THE GAPE TELEGRAPH LINE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5599, 4 February 1879, Page 7

THE GAPE TELEGRAPH LINE.

The Cape Parliament has voted an annual subsidy of £15,000 a-year for twenty years, towards a cable connecting with either Maidera or Aden. The provincial Governments are also considering the same question. There is a movement at Cape Town in favour of Mr StrSUgeways’ project to connect the inland wires between South Africa and Egypt. Mr Watson,. the President of the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce, writes to the Timet, pointing out that it would be much the most economical arrangement. He states that the Cape lines hare teen carried as far north as Port Durban, in Natal, and that the Egyptian lines have been extended up the Nile to Kartohm. As the crow flies, the distance to be bridged over is 2500 miles. The Australian transcontinental line costs, he says, £l6O per mile, hut allowing £2OO per mile in this case the cost would only be a quarter of a million, against nearly a million and a quarter, the estimated cost of a cable. He advocates the land line further on political and humane grounds as certain to prove a deathblow to the slave trade, and to save the Imperial Government many thousands a year in maintaining cruisers on the coast of Africa. Mr Strangewajs has made no public response to this flattering endorsement of his bold idea. Possibly they have gone too far at the Cape to he able to cut short the negotiations they have been carrying on with the Cable Companies, or they may not have the right spirit for this kind of enterprise. Apropos of new cables, I was surprised to read in the newly issued report of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company that the negotiations for a duplicate cable have ended happily after all. The report alludes to the Conference of Colonial Secretaries, held in May last, and the agreement arrived at to offer a subsidy of £32,400 a year for 20 years for a second cable from Singapore. “Negotiations,” it says, “have since been carried on with the representatives of the Governments, which the Directors have the satisfaction of stating have resulted in an agreement on the above basis, the terms of which ore to he submitted for confirmation at the meeting.” No explanation is offered of the hitch in Colonel Glover’s negotiations for Press messages. Cable shares have gone up to-day.—London Correspondent.