ITALY—THE EASTERN MAILS—SICILY.

Arrived in Italy, either by the Mont Cenis Railway, or by that through the Tunnel of the Alps, we have in front of us a Peninsula which juts for an extent (taking Susa as the extreme northern point and Otranto as the extreme southern) of 765 miles into the ocean. On the east, the ocean is called the Adriatic; on the south as well as on the west, the Mediterranean, a sea that contains within its limits a surface of 579,000 square miles.

We have already described the mighty railway company, Alta Italia, 2,565 miles in length, of which, since the close of the war of 1866, 1,349 belong to the South Austrian Division, and 1,216 to that of Alta Italia proper. If we are on our road to Brindisi, we arrive at the end of Alta Italia at Bologna, and, at that station come upon Ferrovia Meridionale. From Bologna, the line, proceeding southwards but also verging towards the eastward, gets to the Adriatic at Rimini, and thence, hugging the shore, it touches at Ancona, distant 127 miles from Bologna. From Ancona it still follows the shore of the Adriatic, except that at the Spur of the Boot it passes inwards through Foggia, 331 miles from Bologna. It is at this point that the line which is to unite Naples by the shortest possible railway connection, with the Adriatic, branches off. Its total length will be 124 miles; 43 are now open for traffic, 68 will be finished in the summer of 1868, leaving only a blank of 12 miles to be continued. Unfortunately, however, on these 12 miles, situated in the very heart of the Apennines, are concentrated the greatest works of the railway—three tunnels, one of which will be 2 miles and 17 yards long, and when completed will be the longest railway tunnel in Italy; the two others will be of the united length of 2 miles and 890 yards.

Reverting to Foggia, the main line, proceeding southerly and easterly for 145 miles, reaches Brindisi, 470 miles from Bologna, 711 from Susa, 1,180 from Paris, and 1,477 from London.

Captain Tyler, in his interesting Report of 1866, reviews the relative capabilities of the several harbours of Italy for the receipt and despatch of our Eastern mails, and without hesitation, names Brindisi as the one that should be selected. The harbour is composed of an outer port of about 1¼ mile long by about half that distance at its greatest width. It is connected by a channel 290 yards, or the sixth of a mile, with two inner harbours or arms, the western of which is to be the Packet Harbour. The Italian Government have important works going on at Brindisi, and their objects are the security of the outer port, the deepening of the channel, and the facing of the channel that connects the outer and inner ports, as well as the sides of the latter, with solid masonry. During 1865 and 1866, 1,800,000 cubic feet of excavation were accomplished and very considerable progress has been made with the masonry, but at the present moment the works rather flag. It is stated, however, by the Government authorities, that as soon as it is decided that the British Contract Steamers carrying the Eastern mails to and from Alexandria, shall make Brindisi their port, the works will be resumed with great vigour. The present depth of the channel is 19½ feet, but this depth is to be increased to 26 feet at low water, not only at the channel, but at the passenger jetty (to which the railway will be extended), and alongside the coal depÔt. This depth would be sufficient for the largest steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental, or of any other company, and with the view to affording suitable accommodation for large ships in case of need, it has been decided to construct immediately a dry dock, 380 feet long, at an estimated cost of £100,000. At the entrance of the outer port, and for a quarter of a mile within it, the depth of water will be from 28 to 37 feet. The rise and fall of tide at Brindisi is not more than 1½ foot. A plan of the harbour is appended.

Whilst at Brindisi, it is impossible to omit reference to its future with respect to the conveyance of our Eastern mails to and from Alexandria. This subject is divisible into two portions—conveyance of the fast and conveyance of the heavy mails. These mails go at present respectively vi Marseilles and vi Southampton. A contract now in course of completion between the Post Office and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company is about to bind the nation to the Southampton route for twelve years. It admits, however, of the transfer of the fast mails vi Marseilles being likely to take place at a period more or less proximate. If the reader will be so good as to refer to Appendix No. 3 in this volume, he will see a memorandum in which the course of the Eastern mails, both fast and heavy, is indicated, and the vast difference between the time that letters take in their conveyance by the two routes—that is, vi Southampton and vi Marseilles. This difference will continue until all mails, both fast and heavy, are carried (as eventually they will be) by Brindisi.

