done to bring the self-governing colonies and ourselves closer to gether, and to develop the resources of the Crown colonies. The new Secretary did not lose any time in proving that he was in earnest. In November of the same year he received a deputation of Australian agent-generals on the subject of the Pacific cable. In reply to their representations, he declared that the Imperial Government was willing to assist in the matter, and proposed a Commission, to be formed of two delegates from Canada, Australasia, and Great Britain respectively. These delegates were selected at the beginning of last year, and the first meeting of the Conference took place on June 5. Unfortunately the sittings clashed with the Buda-Pesth Telegraphic Conference, at which the Australasian delegates were representing their Governments, and as it was too late for anything to be done in Parliament with regard to the project before the end of the session, the Conference was adjourned till November 11, when work was resumed.

The position as it now stands is a hopeful one for the immediate realisation of the All-British Pacific Cable scheme. The fact that France has already laid the QueenslandNew Caledonia section, and that America, Russia, Hawaii, and Japan are ready to assist in laying the San Francisco - Honolulu section, makes it imperative for the British project to be taken up at once if the French scheme is not to be the first in the field. As recently as December 2 the Minister of Commerce announced in the French Chamber of Deputies that, with a view to maritime and national security, he would soon have to ask for a large sum towards telegraphic extension. It

is extremely improbable that there will be enough traffic to support two cables between Australia and North America for some years to come, and priority is consequently all-important. That the Americans are fully alive to the situation can be seen from a recent speech of Mr Chauncey M. Depew at a meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce.

"No power can estimate," he said, "and no language can adequately state, the benefits of a cable. Commerce is revolutionised, communication between different parts of the earth is infinitely quickened, and intelligence is widely disseminated. People are benefited by cheaper living, better homes, higher thinking, broader education. Peace is promoted among nations. The value of a cable has been inestimable on the Atlantic side, and the same advantages will accrue to the Pacific coast of America, if a cable is laid with communications to China, Japan, Hawaii, and Australia."

The objections which were raised in past years against the British Pacific Cable scheme have been met one by one and overcome. The Eastern Telegraph Company, with its allied companies, has been active in raising these objections; and the late Sir John Pender, chairman of this group of companies, in the interest of his shareholders, opposed the project with all his well-known energy and ability, belying for once his claim to be the leader of telegraph extension throughout the world. At first Sir John Pender contended that the cable could not be laid at all; then, if laid, that it could not possibly pay; finally, that if it had to be laid, his company should have a voice in the construction. There is no doubt that the Eastern and Eastern Extension Companies have rendered great service to India and Australia; but they have not

neglected their own interests, and there is no reason why their monopoly should be extended in perpetuity. A scheme which secured their shareholders against actual loss by the laying of the Pacific cable would sufficiently meet the

case.

It may not here be out of place to observe that in subsidies from the Australian Colonies, the Eastern Extension Company will have received by the year 1900 no less than £778,250, a sum exceeding the cost of two cables over the whole intervening distance from Asia to Australia. In 1893 the reserve fund of the company amounted to £633,686, after paying out of revenue the cost of new cables and cable-renewals to the extent of £1,160,685. These are large sums to be realised out of revenue, in addition to dividends equivalent to 9 per cent on the capital, before it had been watered. The best of the various routes which have been proposed for the All-British Pacific Cable runs from Vancouver to Fanning Island, Fanning Island to Fiji, Fiji to Norfolk Island, and from Norfolk Island in two sections, one to New Zealand and the other to Australia. Fanning Island is of coral forma tion, and about ten miles long by four miles wide, with an excellent anchorage called Whaleman Bay, where ships of the largest class can lie.

Its fertile soil produces bananas, figs, melons, and tomatoes in great abundance. In 1850 an Englishman, Captain Henry English, settled there with about a hundred and fifty natives, and placed himself under British protection. It has since been annexed to the Crown. The island was chosen as a landing-place for the cable on account of being the nearest British possession to Vancouver on the route to Australia.

