Telegraph Poles and Telegraph Wires.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 179, 20 October 1903, Page 3

Telegraph Poles and Telegraph Wires.

— *&. In the tropics the maintenance of a telegraph line in good order is a constant uphill fight against ail manner of interrupting enemies that operators and linemen in England never dream of. In Brazil the wires get tangled up with the cable-like web of an immense spider, which, dripping with dew or rain, makes cross connections, "short circuits." and "grounds" almost daily. Anfs often destroy the poles in a few weeks. All this is more or less true of all Central and South America. In the West India Islands the turkey buzzards make II Pe miserable for the te'egraph an 1 telephone people. These big, heavy birds — the only scavengers — abound in great numbers. They roo.ss on the wires or fly against them, and invariably bre^k them oi" short. In one lnrge town tin; telephone lines that ran by the public m U'lcet had to be put under ground because the buzzirds congrorruted there in cri-oa', numbers, rested on th'i wires, and broke them almost nightly. Ou c'u pampas of Argentina the herds of practically wild cattle rub and butt against the poles, and frequently break them down. For some years it was altogether impossible to maintain a line of telegraph through Persia for mure than a few days at a time ; the natives regularly destroyed it as a device of the evil one. Finally the Shah issued an edict making the loss of an ear the penalty for a first offence of destroying the telegraph line, the loss of a hand for the second, and death by being buried to the neck in sand beside the telegraph line the penalty for a third offence. One-eared men were common in Persia for several years after this, for the Shah was determined to introduce civilising influences.