The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-08-23
$4,000 MILES BY WIRE
NEWS FROM CHINA COMES At THE
RATE OF AZ lille A MINUTE.
First Word of n story Is i'm Type mt
New York Before the Last Plunges
Into the Sea from Hong Kong.

II Is quite twenty-five luOuSd nu IlllSS, -
the cable lightning flies, from Hong Kong
TO Coney Island. SO that it is quite safe to
say that when the messages are sent which
tell us of the doings of the contending
forces of Japan and China. the front end
of the procession of words is coming ashore
at the late lamented McKane's bailiwick
before the rear end has been emptied into
the sea by the Hong Kong operators. Pekin
is exactly due east or west of New York.
as you choose, being on the same parallel
of latitude and but twenty degrees nearer
to the west than to the east, and Hong
Kong is as far south of Pekin as Havana
is from New York. So if there were an
airline telegraph to the Chinese capital,
the message to the World telling that war
at last had been formally declared be-
tween the Japs and the Johns would only
have had to fly a little matter of some
thing like twelve thousand miles.
But it is by ma ~ and devious paths.
under tropical seas and over bleak Asiatic
mountain ranges, across the dark stretch
of Persia, through the land of the Arabian
Nights, across the Caucasian mountains,
skirting around the lonely shores of the.
Black sea, up through the country of the
Danube, across Austria, across Germany,
across France to England, and from Eng
land, in its last. final deep-water plunge
under the North Atlantic to Coney Island
over all these weary leagues of land and
sea the signalled words are rushing on
their way TO the telegraph room under the
World dome, where the operator sits calm
ly smoking his pipe and catching them on
the fly.
40 matter what the name of the town in
China the message is dated as coming
from, it is Hong Kong that is the great
cable clearing house. Here it is the mes
sages are dumped into the sea, not touch
10 and a mlf H1nrl tho <n,- ~
marshy shores OF Singapore. 1t is only
about half a mile in some places from Sing
apore to the Malacca peninsula. and the
books say that tigers go across, and as they
hardly sail over in catboats they must
swim. SO the message you read at break
fast may very well have flashed under the
tawny belly of a tiger, for the BOOKS cannot
tell a lie. And they are very bad tigers,
too; these tigers of the straits, with a
again saying that the tigers count upon
about one Chinaman a day from Singa-
parently a particularly fine flavor to make
the tigers swim so far for him
But the words which flashed under the
bad tiger as he splashed along on his
l~eisurely way TO luncheon are in type in
the World office before he has got ashore
and. found a tender Chinaman to his taste,
for there is a mar in Singapore who catch
es them as they rush in out of the wet and
sends them hurting back into the water
again, whence they leap up to the bold
coast of densely wooded Penang. Here
they catch a long breath for a dive across
another sea to Madras, away down in
Southern India.
With the exception of two brief plurges,
one up to and partly through the Persian
gulf and the other under the English chan
mel, ii is all land travel for thousands of
leagues after leaving Madras. The first
heat is a little skip of $40 miles northwest
ward across India to Bombay. Then the
story takes TO the water again, until it
PUSHES out at white-walled. plague infested,
filthy Bushire, on the Persian gulf. Sin
Dads rocs and Persian gulf whales that
looked like islands and loadstone mountains
are mere humdrum details compared with
this cable-message journey; Sinbad could
race out a pretty good-SiZed sea yarn, but
ne would have drawn the line at such per-
formances as now are everyday occurrences
right in his own stamping ground.
Perhaps there is just a gasping moment
or two or rest for the message at l;ushire.
1t is TIC Rotany bay of cable operators,
sometimes when the management thinks
they need a little quiet life away from
temptation, and the climate of Busnire is
not calculated to inspire a violent foi! N of
energy. So we will say there are fifteen
minutes for re~freshment a. Bushire, ard
men on the hylng train OF words goes to
Iorty Sn1raz, nearly nVe thousand feet
above the level of the sea, and tie hand
soonest town in all Persia. But there is no
stop at Shiraz. Teheran is the place where
the story changes wires. From Tehe-an il
caps lie Caucasus, Skips around the cast
ern and northern shores of the Black sea,
naShes through much-battered Sebasto-
FOL, and so on 10 Odessa, where l. is
switched to another wire that carries ii
| IlTOuSn the Balkan provinces to Austria.
Germany, France and London, whence il
Is flung to Lands End, on the bleak Cor
nish coast of England, and there it takes a
long breath for its final plunge down among
the whales and sharks and rotting bones
of dead ships and dead men at the bottom
of the North Atlantic. to be greeted at
last by the Coney island elephant and mer-
ry-go-rounds untwiSting the chains of har-
mony that tie Daisy Bell'' and Sweet
Marie"
An hour is a reasonably long time for
a word to make this journey from China
TO the telegraph room under the World
dome, and as many a message before the
China-Japan war is over is likely to take
more than an hour in the sending, ii NAV
very well happen that the front end of the
story is being frozen into cold type while
the rear end is kissing into the sea at far
away Hong Kong. Operators at Hong
Kong, singapore. Penang, Madras, Bonn
Lands End and Coney island are ticking
away at the same time on the same mes
sage which World compositors are putting
into type though it not infrequently hap,
pens that London works directly with Te-
continent.
The messages from Japan go, as a rule,
under the sea to Vladivostock. whence by
the Great Northern lines they rush across
Siberia TO st. Petersburg and thence "a
London by way of Copenhagen. And in ad-
dition to the overland routes there is ar
wat communication by way of Alden
the Red sea, the Mediterranean and the
Bay of Biscay 10 London. You pay your
money and take your choice, and il costs
about sixty cents a word less by way Of