A NEW ZEALANDER AT HOME.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2181, 21 February 1881, Page 3

A NEW ZEALANDER AT HOME.

One of the victims of retrenchment in the New Zealand Telegraph Department sends a friend in Auckland his first impressions of England:—“ One of the first things that strikes you about London is the narrowness of the streets in the city. If it was not for the underground rail, you would wonder how people could get along at all. Queen street on a Saturday night is a fair sample of the all day long throng in every street in this huge city, only they haven’t got a street anyti ing like as wide. The underground rail is a great institution, only the first thing to do is to buy a map and thoroughly study it. It is a double line with lota of branches, and os trains start from either end every four minutes, at intermediate stations you will see that there is a tr«in either up or down every minute ; they only stop a bare half minute, so you haven’t much time to think whether you ought to get out. It is the most perfectly-worked line in the world. Last year over sixty million people travelled on it without a fatal accident. It relieves the streets a great deal. I went over the Central Telegraph office, which is a vast affair. Id the operating room there were fifteen hundred people at work, and the din and clatter of the instruments was at first awful, but you soon get used to it We in New Zealand thought a lot about the duplex being used on our lines, which I find was in use here four years before adopted in the colonies, and now they are working quadruple! with the greatest success, that is sending four different messages simultaneously on the same wire. Unlike our Government, every facility is given here to the press. I will send some day a letter on the working of the English system. There is also a pneumatic delivery to dificrent parts, the greatest length being four miles. There is also, to facilitate press telegrams, a large punching staff for the automatic system, by which means telegrams can be sent at the rate of twelve hundred words a minute with unerring accuracy, and go great is the perfection of the quadruple! that it is even used at this high rata of speed. Precoe, the head of this department, is just the man for the place, and seems determined to keep up with the times. Oysters aro a luxury in London. The price for natives is 3s 6d per dozen. They are very fine though, aud are about the same size us the Auckland ones. Crabs are very fine, and a great size, weighing os much as ten and twelve pounds. The best London fish is the turbot, and after that, I think the herring.