recently been provided, which is stationed near Cape Race on Newfoundland, for the purpose of intercepting the ships in the Atlantic and obtaining from them the highly-prized “latest news.” The steamers crossing from England or Ireland make for Cape Race, and when they approach the cape, they run up a signal or fire a gun to attract attention. The newsmen are on the alert, and start off with the yacht to the large steamer. A tin canister or box made water-tight, and to which a flag is fixed which can be seen at considerable distance when in the water, is thrown overboard, and this contains the latest news made up at Liverpool or Galway. The yachtsmen make for the small flag, pick up the box, and make all speed to St. John’s, Newfoundland, from which place the news is immediately telegraphed to all parts of Canada and to the United States, a distance of more than a thousand miles. The news is carried across a country great part of which is little more than a savage wilderness, over lofty hills, deep swamps, and almost impenetrable woods. It passes by submarine telegraph from Newfoundland to the American continent, over a portion of the lines to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and thence to Portland, state of Maine, where the American system of telegraphs commences. The news from Europe thus precedes the arrival of the steamers by several days.
When the Whig Convention met in Philadelphia in 1848, great anxiety was felt as to the result of the proceedings in the nomination for the Presidency, the chances lying between General Taylor, Mr. Scott, General Scott, and Judge McLean. As the telegraph across the Hudson river was not completed, a mode was devised of supplying the deficiency by means of a system of coloured flags, which were to be displayed and repeated by signals at different parts. A white flag was to denote that the choice had fallen on General Taylor, red and different colours for the other candidates. It so happened, however, that, unknown to the telegraph reporters, the brokers and stock-jobbers of Philadelphia had also a system of telegraphing the prices of stocks and upward or downward movements of the money-market by the use of coloured flags. One of their men on a commanding position waved his white flag, as a signal to one of his own confederates at a distance. It was mistaken by one of the signalmen of the reporters who forthwith rushed to the telegraph office, and the wires in every direction were giving out the exciting news, that General Taylor had been nominated by the important convention. Portland, and some other towns—favourable to the gallant candidate—“blazed” away with salutes of a hundred guns, and gave vent to their gratification in the usual approved forms. In this case the telegraph, unfortunately, went “a-head” of the fact.
Greater experience, and improved modes of working the telegraphic lines, have now removed many of the difficulties which, at an earlier period of their establishment, restricted their use for the purposes of the daily press, both in the United States, and in this country. Even a President’s message does not now offer any difficulty to the conductors of the telegraphs, and column after column of these long and prosy official expositions of the political principles of the government at Washington are carried safely along the slender wires to all parts of the country. On the same day as that of its delivery, the message at Washington, has been placed on board the steamers starting for Europe from New York or Boston. Speeches of some great American orator on the Kansas question, or the appropriation of some plot of waste land in the Far West—and in which are included dissertations on the creation of the world, the Deluge, the origin of evil, the decline of the nations of antiquity, the marvellous growth and development of the American people, some very “tall” compliments to the “Eagle” and the “Star Spangled Banner;” and glowing prophecies of the destiny of the great republic—travel as easily along the silent highway of the electric fluid to the newspaper-offices of New York and Boston, as the prices of bread-stuffs. The ragged urchins of New York who vend the daily papers at two cents, are aiding in carrying out that which Congress, reporting in favour of the first telegraph line constructed in America, said, “From a feeling of religious reverence the human mind had hardly dared to contemplate.”
JAPANESE FRAGMENTS.
BY CAPTAIN SHERARD OSBORN, R.N.
CHAPTER V.
The execution of the disobedient Christian priests and the death of Taiko-sama, followed, as we have already said, close upon each other. The new emperor, beset with difficulties, paused for a while in the prosecution of his predecessor’s views against the Portuguese and Spaniards, although it appears that the natives of the country who had become Christians were treated with unmitigated severity—death or recantation being their only alternative. We need not dwell on this painful episode in Japanese history, but there is no doubt that between about 1580 and 1620 nigh upon a million and a half of Christianised natives perished, and that the Europeans after the year 1600 made few fresh converts.
Spain never appears to have had any great commercial relations with Japan, and directly the Franciscan monks were banished from Japan, the Spaniards may be said to disappear from the field, except by the accidental wreck of a galleon, bound to Acapulco, upon the west coast of Niphon, and the exchange of courtesies which ensued from the generous treatment they received at the hands of the Japanese authorities. The Portuguese, however, maintained their trading ports at Nangasaki and its neighbourhood, and the Jesuit priests constantly recruited from the great college at Goa, perseveringly intrigued to regain the ground they had lost in the confidence of the ruling classes. Portuguese interests, however, were doomed to receive a blow from a quarter whence danger could then have been little anticipated. The ships of Holland and of England, not men-of-war, not royal ships, but those of their enterprising traders, were about this time, struggling to reach a land of which marvellous tales were then rife in the seaports of Rotterdam, London, and Plymouth. Drake and Cavendish in 1577 and 1586, brought