F.—Ba.

There are two telegraphic routes from England to Cape Colony. Both have landing-stations at Lisbon, one passes through the Mediterranean to Alexandria, through Egypt to Suez, through the Bed Sea to Aden, and from Aden the cable follows the east coast of Africa, touching, among other points, at Mozambique and Delagoa Bay in foreign territory. The other route leaves the first at Lisbon, and follows the west coast of Africa, touching at some fourteen points, eight of which are under foreign flags, those of Portugal, France, and Spain. Interruptions are frequent on both routes. There is evidence to establish that during the past four years communication between England and the Cape has been broken many times, and that the aggregate interruptions have averaged in each year seventy-five days on the west coast route, and eighty-seven days on the east coast route, showing that each cable is unavailable from six to seven days per month. While this refers to the average period that the cables have been thrown out of use, the durations of single interruptions have varied from one to thirty or forty days. As both lines are liable to be broken at the same time serious inconveniences have not seldom resulted. Every one will remember this contingency occurring when the Transvaal difficulty was at its height. Intense anxiety was then caused during the cable interruption of eleven days, when South Africa was passing through an acute crisis in her history. Obviously a new cable to the Gape is much required, and as the frequent interruptions to traffic by the two present routes is to a large extent owing to the fact that the cables are laid in the shallow water which prevails along the African coasts they are in consequence exposed to accidents to which cables in deep waters are not subjected. That part of the proposal to touch at St. Helena and Ascension, where the water is of ample depth, would give to the cable the necessary security and avoid the difficulties experienced on the present routes. It is, however, not so clear that the northern half of the new cable would be so fortunate. By landing at Sierra Leone or Bathurst, and Gibraltar, and terminating in Cornwall, the cable of necessity would be laid for some distance in shallow seas, where it would be exposed to injury from various causes, and where, too, the agent of an unfriendly nation, or, indeed, an evil-disposed fisherman, would have it in his power to destroy the cable with ease, totally unobserved. For hundreds of miles it would be exposed to such risks. The question may be asked, Would not this proposed new cable from England to the Gape with an extension to Australia be of general advantage ? To such a question there is but one answer. It certainly would be of general as well as special advantage, for the reason that we cannot have too many lines of communication. They are needed in the every-day business of trade and shipping, and, moreover, we must come to recognise that a complete telegraph system, ramifying wherever Her Majesty's wide domain extends, is an essential condition of the life and integrity of the British Empire. It is on this and on other grounds impossible to admit the claim of the Eastern Extension Company that the proposal submitted by them is preferable to a trans-Pacific cable, and that it will render it unnecessary. At the Colonial Conference of 1894 the outline of a telegraph system for the Empire was submitted. It was not confined to one side of the globe; the system projected embraced and encircled its whole extent, The scheme was illustrated by a map of the world, with the chief cable lines laid down upon it. If the proceedings of the Conference be referred to, it will be seen that a trunk line of telegraph was projected from London through Canada to Australasia, with extensions to South Africa, India, and China. It was shown that by the Canadian route all the chief British possessions on the four continents would be brought into electric touch with each other and with the Imperial centre in London. It was demonstrated, moreover, that this result could be accomplished without touching a single acre of foreign soil, and without traversing shallow seas, where cables are most liable to injury from ships' anchors and other causes, and where they can be so easily fished up and destroyed. No fact can with greater confidence be affirmed than that the cables by the Canadian route would be far less vulnerable than the existing cables or those now projected by the Eastern Extension Company. But, even if no advantage in this respect could be claimed, it requires no argument to prove that telegraphic connection between England and Australasia would be infinitely less subject to interruption from accident or wilful injury by having the Canadian line established in addition to the Eastern Extension lines, especially as the former would be on the opposite side of the globe, and far removed from the immediate theatre of European complications. It is not possible to believe that any one dissociated from and uninfluenced by the Eastern Extension Company can view the proposed Canadian Pacific cable with disfavour. If it be important'to strengthen the connection between the United Kingdom and the outlying portions of the Empire, no one can question its necessity. But the Eastern Extension Company has never taken a friendly view of the Pacific cable. From the first it has been its determined opponent. The proceedings of the Colonial Conferences of 1887 and of 1894 gave evidence of this fact. The report on the mission to Australia by the Canadian delegates gives some indication of the intense and persistent antagonism displayed by the company and the manner in which its powerful influence has been employed to thwart the enterprise. It may not be an unwarranted surmise that the immediate purpose of the company in submitting to the Conference of Premiers their new proposal was to divert attention from the Pacific cable. The Eastern Extension Company represents a combination of associated companies engaged in telegraph transmission between England and Australasia. The lines of the company comprise those of three amalgamated companies: (1.) The " British Indian Extension," from Madras to Singapore, with a share capital of £460,000. (2.) The "British Australian," from Singapore to Australia, with a share capital of £540,000. (3.) The "China Submarine," from Singapore to Hongkong and Shanghai, with a share capital of £525,000. The combined share capital of these three companies amounted to £1,525,000. On their amalgamation the united share capital, by a well-known process of "watering" to the extent of

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