The following table exhibits the relative distances between London and Alexandria by the three routes. The computation is in English miles.

There is therefore a less distance vi Brindisi than vi Marseilles of 103 miles; than vi Southampton of 1,000 miles; but, as Captain Tyler says—“Apart from contingencies, which must be always greater by sea than by land conveyance, the speed on a railway is usually double that at sea,” hence the captain strongly recommends the Brindisi route, not only on account of its being the shortest between London and Alexandria, but likewise because the land portion exceeds that vi Marseilles by 644 miles, and that vi Southampton by 1,399 miles. As a question of time, the computation made is as follows:—Southampton fifteen days, Marseilles eight days one hour, Brindisi six days seven hours.[143]

The contrast between the weight of the Eastern mails carried in 1850 and at the present time is marvellous. Then the annual number of boxes despatched, the average weight of each of which was about 60 lbs., was under 2,500; in 1867 it is at the rate of 25,152. It is true that since 1858 the Australian mails are conveyed by the overland route—they are only despatched once a month, both vi Southampton and vi Marseilles, but then they form nearly two-thirds of the total weight of the mails; they swell the number of boxes from the average of 524 to 1,347.

But we must ask our reader to continue his land journey a little further south than Brindisi, just for a moment, so that he may get to Leece, twenty-five miles. This is as far as he can go by railway towards Otranto, twenty-nine miles farther at the very extremity of the heel of the boot of Italy, the Castle of which used, in the days of our boyhood, thanks to Horace Walpole, to enchain, enchant, delight and to terrify us. We feel bound to acknowledge the fact that we are exactly forty-five years older than we were forty-five years ago. We fear we must also confess to a sense of terror about Otranto that can only cease with our own cessation. We are therefore not surprised that even Captain Tyler, stout, resolute and brave as he is, did not wish to go to Otranto. “I did not,” says Captain Tyler in his report of 1866, “even consider it worth while to visit Otranto, although I made a personal inspection of all the other Italian Ports to which I have referred, as well as those of Naples and Genoa.” In other words, Captain Tyler visited every Italian Port except one, and that one was Hob-gob-lin!

The connection of the Ferovia Meridionale with the net-work of the Calabro-Sicula is effected by means of a branch given off at Bari, half way between Foggia and Brindisi, and running for seventy-two miles south to Tarento, situated at the very top of the front of Italy’s heel. Whilst Brindisi is intended to be the commercial port of Italy towards its southern extremity, Tarento is to be its great southern port for military purposes. The extent and depth of the outer harbour, its great natural advantage in a military as well as in a naval point of view, and the extent of the “seno interno” or inner expanse of deep water, render it admirably applicable for a naval arsenal. It will therefore eventually fulfil for Italy the purposes which Plymouth fulfils for England, while Spezzia on the Mediterranean, half way between Genoa and Leghorn, may be considered as Italy’s Portsmouth.

The main-land as well as the Sicilian portions of the Calabro-Sicula are at the present time very much longer on paper than on terra firma. The longest of the Calabrian sections is, when completed, to extend from Tarento all along the undersole of Italy as well as to the ball of the foot, and thence to its very tip-toe at Reggio, a distance of 300 miles; but although ten years have elapsed since the railway works were taken in hand, only the ten miles nearest to Reggio have as yet been completed. As, however, the Italian Government has recently made a loan of £720,000 to the company, the works are carried on actively, and it is probable that half-way in 1868 (portions perhaps earlier) 127 miles, in two sections, of which one from Tarento westward will be 90 miles, and the other will extend the line from Reggio 47 miles, will be ready for traffic. Of the remaining 163 miles to complete the continuous railway tie along the sole of Italy, some slight progress has been made on 56 miles, none on 107.

