irect barrier to the advancing tide.
Here is a list of a few trifles in expectation.

A line of communication by railway from England to the principal
cities in India, interrupted only by narrow sea-channels, and these
bridged by steamboats. It will then be possible to travel from London
to Calcutta in a week.

At the same time, there will be railways to other parts of
Asia--Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem. From the
last-mentioned city, a line will probably proceed through the land of
Edom, to Suez and Cairo; thence to Alexandria. This last portion is
already in hand. Think of a railway station in the Valley of
Jehoshaphat! As the course of the Jordan presents few 'engineering
difficulties,' there might be a single line all the way from Nazareth
to the Dead Sea, on which a steamer might take passengers to the
neighbourhood of Petra. At a point near the shore of that mysterious
sheet of water, a late traveller indicates the spot where Lot's wife
was transformed into a pillar of salt. How interesting it would be to
make this a stopping-place for tourists to view the adjacent
scenery--rocky, wild, and scorched, as if fresh from the wondrous work
of devastation!

It cannot be doubted that in a period much short of twenty years,
railways will have penetrated from Berlin northwards to Russia; and
therefore a communication of this kind through the whole of Europe,
even to the shores of the Indian Ocean, will be among the ordinary
things of the day.

As for communication by electric telegraph, where will it not be?
Every town of any importance, from Moscow to Madras, will be connected
by the marvellous wires. These wires will cross seas; they will reach
from London to New York, and from New York to far-western
cities--possibly to California. The sending of messages thousands of
miles, in the twinkling of an eye, will be an everyday affair. 'Send
Dr So-and-so on by the next train,' will be the order despatched by a
family in Calcutta, when requiring medical assistance from London; and
accordingly the doctor will set off in his travels per express, from
the Thames to the banks of the Ganges. Spanning the globe by thought
will then be no longer a figure of speech--it will be a reality.
Science will do it all.

Long before twenty years--most likely in two or three--a journey round
the world by steam may be achieved with comparative ease and at no
great expense. Here is the way we shall go: London to Liverpool by
ra