The distance between Fanning Island and Vancouver is 3230 miles, which with 10 per cent for slack will represent a cable of about 3560 miles. The longest cable that has hitherto been made is the Jay Gould Atlantic cable of 1882, which is 2563 miles long, or nearly 1000 miles shorter. The length of a cable in itself adds very little to the difficulty of laying it from an engineering point of view, as it can be paid out in different sections, and if necessary from different ships, the section in one ship being spliced on to the buoyed end of a section laid by another.

But the length of a cable makes all the difference in the speed of working it, and on this its commercial value depends. The speed varies inversely as the square root of the length, so that a type of cable which gives 40 words a minute for 2000 miles would only give 10 words a minute for 4000 miles. For a given length the speed of a cable varies inversely as the product of its copper resistance and electrostatic capacity, so that in order to get a high speed it is necessary to have a low copper resistance and capacity. The copper resistance-or the resistance which the conductor offers to the electric current-can be decreased by increasing the thickness or weight of the copper, while the capacity can in like manner be decreased by increasing the thickness or weight of the insulating covering, which is generally of gutta-percha or india-rubber. As, however, a pound of insulator or dielectric is seven or eight times more expensive than a pound of copper, it follows that the most economical way to construct a long cable so as to give a good speed is to increase the weight of the conductor without increasing the

weight of the insulator to an equal degree-taking care, of course, to be well within the limits of the necessary thickness for safety for the latter. Thus a core with a ratio of copper to dielectric of 3 to 2 or even 3 to 1 will give the same speed as a much larger core of equal weight, and will cost a great deal less. It was largely on this account that the estimate of the Post Office for the Pacific cable of £2,924,100 nearly doubled the lowest tender to the Dominion Government for the same route. For the Vancouver-Fanning Island section alone a core of 796 lb. per mile of copper to 532 lb. of dielectric would cost some £340,000 less than the enormous and unwieldy core of 940 lb. of copper to 940 lb. of dielectric which the Post Office proposed. The speed would be only 7 words per minute less that is, 18 words instead of 25.

In connection with a long section, however, it must be remembered that the increase in the weight of the core, in order to make it yield the same speed as a short section, adds considerably to the weight of the cable when sheathed. Thus the Anglo-American Atlantic cable of 1894, with a core of 650 lb. per mile of copper to 400 lb. of dielectric-the heaviest core yet made- reached a total weight of 2.01 tons per mile, or nearly double the ordinary deepsea type. This weight at a depth of 3000 fathoms entails a great strain on the cable when being heaved up to the surface for repairs; but the modern type of sheathing, in which each wire abuts the next one so as to form a continuous archway, which resists the lateral pressure caused by a longitudinal strain, greatly minimises any chance of the core being damaged through this cause. Moreover, the method of taping

and tarring each sheathing wire separately, which was first introduced by the Silvertown Company, is an almost complete safeguard against weakness arising from rust.

With regard to the nature of the ocean bed to be crossed between Vancouver and Fanning Island, the surveys of the Albatross and Thetis prove it to be for a large portion of the distance a level plateau barely exceeding in any part 3000 fathoms. It will, in consequence, be only necessary for the ships of the company contracting to lay the cable to survey carefully the landing-places at either end, and then to take a line of widely separated sounding along the intervening distance. The other sections present no special difficulties, and the line they take has already been fairly well surveyed.

It only remains for the Imperial Parliament to sanction the carrying out of a project which the Colonies have so much at heart. The liability incurred is insignificant. It consists of a third share of a capital of £1,600,000, which Mr Sandford Fleming calculates to be sufficient for the undertaking. The interest on £1,600,000 at 2 per cent, together with any unforeseen expenses, would not amount to more than £45,000, which, with £30,000 for working expenses, makes a total of £75,000. The surplus of revenue over expenditure for the first three years is estimated at £154,000. The contractor who lays the cable undertakes to keep it in repair for three years; but after that the cost of repairs will have to come out of revenue, so that in the tenth year the total surplus will be £742,000, and the whole £1,600,000 would be paid off in twenty years without costing the taxpayers a single penny.

