Australia 277,419 miles, but that Africa has 99,409 miles and
Asia 310,685 miles, Japan alone having, in 1903, 84,000 miles
beside 108,000 miles of telephone wires.

I found the telegraph in Siam and Korea, in China and the
Philippines, in Burma, India, Arabia, Egypt and Palestine.
Camping one night in far Northern Laos after a toilsome ride
on elephants, I realized that I was 12,500 miles from home, at
as remote a point almost as it would be possible for man to
reach. All about was the wilderness, relieved only by the few
houses of a small village. But walking into that tiny hamlet, I
found at the police station a telephone connecting with the
telegraph office at Chieng-mai, so that, though I was on the
other side of the planet, I could have sent a telegram to my
New York office in a few minutes. Nor was this an exceptional
experience, for the telegraph is all over Laos, as indeed
it is over many other Asiatic lands.

From the recesses of Africa comes the report that the Congo
telegraph line, which will ultimately stretch across the entire
belt of Central Africa, already runs 800 miles up the Congo
River from the ocean to Kwamouth, the junction of the
Kassai and Congo Rivers. A Belgian paper states that ``a
telegram dispatched from Kwamouth on January 15th was
delivered at Boma half an hour later. For the future, the
Kassai is thus placed in direct and rapid communication with
the seat of Government, and Europe is also brought close to the
centre of Africa. Only a few years ago, news took at least two
months to reach Boma from the Kassai, and the reply would
not be received under another two months, and this only if the