In looking over the history of the lines of the world, none is found to have exerted more influence upon subsequent progress than the old route between India and England. This route at first doubled the Cape of Good Hope—a distance of 14,000 miles, so long and uncertain that the East India Company frequently sent their despatches by way of the Persian Gulf and then overland between Bagdad and Constantinople. The successful crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by the steamship Savannah suggested the possibility of a like means of communication with India. Accordingly, the English side-wheel steamship Enterprise, of 470 tons, 122 feet long, bark-rigged, left Falmouth in the year 1825 and reached Calcutta, after a voyage of 13,700 miles, in 113 days, of which 64 were steaming days. This result, though unsatisfactory, stimulated efforts looking toward remunerative steam navigation in the East. The first steamship arrived at Macao, China, in 1830. As an inducement to people to choose this novel mode of travelling, a Canton paper contained the following notice of a steamer: “She carries a crew, a surgeon, a band of music, and has rooms elegantly fitted up for cards and opium smoking.” The problem of a short route to Europe from India was practically solved in 1830, by sending a steamer from Bombay to Suez, a distance of 3,000 miles, in 25 days. In a few years a regular line was established between the two places, connecting with steamers at Alexandria by means of a camel service across the desert. The camel post was succeeded by four-horse vans, and later these were followed by the Suez Canal and the railway. With the progress of time sailing-ships have given way to steamships, and the routes of communication which they, after years of navigation, did so much to establish, have become the highways of an enormous trade, along which large and swift steamships are constantly going to and fro with the certainty and regularity of railway trains. A steamer to-day leaves her wharf at the moment of time set forth in her schedule, and arrives at the terminus of her voyage—it may be many thousand miles away—with almost equal promptitude. Like railway traffic, steamer traffic follows certain main routes or grand trunk lines, having numerous feeders or subsidiary lines. The great ocean thoroughfares of the world are: 1. The route across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, and Red Sea, to India, China, Australia, and eastern Africa. 2. The route by the Pacific Ocean to Japan, China, and Australia. 3. The route by the Atlantic Ocean down the east coast of South America, and around Cape Horn, to western America and Australasia; and