OCEAN TELEGRAPHS.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 373, 21 May 1861, Page 4

OCEAN TELEGRAPHS.

The Geographical Society, popular and very prosperous (for at each of its fortnightly meetings a score of members are added to tha 1400 already enrolled), met last Monday. The main subject discussed was the North Atlantic electric cable. We may offer a few observations ou this

subject,

The discussion arose out of papers read at the preceding meeting by the persons who conducted the survey by land and sea from Scotland to Labrador, and when we say that those persons were Sir Leopold M'Clmtock, Captain Allan Young, and Dr. Rae, it is the same as saying that it was performed with skill and intrepidity. But the practicability of connecting the Old and New World by an electric cable is a very different matter from a survey. Schemes as feasible, and even a good deal more so, have totally failed; but the reader shall judge for himself when we enumerate a few of them.

First, then, the Great Atlantic Cable has been a great failure, and has cost the subscribers, as far as we understand, £450,000 ; tbe pounds and cab.c are equallyat the bottom of the Atlantic.

The next attempt was a greater, because a more costly failure. This was the Red Sea and Indian affair. It waß to have brought the Nile and the Indus almost within hail of each other, although the distance between them was little short of 1700 miles. For this adventme the Government has given a guarantee of 4^ per cent, on a million sterling for half a century, or, in other terms, the nation is for that long time to pay an annuity of £45,000, without receiving the smallest consideration in return. It never conveyed even a single message throughout, so that, as far as tho nation is concerned, the million sovereigns might as well have been consigned to the sea that swallowed up Pharaoh, his horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. In the debate which took place in the Commons on Thursday last, an hon. member naively and drolly ascribed the failure "to certain occult causes at the bottom of the sea, which could not be provided against."

Our next speculation was meant to connect England with Spain by Falmouth and Gibraltar, and the Government bargained in this case for a first-rate cable at the cost of some £400,000, but the Atlantic being deemed too deep for it, it was transferred to Rangoon and Singapore, a distance of 1200 miles, embracing the best part of the Bay of Bengal and the whole of the Straits of Malacca, among a hundred isles, islets, and coral reefs. The Ship bearing it was wrecked in Plymouth harbor, when the cable was discovered to be damaged by the corrosion ol the iron and the decomposition of the gutta percha. It was not, therefore, deemed good enough for the Indian Ocean, and it is now destined to connect Malta with Alexandria ; all the cables of the Mediterranean, whether English or French, having already failed.

If we include the cable which was to have connected Malta with Spezzia, through Sardinia and Corsica, and that which was to have connected Malta with Corfu, both of which have failed, we have spent not less than two millions in experimenting upon oceanic cables.

But we are not the only peeple who have failed in the matter of long cables. The cable that was to have connected Algeria with France will not work, although it embraces but the breadth of the Mediterranean. The Dutch laid down a cable between Batavia and Singapore about fix months ago. The distance is 660 miles, and it conveyed, like the great Atlantic cable, a few messages! when it stopped. Ships'

anchors and coral reefs were fatal to it; it has broken a score of times, and has b<sen finally givea up as a hopeless project. Such, then, being the result of our experience of oceanic electric cables, what chance of success can there be with a cable that proposes to bring the Old and New World together by the route of Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador, over seas infested by icebergs, aud along ice-bouDd coasts? We fear none whatever. The distance is little short of that across the South Atlantic. There are seagaps of 800 and of 500 miles, and the inhospitable land is rather «n hinderance than an advantage. We are, then, decidedly of opinion that a North Atlantic cable is a hopeless project that will not be, and ought not to be, attempted. The Government, goaded on by the press and the publio, has been already severely bitten, and will assuredly not guarantee a farthing. Without its guarantee there will as assuredly be no subscribers. Until some great discovery is made which no man at present even dreams of, our electric cables must be confined to the narrow seas, and the wafting of " sighs from India to the Pole " must be still au achievement known only in the domain of poetry.— -Examiner.