Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455, page 9 by Various Authors
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how best to reach Badajoz from Lisbon. Three routes present themselves--one to Santarem, and across the Tagus to Badajoz; another to Santarem and Coimbra, and so on into Spain by way of Almeida; and a third to Oporto, and thence by Bragança into Spain. The first of these, being more directly in the route to Madrid, is preferred by the commissioners, who estimate the outlay at a million and a quarter sterling. They discuss the terms on which capitalists might possibly be induced to come to their aid; and they indulge in a hope that, ten years hence, Lisbon may be united to Central Europe by a railway, of which 260 kilomètres will cross Portugal to Badajoz, 370 from Badajoz to Madrid, and about 400 from Madrid to the French frontier, where the Paris and Bayonne Railway will continue the route. (Five kilomètres are equal to rather more than three English miles.) The Continental Bradshaw will, we apprehend, have to wait long before these peninsular trunk-lines find a place in its pages.
Leaving altogether the countries of Europe, and crossing the Mediterranean, we find that even Africa is becoming a member of the great railway system. After a world of trouble, financial and diplomatic, the present ruler of Egypt has succeeded in giving reality to a scheme for a railway from Alexandria to the Nile. A glance at a map of Egypt will shew us that a canal extends from Alexandria to the Nile, to escape the sanded-up mouths of that famous river. It is mainly to expedite the overland route, so far as concerns the transit along this canal, that the railway now in process of construction has been planned; anything beyond this, it will be for future ages to develop. The subject of the Isthmus of Suez and its transit has been frequently treated in this Journal, and we will therefore say nothing more here, than that our friend Bradshaw will, in all probability, have something to tell us concerning the land of Egypt before any long time has elapsed.
Asia will have a