The Dominion in 1983, Ralph Centennius [short books to read TXT] 📗

the edge, a mile distant, in consequence of the difference in grade, there is fifty feet between them. The path of the cars before they emerge from the departure slide, is between the supports of the upper one, yet the supports are so placed that the cars can be pointed before starting for all the principal routes. There is a through car to Constantinople, and in it the twenty passengers from Halifax take their seats. At 8.30 the first spring is made, and Paris is reached in 10 minutes. Another spring, and in 10 minutes more Strasbourg appears. Then successively: Munich in 8 minutes, Vienna in 10, Belgrade in 15, and lastly Constantinople in 20, or at 9.43, that is just one hour and thirteen minutes from leaving London, and two hours and 43 minutes from Halifax. It is still early in the day—well that is where a surprise awaits the traveller who has not considered that he has been journeying eastward through more than ninety degrees of longitude, so that instead of being a quarter to ten in the morning, it is a good six hours later, or just about four in the afternoon. Two out of the twenty Haligonians are on business only, and intend to return the same night; the other eighteen, after seeing the lions of Constantinople intend visiting Jerusalem, the Persian Gulf, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Pekin, and Yokohama, staying a day or two in each city. The car services on this route have been in existence a good many years and are well organized. From Yokohama a long flight over the Pacific will be taken and Canadian soil again struck at Victoria. We will not follow the eighteen travellers in their eight or ten days sight-seeing, but will return to the two Haligonians at Constantinople, who have got through their business in a few hours, and must go back to Halifax at once. They start for London at 10 p.m., Constantinople time, arriving there in one hour and thirteen minutes over the route they traversed in the morning. They change cars, and in ten minutes are off again via Holyhead, Dublin, Galway, St. John's and Sydney, C. B., for Halifax, where they arrive in one hour and 20 minutes from London, or forty-three minutes after midnight by Constantinople time, but more than six hours earlier, or about 6.30 in the evening by Halifax time. They have therefore got ahead of the sun in his apparent journey round the world, for he had set for at least two hours when they started from Constantinople, but they caught up with him when over the Atlantic, and to the engineer it appeared as if he were rising in the west. This is a daily experience of travellers going west, which never fails at first to create great surprise. Our two voyagers are now safe back, at the port from which they set out a little less than twelve hours before. They are quite accustomed to such travelling, and have done nothing but what thousands are doing daily. But what would have been thought, if such a journey had been described a hundred years ago, in 1883? And how will the world travel a hundred years hence, in 2083? It is hard to say, or even to imagine. Yet inventive skill is unceasingly active, and in all probability speed will eventually be still further accelerated.

And now our task of contrasting Canada in 1983 with Canada in 1883 is concluded, and surely in this epitome of the works of a century there is food for reflection for the inventor, the statesman, the moralist and the philanthropist. All, when pondering on the gradual, but sure improvement that has come about in their respective paths, can take heart and nerve themselves for renewed effort, or be induced to stand firm till success comes to reward their courage. No man can despair who ponders on the position of the Dominion in 1983.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Dominion in 1983, by Ralph Centennius