The

reduction of the tariff from 4s. 9d. to 3s. 3d. will effect in the first year a gross saving of £190,000 to Australasia and this country.

From a strategical point of view the All-British Pacific Cable route is of incalculable importance to the Empire. The present lines to India and Australia are the following:1. Lisbon, Gibraltar, Malta, Egypt, and Red Sea.

2. France, Italy, Greece, Egypt,
and Red Sea.

3. Germany, Austria, Turkey,
Russia, and Persia.
4. Germany, Austria, Turkey,
Russia, and the Pacific
Coast.

5. Lisbon, and the West and

East Coast of Africa.

All these routes pass through foreign countries, and could at once be interrupted in case of war. The Russian journal, the 'Novo Vremya,' recently said: "In case of an armed conflict between this country and England, our first task would be to block England's communication. with India and Australia." With good reason has Lord Wolseley condemned the policy of trusting to the present telegraphic routes to the East as nothing less than suicidal.

The wishes expressed by the Colonies at the two previous Colonial Conferences met with no response from this country. It is to be hoped that the labours of the third will not end in an equally disappointing manner. All who attended the Ottawa Conference, or read the report of its proceedings, cannot fail to have been struck by the deep feelings of regard which the delegates evinced for the mother-country. The "passionate sentiment of Canada," as Sir John Thompson, Premier of the Dominion and Pre

sident of the Conference, termed it, was no idle hyperbole. "On this happy occasion," he said, "these delegates assemble after years of self-government in their countries, of greater progress and development than the colonies of any empire have ever seen in the past, not to consider the prospects of separation from the mothercountry, but to plight our faith anew to each other as brethren, and to plight anew with the motherland that faith that has never yet been broken or tarnished." The hurricane of applause which greeted this avowal proved that the speaker had voiced the sentiments, not only of Canada, but of all the colonies assembled there.

The progress of Canada has been especially remarkable. It is not generally remembered that the first steamer to cross the Atlantic, the Royal William, was designed and built at Quebec by a Canadian. Almost thirty years ago the statesmen of the various provinces had the foresight to unite in a federal Government, an example which the Australian colonies soon hope to imitate. In 1886 the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, a project which in its earlier days met with every discouragement, both from engineering experts, who declared that it could not be done, and from business men, who maintained that it would not pay for the grease of its wheels. This great work was carried out at the cost of £48,000,000, entailing an annual liability of £1,000,000 in perpetuity. Yet the expenditure was justified, as its revenue will prove.

Since then Canada has busied herself with this other great project, which at first met with the same discouragement. It is of

happy augury for its successful issue that the man who carried through the railway scheme has been the chief promoter of the cable. After nearly twenty years devoted to the project, there is every prospect that Mr Sandford Fleming will see his second great public undertaking successfully inaugurated.

A well-known writer who resides in Canada has said, "Whenever the word empire is spoken, it creates a thrill in every British heart." The following extract from a speech by a prominent Canadian will show the sentiment of his countrymen in this connection. Speaking of Great Britain,

he said:

pended blood and treasure to establish and strengthen her colonies, and then hand the heirship of them over to their inhabitants. To Canada Great Britain handed over the fortresses and Crown lands and all the money she had expended for a hundred years, without asking one penny in return; and quite recently she handed over to a mere handful the colony of Western Australia—a country which My own impression is that there is may be valued by millions. not a man in Canada to-day who would not be prepared to spend his life and fortune to maintain the honour and dignity of this great empire."

Imperial Parliament, let us hope, will prove that England heartily reciprocates this generous sentiment, by readily accepting her share of an undertaking which will do more than anything else to strengthen the bonds uniting Great Britain and her colonies.