WAR AND DISCOURAGEMENT 115 
from Portugal to the Azores, Bermuda, and the Southern 
States. Variations of these routes have ultimately been used 
for cables, but the pioneer work was, of course, not done there. 
A still more interesting competition was now under way to 
attain telegraphic communication between America and the 
Old World. This was the overland telegraph by way of 
Alaska and Siberia, sponsored by an energetic American, 
Perry McDonough Collins. This route was the choice of 
those who believed that a long ocean cable would never be 
practicable; and that a land line, with a short cable under 
Bering Strait, would prove ultimately successful. 
Collins, who had gone to California during the gold rush, 
was a former banker and lawyer of the type successful in San 
Francisco during pioneer days. Like Field, he was a natural 
promoter and had far-reaching visions. In 1856, after con- 
ferences at Washington with President Pierce, Secretary of 
State Marcy, and the Russian minister, he was appointed 
Commercial Agent of the United States for the Amoor river 
region of Siberia. This manufactured appointment was 
granted merely to enable him to investigate Russian territory 
under an official title. After obtaining the consent of the 
Russian, British, and American governments, with all neces- 
sary legal rights, he finally got the Western Union Telegraph 
Company to issue ten million dollars of special stock for the 
long overland line. 
This financial arrangement was not completed, however, 
until 1866. During the Civil War, Congress aided by voting 
the use of a naval vessel and an appropriation for surveying 
the coast of Alaska, which was still owned by Russia. Presi- 
dent Lincoln approved the measure in 1864, and actual con- 
struction work was begun in that year. Secretary of State 
Seward spoke highly of Collins; and Senator Latham, chair- 
man of the committee on military affairs, anticipated success 
by declaiming: “We hold the ball of the earth in our hand, 
and wind upon it a network of living and thinking wire, till 
