Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1896-01-18
A GREAT TELEGRAPH LINE.
PROM LONDON TO PERSIA ANB
BACK In A SECOND.
Something About the Lines Of the
Great Northern and Esstern
Telegraph Companies.

line across Siberia-the line
which, it will be remembered was
intended to be part of the route so
long projected into the United
States by Bering Strait, But the
American end of the project had
failed, and Russia found she had
an interminable stretch of line
across her barren steppes, and
now had nothing to attach the
end to. In fault of anything bet
ter to do with the struggling ter.
minus, it was carried to Vladivos-
tock. The Northern Telegraph
Company of Denmark saw the
possibility of utilizing this end
for a European communication
with China and Japan. Not that
China and Japan had expressed
desire for such u union.
The willy Danes took care not
to ask permission, but slipped the
land end of their cables into
shore in inoffensive d:ain. pipes,
and quietly made their connec-
tons until they had a cable run
ming from Hongkong to Annoy,
GutzlaT, Woo Sung, Nagasaki
CJapan), and connecting with the
land line at Vladivostock. When
the Chinese wakened up to the
presence of the cable, it was too
late to object. They simply pro-
fessed themselves utterly sceptical
Of its usefulness, and refused to
have anything to do with it.
However, they soon had a prac-
tical demonstration of its capubil-
tiles. An Oriei tai more bold
then his compatriots resolved to
act on the price of rice telegraphed
down to Shanghai from Pekin, and
to buy up quantity. He did so,
and made big sum. Soon after,
lottery drawing came of in
Pekin, in which many residents
of Shanghai were interested. The
lucky numbers were telegraphed
down, but the majority OF the
holders felt it unorthodox to trust
to the impious Western contriv-
ance which disdained time and
space, two things which the I'm
perial Dragon himself had always
respected, and they let their
scepticism go so far that they
sold their tickets for a song to
more progressive gamblers. The
next week, when the recognized
post arrived, the report of the
telegraph was confirmed. aThe
new contrivance could not have
had more impressive advertise
ment.
The Great Northern Company
in venturing into Chinese waters
to pick up the useless end of the
Russian land line at Vladivostock,
left floating end at Hongkong,
but Immediately another daring
company came on to meet it. The
year before, 1870, the famous
Eastern Telegraph Company, the
cable company which today pos
sesses nearly twice as many miles
of cable as any other in the world.
had laid its lines from Lands
End t. Gibraltar, thence to NAL
ia, and on to Alexandria. 1t had
also laid a line from Alden to
Bombay. On the other side of
the Indian peninsula, the Eastern
Telegraph Company, today the
second largest in the world, had
picked up the end laid down at
Bombay, and had run a cable
from Madras to Penang, and
from Penang to Singapore. When,
the next year, the Great North
ern appeared in Chinese waters,
it was an easy matter to run up
to Hongkong to meet 1t, and thus
was furnished the last link in the
tremendous circle which, begin
ming in England, crosses the north.
of Europe and Asia, passes down
the eastern seas of Asia, and
through the Gulf of Bombay, the
Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean
Sea, and the east Atlantic, back to
England.
Mr.. MUIR tells an incident that