10. The Republic is now in telegraphic connection with the outside world. Gerard tells us that “the _German-South-American Telegraph Society_, with a capital stock of 30,000,000 marks, has recently laid a cable at Monrovia which will place the negro capital hereafter in rapid communication with the civilized world. Up to this time telegraphic messages addressed to Liberia were delivered at Freetown, and there were entrusted to the ordinary postal service, upon the semi-monthly mail-boats conducting business between Sierra Leone and the Grain Coast. Constructed by the North German Marine Cable Factory of Nordenham-am-Weser, the cable, destined to draw the little Guinean Republic from its isolation, starts from Emden, passes under sea to the island Borkum, connects at Teneriffe, in order then to reach Monrovia, from whence it is finally directed to Pernambuco, the terminal point of the line. On the other hand, the _South American Cable Co._ of London, a French society with a French director and supported by French capital, has obtained a concession with a view to the establishment of a submarine cable connecting Conakry (Guinea) with Grand Bassam (Ivory Coast), touching at Monrovia, and it is interesting to notice in passing that there has been arranged, in connection with this matter, between Germany and France a friendly relationship permitting the German cable to touch at Brest, allowing the French installation to be accomplished through the German cable, and obliging the two rival companies to have similar tariffs and giving each of them the right of using the apparatus of the other in case of the breaking of its own connection. It is also to the French government that the exclusive right has been given of establishing a _wireless telegraph station_ which will connect Monrovia with the Eiffel Tower via Dakar and Casablanca, while posts, constructed at Conakry, Tabou, and Cotonou will give origin to radio-telegraphic connections between Liberia, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Dahomey; the importance of this project, to-day in course of execution, will escape no one, since one will understand that there is question here of installing the Marconi system in Madagascar and at Timbuctu, and of thus enclosing the whole black continent in a network of rapid communication of which France alone will have control.” All three of these enterprises have been successfully carried through, and to-day Liberia is in easy connection with every part of the civilized world. It is a notable step forward.