In the centre, where the cars stop, is a hydraulic elevator, by
which they are immediately let down below to make room for the
next arrival. The passengers are then disembarked without hurry.
Those who are to continue their journey then go on board their
right car and are again started on time. The departure slide is
like a lower storey of the arrival one. It is immediately beneath
it, but its grade is not quite parallel. Near the centre, where
the cars start, the upper slide is twenty-five feet above the
lower one, but at 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