To England in Eighteen Days.
The strides, says tb.e Sydney.Echo, that are being made ia .every direction are simply wonderful, and not the least striking is the way. in which the time of journey between England and Australia is beinjf lessened. Clipper-built ships at some time were thought to be very fast when they accomplished the trip in a little % over two months ; now the ocean steamers run the journey from Adelaide to Ply. mouth in thirty-nine days. , This was the feat which ihe Cliimborazo achieved"; but , there is, if the indications'of the times ' are to bo relied on, a, hiahrr pinnacle far in the march of successful accomplishment than any yot <£(!iier;iliy believed .pruclie-
able. Less than eighteen days between the, Old World and her Australian possessions is now on tho tapis, and many.of. advanced thought here think it possible within the next ten years. Those ladies, who are humourously 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 the 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 tight into Charing Cross, and that too without 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 opening at all hazards.' It is doubtless for the protection of her land and water routes to her great Eastern possessions that the Islands of Cyprus and. Socotra have been annexed. When some time in the future the idea shall have changed into an accomElished fact, the natural exclamation will c, what a shrewd old fellow that Bea« consfield-is! Not only did he buy the Suez Canal, and fortify it, and placed it in English hands, but he also opened a land highway to the East. It will come yet to be an iron-girdled earth.
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Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3009, 7 October 1878, Page 1
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344To England in Eighteen Days. Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3009, 7 October 1878, Page 1
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