202 Cruise of t lie ^' Alert.''* 



completion of the submarine cable and land telegraph lines, which 

 have each got terminal stations, at Port Darwin, where the 

 "through" messages are transferred. Its subsequent progress, 

 such as it has been, was encouraged and fostered by the trade 

 in provisions and gold induced by the workers at the northern 

 territory gold-fields. There are now two submarine cables con- 

 necting Port Darwin with Singapore, via Java, and thence with 

 Europe. The first was laid in 1872, and was found most difficult 

 to maintain on account of the ravages made in it by a boring 

 mollusc, a species of Teredo, which in an amazingly short space of 

 time pierced the galvanized iron-wire sheathing of the cable, and 

 destroyed the insulation of the copper core. The repairs of this 

 cable necessitated an outlay of i^2 0,000 per annum, a circumstance 

 contrasting strangely with the condition of a similar cable in the 

 China and India seas, which is not attacked by the Teredo. 

 Recently a duplicate cable has been laid, in the construction of 

 which a tape of muntz metal was wound round in a spiral fashion 

 between the insulating material and the twisted wire sheathing. 

 By this provision the new cable has been rendered proof against 

 the boring effects of the Teredo, and has hitherto worked success- 

 fully without the slightest hitch. 



The land telegraph line stretches directly from Port Darwin to 

 Adelaide, a distance of about 1,800 miles, and thus serves to 

 connect all the principal towns of Australia with the station of 

 the Cable Company at Port Darwin. It was at one time 

 thought that there would have been much difficulty in inducing 

 the aborigines to abstain from meddling with the overland wire, 

 but experience has not justified this impression. It appears that 

 the black fellows hold it sacred, looking on it as a sort of boundary 

 mark to separate the white man's territory from theirs. 



Palmerston contains a police magistrate, who is the chief 

 executive authority in the northern territory; a lands department, 

 with its staff of surveyors ; a police inspector, with a detachment 

 of white troopers ; a government doctor ; the two telegraph 



