By the completion, many years ago, of the trans-Indian line of telegraph and railroad, and now of that from Calcutta along the Brahmapootra River and through Southern China to Canton, the girdle around the world is almost completed. Puck might travel it now in less than forty minutes. Behring's Strait will, in a few months, be crossed by the Asian-American cable, and a line of steamers, owned partly by Russian and partly by American stockholders, will soon make that channel a ferry between the Continents. The greatest tunnel in the world is that being constructed through a spur of the Himalayas, in Northeastern India. The new observatory on Mount Everest is furnished with three first-class telescopes, and other needful appliances for astronomical observation.
All friends of Africa will rejoice to know that Liberia is extending its annexations farther and farther into the interior. The Livingstone lock Canal also, along the valley of what was once called the Congo River, is contracted for, to be ready for navigation within twelve months. No doubt at all exists of the success of the project for irrigating portions of the desert of Sahara by means of Artesian, or rather not very deep driven wells, by which the desert has already been made, in a hundred artificial oases, to "blossom as the rose."
Ship canals seem to be among the special works of our time. It is now almost a quarter of a century since the Caspian and Black Seas were connected, through the enterprise of Russian capitalists. The newest project broached is to cut through from the Gulf of Boothia to Hudson's Bay, in latitude 65° N. and longitude 90° W. from Greenwich.
I think I shall join, this summer, one of the excursions which are getting so fashionable, to Labrador, Greenland, or perhaps Iceland. The Upernavik House is said to be very well kept, and filled most of the season with boarders or transient visitors.
There is something yet new in these northern places. Switzerland is getting spoiled and commonplace. Think of making the ascent of Mont Blanc on a steam railroad! Think, too, of public school excursions to the Yosemite, and the rocks there being placarded all over (until the government very properly had them taken down) with advertisements!
Certainly man must begin to repair or restore to nature some of his robberies. A small beginning of this has been made by the Society of Acclimatization and Conservation. At their Acclimatarium in West Philadelphia, including the old Centennial Grounds of '76, and the Zoological Garden, munificent arrangements have been made, by the use of glass, wood, iron, and water-gas heating apparatus, for the creation of an artificial tropical and sub-tropical climate. All the glories of Southern India, Ceylon, Java, Australasia, Brazil, and the West Indies may now be seen there, in palms, cycads, eucalypti, acacias, tree ferns, clinging vines, and splendid flowers, as well as in the many-colored birds and insects of those regions; with their animals, also, which are disposed, when needful for safety, in cages so large and yet so light, as scarcely to give the appearance of imprisonment.
Also, the camel is now fairly naturalized in Texas and New Mexico, and the two-toed ostrich in South America; on the pampas of that continent travellers may meet with the gazelle, the springbok, the oryx, and the kangaroo. Elephants are domesticated and used for court occasions in Brazil, as they are in India. Tea and coffee are now largely cultivated in California, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. In exchange, the cinchona tree abounds more now in India than in Peru, and the cacao or cocoa tree has been planted by thousands upon the southern slopes of the Himalayas and in Persia.
On the other hand, the bison and the prong-buck are almost extinct in the west. But for the great national parks, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Niagara and others, carefully guarded, the American deer, elk, and moose would all likewise disappear. Forest-culture, however, is, by the pressure of necessity, attracting, as it ought, a great deal of attention, under the guidance of the government Agricultural Department.
It seems to work well, better than some expected, to have our national Cabinet enlarged by the introduction to full rank in it of the three new Secretaries, of Agriculture, Education, and Health. The importance of the last named of these is universally acknowledged; as well as the necessity for State Boards of Health in all the States.
How much sanitation has advanced during the last half century! Human life now averages 50 years in the United States; rather more in England, and nearly as much in France and Germany. By stringent regulations for maintaining cleanliness of ships, wharves, and, indeed of cities throughout, along with the abolition everywhere of the useless and detestable antiquated personal quarantine, yellow fever has been almost absolutely extinguished; only ten deaths from it occurring last summer in Havana, one or two in Pensacola, and not one in New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, or any other city in the United States. Cholera, likewise, through sanitary improvements, has disappeared from the world, except a score or two of cases annually in the worst crowded villages near the Ganges in India. What a grand triumph of medical art, also, following Jenner's vaccination, and Pasteur's later investigations, is the protection afforded against the dangers of scarlet fever, measles and whooping-cough, by inoculation with a modified virus, appropriate to each!