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300 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



A the rate of a hundred and seven miles m the hour. 



At Holyhead, during squalls of short duration, the 

 wind was ascertained to blow at the speed of even a 

 hundred and fifty miles an hour. No timber, how- 

 ever heavily strutted, could withstand the strain, and 

 down came road and railway telegraphs by the board. 

 But when the day of gutta-percha, or some other 

 cheap and effective insulating material (paper, 

 perhaps), has fully arrived, then wires, laid under- 

 ground, will be superior to all vicissitudes of weather. 



Meanwhile, storms and interruptions give rise to 

 wondrous cases of eccentric circulation of telegrams. 

 I think all previous examples were eclipsed by what 

 happened during the great blizzard which raged in 

 Cornwall in 1892. From the night of Monday, 

 March 9, until the Saturday night following, Fal- 

 mouth and Penzance were so completely cut off from 

 inland telegraphic communication that urgent tele- 

 grams to and from London had to be sent by means 

 of the direct Spanish submarine cable from the Lizard 

 to Bilbao. Some, I have reason to believe, were even 

 sent by Atlantic cable to New York by one route, and 

 back again to England by another. 



Touching on storms and telegraphs, I may permit 

 myself a passing reference to telegraphs in war-time. 



Besides giving employment to a company of the 

 Royal Engineers in maintaining a portion of the 

 postal telegraph, the Post-Office in the Metropolis 

 furnishes a regiment of volunteers, thirteen hundred 

 strong, which, under the title of the 24th Middlesex 





