On the Electric Telegraph between England and India. 47 



and are repeated first in Paris, then Turin, again at Otranto or 

 Yalona to Constantinople. 



I may mention there are alternative routes available for the 

 messages of both these companies as far as Constantinople, but as 

 a rule the lines marked on the diagram are preferred. 



The telegrams having reached the Indo-Ottoman administra- 

 tion, it may be interesting to know how they are treated while 

 passing over that section, which will explain how some of the 

 vexatious delays have occurred, to the disgust of all who, for 

 basiness or other purposes, have been compelled to use the 

 lines. 



Major Champain writes the following to the Under-Secretary 

 of State for India in 1865 : — " The organisation of the Turkish 

 lines is defective, and in my opinion will continue so unless some 

 decided step, such as an opposition route, be taken." In another 

 paragraph, he states : — " In some measure, however, I can account 

 for delays of late in consequence of the cholera panic, which 

 frightened the telegraph clerks from their posts." 



Mr. Walton, the director of the Persian Gulf cable, also writes 

 that the messages from Kurrachee to Pao, and vice versa, average 

 seventy-four minutes, and that the Bagdad men report seventy 

 or eighty messages on hand, send twelve or fifteen, and then 

 smoke hookahs or say their prayers for two or three hours, 

 during which time Pao hears nothing of them. 



I have reason to believe that this state of things no longer 

 exists, as telegrams between England and India occupy a much 

 less time than formerly, but there is still room for a vast im- 

 provement. No Turks, Armenians, or Greeks are fit for tele- 

 graphists, being quite unable to understand the necessity for 

 immediate action, and the requirements of the telegraph service 

 to render it perfect. To remedy this evil the Electric and Inter- 

 national Company tried the Russian route, via St. Petersburg and 

 Moscow, with the following result, which I have copied from the 

 evidence of the Hon. Mr. Grimston, the chairman of the com- 

 pany, taken before a committee of the House of Commons in 

 1866. Mr Grimston says, — " I am sorry to say we were on one 

 occasion induced to send our messages via St. Petersburg when 

 the Turkish lines were broken down. Prom inquiries we made 

 we found that they went perfectly well through Russia, but when 

 they got to Persia no further trace could be obtained of them, 

 and I suppose that Jonadab, the son of Rechab, lit his pipe with 

 them, as they never reached India at all ; although we paid the 

 Russian and Persian government their proportions, we had to 

 refund the whole charges collected to the senders." 



The lines throughout India were also at this time in very bad 

 order ; they had been very roughly constructed in the first in- 

 stance, badly insulated, and after the Indian mutiny had to be 



