Show A construction company has offered to lay I a British transPacific cable from British Columbia to Australia for 50750000 and to complete It by July I 1 1902 All those things will be done lone of these days In the meantime the citizens of the Unltqd States are mining closo up under onc of the abutments abut-ments of the gate that opens Into the Arctic sea Thirtyfive years ago on glncers wcr sent to Bering straits to make surveys and estimates of the cost of stretching a cable across those straits The chief engineer of tho expedition ex-pedition told tho writer of this more than thirty years ago that there wero no difficulties that the whole distance was less than forty miles nnd the Islands in the straits made it practicable practica-ble to cover the space to lay only two or three short cables Again tho Siberian railway will bo completed probably In the next year and n half or two years For present pres-ent uses why would It I not be a good plan to extend an American telegraph tele-graph system from one of tho upper I ports of the State of Washington along the coast by Cape Nome to Bering straits then doun on the Asian shore to Vladivostok From that poInt there will be telegraphic connections for southern Asia and there Is already al-ready n cable to Australia and Manila Of course It would leave the Hawaiian I islands out for the present but it is only six days sail from San Francisco to Honolulu and that group can get along for the present |