
the bones of camcls and the relics of
pcri>hcd caravans. At that time near
ly all Europe was laughing at the crazy
Frenchman who was trying to dig Il
canal somewhere hctween the Mediter-
rancan and the Red Sea. Those who
did not laugh were incrcdulous, for had
/ not Lord PalmerSton. the English Pre-
/ mieT. declared that the canal should
/ not. and had not scientific men declared
/ that it could not. he made Did not
common SENSE teach. everybody said,
! that the sand of the desert would fill
/ the ditch faster than the multitude of
/ Arab woIkmcn could possibly dig it
ont And vet. notwithstanding the
icerS of the world the han of Lord
/ PalmcrSt"m and the prophecies of men
of science. the canal exists, to-day,
hearing heavily laden ships on its
bosom. ummolcSted 10y sand or BedouinS,
and changing the cOul>c of nlne-tenthS
| of the commerce of the ancient and
modern worlds We have before made
mention of another gigantic project, the
parent and hero of which is the same
/ Frcnchman who dug the SucZ Canal.
The circumstances and the peculiar
difficulties of the new scheme are very
similar to those of the first. The same
doubt and diScouragcmenta are express
ed. and. though PalmcrSton no longer
lives, there still exist other prophets of
evil nearly as eloquent. Mr.. LcSSeps
proposes to build IL railroad of 25OO
miles. from Orenhurg, in Southeast
Russia. on the banks of the tral, to
Peshawur. in Northwestern India. Over
this route freight and passengers, and,
l if need he. troops could he forwarded
from Calais tn Calcutta, through War
saw and Moscow, without break of
gauge, and possibly without change of
ears The entire line would he 1900
miles in length. two-thirds of which Is
already finished. There remain now
but 300 mil to complete, and this
link to finish the great chain, VI. Les
>epS proposes to supply. All the out
lay he demands from the Government
at st. Petersburg. is S7O0.0OO. This is
for the preliminary work, and the proba-
bilitics are that he will get it. OF course
there is strong opposition to the
scheme in England, and on grounds
which are at once apparent. When the
canal was being built the bugbear was
France: now, with the railway, it is
Russia. As nation, aver the alarm
lists. England has done many blind and
~elf-damaging things: but. say they, it
is to be hoped that the spectacle may
not be Witnessed of England's encour
agcmcnt of il Russian strategic line of
railway straight toward India, which
would he virtually relinquishing the
British grip upon that country.
Notwithstanding. we have faith that
VI. LcS>cps will he as fortunate in the
carrying ont of his present enterprise as
he was in his former one. His success
in the canal project stimulated his am
bllIoI anu MS 'h'llS, anu Will 'hc
prestige which clings to his name we
see no difficulty, or, at least nothing of
an insuptribIe nature, i'll his achieving
the end aimed at. and which will do
more towards civilizing and harmonic
ing the conflicting elements of the va
rious countries through which the iron
road may run than all other influences
combined Boston Globe.
.y The piazza around the fall style
of shoes is little broader than those
built in the summer.