256 INDO-EUROPEAN LINE. 



firm, which had been altogether broken off for many 

 years, and made use of its great experience in the 

 telegraphic department to improve the working arrange- 

 ments of the government -telegraph system, which had 

 remained almost stationary. As at the same time in 

 Russia my old friend and patron. Colonel von Lliders, 

 was again after long illness managing director of the 

 government telegraphs. I conceived the bold plan of 

 calling into existence a special telegraph line between 

 England and India by way of Prussia, Russia, and 

 Persia the Indo-European line. 



The way had already been paved for this plan 

 by the attempts of England to construct a line through 

 the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and Persia, in the 

 execution of which my brother William had taken an 

 active part. The English Government had in 1862 

 laid a cable from Bushire in Persia to Kurrachee in 

 India, in the laying of which our electrician Dr. Essel- 

 bach had unfortunately met his death. The land line 

 through Asia Minor and Persia joining the cable had 

 also been constructed under English direction by the 

 Turkish and Persian governments, and thus an overland 

 telegraph line to India had actually been called into 

 existence. But the impossibility of really solving the 

 problem in this way soon appeared. The line was 

 usually interrupted, and if it was actually in perfect 

 order, yet the messages often took weeks in trans- 

 mission, and at last reached their destination in an 

 altogether unintelligible, mutilated state. Theoretically 

 there also existed a second overland connection by 



