HOME IN EIGHTEEN DAYS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5496, 7 November 1878, Page 3

HOME IN EIGHTEEN DAYS.

The strides (says the Sydney Echo) that are being made in every direction are simply wonderful, and nob the least striking is the way in which the time of journey between England and Australia is being lessened. Clipperbuilt ships at one time were thougnt to be wonderfully fast when they accomplished the trip in a little over two months. Now the ocean steamers run the journey from Adelaide to Plymouth in thirty-nine days. This was the feat which the Chimborazo achieved. Less than eighteen days between the Old world and her Australian possessions is now on the tapis, and many of advanced thought here think it possible even within the next ten years. Those ladies who are humorously described by Tom Hood in effect as beholding a coffin in every tackle and block, and spar connected with a ship will rejoice that -the dangers of sea during a trip Home are to be. lessened. The idea is this— Four days to the Gulf of Carpentaria, seven days to the Indian Continent, and then from seven to nine days from the Indian Continent, right into Charing Cross, and that too withoxxt leaving the railway carriage. It is no Utopian scheme. The valley of the Euphrates is the great land road to the East, and England must secure its openess at all hazards. It is doubtless for the protection of her land and water routes to her great Eastern possessions that the island of Cyprus and Scotra have been annexed. When some time in the future the idea shall 1 hare changed into an accomplished fact, the natural exclamation will be what a shrewd old fellow that Beaconsfield is ! Not only did he buy the Suez Canal, and fortify it, and place Egypt in English hands, but he also opened a laud highway to the East. It will come yet to be an iron-girdled earth.