TELEGRAPHS ON THE TRACK 293 



performance, seeing that the race endured but a short 

 five minutes. 



The late Mr. Charles Galbraith, who rendered great 

 service, under Sir W. O'Shaughnessy, to telegraphy 

 in India, and who was at one time Chief Superin- 

 tendent of Telegraphs at Bombay, used to describe 

 many ingenious and sometimes successful attempts of 

 native employes to communicate the tenor of English 

 telegrams, especially during the cotton famine, to 

 outside confederates. 



The messages in early days were brought in some 

 instances by mail steamer from Suez to Point de 

 Galle, and thence telegraphed overland to Bombay. 

 One method was to write a telegram in triplicate, 

 filing one copy, sending another to the addressee 

 according to rule, tightly rolling up the third copy 

 and dropping it out of the window. This being 

 detected and stopped, a new plan was adopted. The 

 telegraphist would lean his head pensively on his 

 hand, and abstractedly tap off signals in the Morse 

 code to his ally watching outside. 



Yet a third plan in operation was to order goods of 

 a supposed tradesman's assistant who called daily at 

 the office-door. ' Send me some tea ' meant cotton 

 up ; ' no sugar to-day ' was the equivalent of prices 

 down. 



But the most daring attempt of all was an actual 

 tapping of the wire, which at one point passed through 

 the jungle. The wire had been cut and led into a 

 small hut, and an instrument and a discharged 



