'Telegraph and travel. A narrative of the formation and development of telegraphic communication between England and India, under the orders of Her Majesty's Government, with incidental notices of the countries traversed by the lines.' [‎31] (64/782)

i.j MEMOIR OF COLONEL PATRICK STEWART. 31
not an animal in the whole country." One of his
brother officers had applied for and obtained an appoint
ment in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India,
and had been then ordered to Kashmir, whence he
would move towards Thibet. On this he writes : " It
is likely to be a most interesting, though rather diffi
cult undertaking. Many of the passes he must cross
are 19,000 feet and upwards; elevations that look down
considerably on Mr. Albert Smith and Mont Blanc."
His enthusiasm was great in contemplating the work
then in progress. It was one quite to his own heart;
and though not himself destined to participate in it,
few would have acknowledged more readily than he the
admirable manner in wljich it has been performed, had
he lived to see the results of the labours of Captain
Montgomerie and his associates.
On taking up his appointment, Stewart contemplates
a tour during the first six months, "from one end of
India to the other from Ceylon to Simla and Peshawar,
and from Prom to Bombay and Karachi." As regards
the extent of the telegraph branches, he notes the fact
that nearly 4,000 miles of line are nqw working, and
about 3,000 more are ordered, and may probably be
completed within a year;" adding, " it is interesting work,
and of a nature likely to become more and more so every
year from the progress made in the science." India
was indeed making a gigantic effort to vie with the
sister empires of Europe in this latest but not least im
portant demand of civilization; and at a time when her
progress and prosperity were threatened by a visitation
which, if foreseen in its reality, might have been inter
preted by the wisest of political seers as fraught with
paralysis and death.