The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson: Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway LocomotiveSmiles, Samuel
History
The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson: Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive
Italy also is employing her new-born liberty in vigorously extending
railways throughout her dominions. The length of Italian lines in
operation in 1866 was 2752 miles, of which not less than 680 were
opened in that year. Already has a direct line of communication been
opened between Germany and Italy through the Brenner Pass, by which
it is now possible to make the entire journey by railway (excepting
only the short sea-passage across the English Channel) from London to
Brindisi on the southeastern extremity of the Italian peninsula; and,
in the course of a few more years, a still shorter route will be opened
through France, when that most formidable of all railway borings, the
seven-mile tunnel under Mont Cenis, has been completed.
During the last ten years, nearly the whole of the existing Indian
railways have been made. When Edmund Burke in 1783 arraigned the
British government for their neglect of India in his speech on Mr.
Fox's Bill, he said, "England has built no bridges, made no high
roads, cut no navigations, dug out no reservoirs.... Were we to be
driven out of India this day, nothing would remain to tell that it
had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion,
by any thing better than the orang-outang or the tiger." But that
reproach no longer applies. Some of the greatest bridges erected in
modern times--such as those over the Sone near Patna, and over the
Jamna at Allahabad--have been erected in connection with the Indian
railways, of which there are already 3637 miles at work, and above
2000 more under construction. When these lines have been completed,
at an expenditure of about £88,000,000 of British capital guaranteed
by the British government, India will be provided with a magnificent
system of internal communication, connecting the capitals of the
three Presidencies--uniting Bombay with Madras on the south, and with
Calcutta on the northeast--while a great main line, 2200 miles in
extent, passing through the northwestern provinces, and connecting
Calcutta with Lucknow, Delhi, Lahore, Moultan, and Kurrachee, will
unite the mouths of the Hooghly in the Bay of Bengal with those of the
Indus in the Arabian Sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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