Without the submarine telegraph these tramp steamers could scarcely compete with the regular lines; but, besides the great transoceanic cables, all the sea-coasts are now festooned with electric cables, which have frequent stations and connect the important ports of America and Europe with those of Africa, Persia, India, the Spice Islands, Australia, and New Zealand, and there is now a plan to run a cable across the Pacific between America and New Zealand, by way of the Sandwich Islands, Samoa, and Fiji. [Illustration: A CORNER IN THE SALOON OF A MODERN STEAMSHIP.] The passenger-ship is a distinctly modern feature of marine carriage. In former days the few persons who were obliged to cross the seas on business errands, and the fewer who went abroad for health or pleasure or the love of travel, had to accept such rough accommodations as the ordinary merchant ships afforded. But as soon as the East and West Indies were added to the map of the world, and colonies of Europeans began to settle on distant coasts and islands, the amount of travel justified owners of vessels in enlarging cabins and providing comforts likely to induce patronage of their lines. Even two hundred and twenty-five years ago the voyage between India and England around the Cape of Good Hope, though it became somewhat tedious, because it lasted six or seven months, was by no means a miserable experience in a well-found ship. Thus Dr. John Fryer has recorded of such a sea-journey in 1682 that “it passed away merrily with good wine and no bad musick; but the life of all good company, and an honest commander, who fed us with fresh provisions of turkies, geese, ducks, hens, sucking-pigs, sheep, goats, etc.” A century later, when England had come firmly into possession of India, and thousands of her officers, troops, and traders, with their families, were colonizing her ports, there were demanded the largest and finest ships that could be built, combining accommodations for many passengers with great cargo capacity. Such were the great East Indiamen; and in those leisurely days a trip half-way round the world on one of these roomy old vessels was a continuous pleasure to almost every one that undertook it.