But when the railway has arrived as far east as the City of the Golden Crescent, will it stop and end there? In one sense it must, unless indeed some of the engineers who are now competing for the honour of tunnelling under, or placing tubes upon the bed of the ocean between Dover and Calais, shall suggest a scheme for tunnelling under the Hellespont, and their proposals shall be accepted. At all events, even if a railway were only to extend a hundred or so of miles eastward in Asia Minor, one will certainly be made for that distance, and opened for traffic by the time the line, coming from the far west to its terminus at Constantinople, shall be completed. It will go through a country rich and productive, as well as covered by a prosperous and money-making population. Fact and reality ended, we approach a “dream of the future.” A dream not new to us, for we have often dreamt of it, and occasionally discussed it with others, whom the reader will probably feel disposed to consider as dreamy as ourselves. And yet the time will come—possibly even a few of those now grown to manhood may see its fulfilment before they die; the LONG RAILWAY will first traverse Turkey in Asia, anciently the seat of the kingdoms of Troy and of Lydia; the birth-land, possibly of Homer and Herodotus, certainly of Thales, Pythagoras, and others hardly less distinguished. From classic land it will cross to Persia, and from Persia it will pass to Afghanistan, the grandest in physical aspect, and perhaps for 600 miles, the most difficult country in the whole world for railway construction. When it has gone beyond those kingdoms, it will be on British soil. There it will attach itself to the then Great Indian Railway, the unbroken course of which will be from the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Ganges. When the now far distant day of accomplishment has arrived, how will Calcutta and London be to one another in point of postal distance? Possibly, fifteen; certainly, not more than seventeen days asunder!