The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

To the demand for news in the above despatch, a reply was at once returned: "Sent to London for news." And later the same day came the following: "North American with Canadian, and the Asia with direct Boston mails, leave Liverpool, and Fulton, Southampton, Saturday next. To-day's morning papers have long, interesting reports by Bright. Indian news. Virago arrived at Liverpool to-day; Bombay dates nineteenth July. Mutiny being rapidly quelled." A despatch of the same date, August twenty-fifth, also announces peace with China. The whole was received at Trinity Bay about nine o'clock P.M., and would have been sent on at once to New York, but that the land lines in Nova Scotia were closed at that hour. It was sent the next morning, and appeared in the evening papers of the twenty-sixth. By referring again to the London Times, the reader will see that the news from China was published in London on the twenty-third of August. It was there given as unexpected news, so that it could not have been a shrewd guess on the part of anybody either in England or America. It took the public by surprise, both for the news itself and for the way in which it came--which was not by India and the Red Sea, but by St. Petersburg, where it arrived on the twenty-first, having been brought overland by a courier to Prince Gortchakoff. From there it was telegraphed to the Government at Paris, and thence to London. The Times comments on this roundabout way in which intelligence so important reached England. Yet this news, so unlooked for, announced in London only on the morning of the twenty-third of August, was published in New York on the twenty-sixth.