Excerpt from The Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1889, Vol. 5 Vol. V. A manifest. By the most rapid means then in existence it took nearly three months to get answers to communications passing between London and Calcutta - a time more than sufficient for the loss of an empire. The line chosen for the projected telegraph was naturally that of the Overland Route. This involved the laying of long submarine cables in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The failure of the first Atlantic cable had, however, so disheartened the public that submarine cables were regarded as investments of too hazardous a nature to be undertaken by prudent people without special guarantees. Unaided private enterprise could consequently not be expected to undertake the great risk of a telegraph line to India, more especially of the portions in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. In the Mediterranean a beginning had already been made by a private company whose cable from Marseilles to Malta it was hoped would be extended to Alexandria. Following the system adopted in the case of the Indian railways, the Red Sea portion was constructed and laid in with a Government guarantee of 5 per cent, shared equally between the Imperial and the ludian Treasuries. The cable, however, had barely fulfilled the conditions required by the terms of the guarantee when it collapsed, leaving the British and Indian Exchequers burdened until the present day, and for some years yet to come, with an annual payment of each. Shortly afterwards, viz. In 1861, the Mediterranean Company laid a short-lived cable from Malta rid Tripoli and Benghazi to Alexandria. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.