Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429. Various
p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 / Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852
THINGS IN EXPECTATION
The passing age is acknowledged to be remarkable in various respects. Great advances in matters of practical science; a vast development of individual enterprise, and general prosperity;—at the same time, strange retardations in things of social concern; a singular want of earnestness in carrying out objects of undeniable utility. Much grandeur, but also much meanness of conception; much wealth, but also much poverty. A struggle between greatness and littleness; intelligence and ignorance; light and darkness. Sometimes we feel as if going forward, sometimes as if backward. One day, we seem as if about to start a hundred years in advance; on the next, all is wrong somewhere, and we feel as if hurriedly retreating to the eighteenth century!
Upon the whole, however, we are ourselves inclined to look at the bright side of affairs; and in doing so, we are not without hope of being able to make some proselytes. Let us just see what are the prospects of the next twenty years—a long enough space for a man to look forward to in anything else than a dream. War, it is true, may intervene, or some other terrible catastrophe; but we shall not admit this into our hypothesis, which proceeds on the assumption, that although people may wrangle here and there, and here and there fly at each other's throats, still the bulk of civilised mankind will go on tranquilly enough to present no direct 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 rail; Liverpool to Chagres by steamer; Chagres to Panama by rail; Panama to Hong-Kong, touching at St Francisco; Hong-Kong to Sincapore, whence, if you have a fancy, you can diverge to Borneo, Australia, and New Zealand; Sincapore to Madras, Bombay, Aden, and Suez—the whole of the run to this point from Panama being done by steamer; Suez to Cairo, and Cairo to Alexandria (rail in preparation); lastly, by steamer from Alexandria to England. It is deeply interesting to watch the progress of intrusion on the Pacific. Already, within these few years, its placid surface has been tracked with steam-navigation; of which almost every day brings us accounts of the extension over that beautiful ocean. Long secluded, by difficulty of access from Europe, it is now in the course of being effectually opened up by the railway across the Isthmus of Panama. And the grandeur of this invasion by steam is beyond the reach of imagination. Thousands of islands, clothed in gorgeous yet delicate vegetation, and enjoying the finest climate, lie scattered like diamonds in a sea on which storms never rage—each in itself an earthly paradise. When these islands can be reached at a moderate outlay of time, money, and trouble, may we not expect to see them visited by the curious, and flourishing as seats of civilised existence? There is reason to believe, that the equable climate of many of them would prove suitable for persons affected with the complaints of northern regions; and therefore they may become the Sanatoria of Europe. 'Gone to winter-quarters in the Pacific!'—a pleasant notice this of a health-seeking trip twenty years hence.
It may be reasonably conjectured, that this great and varied extension of journeying round the earth, and in all climates, will not be unaided by new discoveries in motive power. At present, we speak of steam; but there is every probability of new agents being brought into operation, less bulky and less costly, before twenty years elapse. Even while we write, men of science are painfully poring over the subject, and giving indications that in chemistry or electricity reside powers which may be advantageously pressed into the service of the traveller. Admitting, however, that steam will be retained as the prevailing agent of locomotion, we have grounds for anticipating improvements in its application, which will materially cheapen its use. As regards safety to life and limb, much will be done by better arrangements. In steam-voyaging, we may expect that means will be adopted to avert, or at least assuage, the terrible calamities of conflagration and shipwreck—better acquaintance with the principles of spontaneous combustion, and with the natural law of storms, being of itself a great step towards this important result.
One of the latest wonders in practical science, is a plan for cooling the air in dwellings in hot climates; by which persons residing in India, and other oppressively warm countries, may live habitually in an atmosphere cooled down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or the ordinary heat of a pleasant day in England. The very ingenious yet simple means by which this is to be effected, will form the subject of notice in our next number. Meanwhile, we may observe that the discovery is due to Mr C. Piazzi Smyth, astronomer-royal for Scotland; and if perfectly successful in practice, of which there can be no reasonable doubt, it will have a most important effect in extending European influence over the globe.
The extension of the English language over the civilised world is a curiosity of the age. French, German, Italian, and other continental tongues, seem to have attained their limits as vernaculars. Each is spoken in its own country, and by a few fashionables and scholars beyond. But the language which pushes abroad is the English; and it may be said to be rooting out colonised French and Spanish, and becoming almost everywhere, beyond continental Europe, the spoken and written tongue. Long the Spanish enjoyed the supremacy in Central America; but it has followed the fate of the idle, proud, combative, and good-for-nothing people who carried it across the Atlantic, and is disappearing like snow before the sun of a genial spring. The sooner it is extinct the better. Already the English is the vernacular from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, wherever civilised settlements are formed. As large a population now speaks this nervous language in America as in Great Britain; and this is only an indication of its progress. By means of a rapidly-increasing population, the English language will in twenty years be spoken by upwards of fifty million Americans; and if to these we add all within the home and colonial dominion, the number speaking it at that period will not be short of a hundred millions. What an amount of letter-writing and printing will this produce! And, after all, how small that amount in comparison with what will be seen a hundred years hence, when many hundred millions of men are on the earth, English in speech and feeling, whatever may be their local and political distinctions! The gratification which one experiences in contemplating facts of this kind, transcends the power of language. To all appearance, our English tongue is the expression of civil and religious freedom—in fact, of common sense; and its spread over the globe surely indicates the progress of civilised habits and institutions.
In referring to the qualities which are usually found in connection with the