A RAILWAY ACROSS FIVE CONTINENTS.
MR. ALEXANDER HUME FORD tells us, in the Independent of February 1, that the great giants of finance have as their latest project the building of a round-the-world trunk line of twenty-five thousand miles in length, beginning at Cape Horn, the lowest point in South America, running along the backbone of the continent up the Andes, winding across the Isthmus of Panama, through Mexico, the United States and Canada, diving under the Bering Sea, emerging in Siberia, crossing that frigid region and torrid Central Asia, through the Holy Land and Egypt, connecting with the Rhodes trans-African railway, now in course of construction from Cairo to Capetown. This is a colossal undertaking, yet not so big as it seems, for there is but ten thousand miles of additional railroad to be built to fill the gaps and make the railway complete. It was the joint idea of an American, an Englishman, and a Frenchman. Mr. Carnegie offers to finance the New York to Buenos Ayres project and has subscribed fifty thousand dollars for the preliminary survey; and M. Loing de Lobel is looking after the European and Cairo to Capetown affair. Within five years is the promise of the Frenchman, and about a decade is the prediction of the Scotch-American. There seems to be co-operation on the part of the various countries all along the line. In connection with this the old idea of tunnelling under the Straits of Dover is again revived in order to connect London with the great world by rail. Time and money are all that is needed.