In reply to a question put by us to a gentleman of the administration of the company, to whom we are mainly indebted for the foregoing information, “Quando sar[=a] terminata la Linea—Tarento—Reggio?” we were told, “Non È dato respondere a questa domanda senza conoscere di quali mezzi la societa potrÀ disporre;” and we received precisely the same answer in respect of the Sicilian lines of the company.

The distance between Reggio and Messina is exactly 7½ miles. As we are here on the dominions of Scylla and Charybdis, it is no wonder that the steamers of the company, which ply backwards and forwards in connection with its trains, are often impeded by the numerous currents and the heavy gusts of wind that prevail in the Straits of Messina. Nevertheless, the passage from port to port is usually made in less than an hour, although at times the navigation is so difficult and dangerous, that, in winter, the Royal Postal Steamers of the Italian Government are occasionally unable to land their mails at Reggio, and are compelled to carry them on to their next port of call.

We live in an age of wonders. M. Oudry, one of the engineers of the Ponts et ChaussÉes of France, proposes to cross over the Straits of Messina with a suspension bridge of four spans, each 1,000 metres, or 3,281 feet long. The bridge (which is to be made available for railways) would thus be 4,200 metres, or two miles and five-eighths long, exclusive of the great sustaining piers at each edge of the water. M. Oudry selects this width in preference to the narrowest part of the Straits, which is 3,200 metres, exactly two miles wide, because at the spot of his selection the depth of his two central piers, under water, would he only 110 metres; whereas, if he took the narrowest part of the Straits, his two piers must be of the under-water depth of 130.

The lower surface of the platforms should, in M. Oudry’s opinion, be 50 metres above high water, and to that elevation he proposes they should be carried. The towers of the piers being, say, 40 metres higher, the total pier elevation to be constructed, exclusive of foundations, would be about 200 metres, exactly half as high again as the top of the cross of St. Paul’s. Semiramis, after a repose of nearly 4,900 years, should be started into life again, together with her two millions of Assyrians. Her greatest elevation, however, was only 350 feet—the walls of Babylon—270 feet short of the piers of M. Oudry. To be sure the walls were said to be seventy miles long, and wide enough at top for five chariots.

Of the total length of railways contemplated and sanctioned for Sicily—347 miles, 82 are opened for traffic, of which 59½ are from Messina (passing in its course at the foot of Mount Etna) to Catania, in the direction of Syracuse; and 22½ from Palermo to Marsala. It is a striking illustration of the rapid development which takes place through the opening of railways in a fertile country, that the traffic receipts per mile on the Sicilian sections opened have, since the commencement of 1867, been at the rate of £640 per annum. The directors of the company consider (apparently with justice) this amount as indicating very satisfactory results for the future.

Whilst upon the railways in the extreme Southern Italy, we wish to mention a non-feasible theory that has been propounded to us during a visit we paid to Italy in July last. As England is to have her overland route to her Eastern possessions through Brindisi, why should not France find her way to Algeria by Reggio, and thence to Marsala, from which latter port the city of Tunis is only separated by some 90 miles of water? From Tunis to Constantine, and thence to Algiers, the measurement is 400 miles. But while the distance from Paris to Algiers, vi Marseilles, is 1,100 miles, that vi Reggio is 2,297, in which are comprised 500 miles of intended railway, the construction of which is not likely to be accomplished for several years to come.

“The world,” says the Pall Mall Gazette in its recent review of Alfred Von Reaumont’s Work, Geschichte der Stadt Rom,[144] “may be divided into those who have been to Rome, and those who wish to go there, with more or less of looming hope that the wish may be gratified.” For the wishful and the hopeful there are facilities that did not exist even twelve months ago. The “Roman Railways” Company is the second, both in length and importance on Italian soil, as it consists of 1,024 miles “en exploitation,” and by it, not only Rome, but Naples may be approached from the north, either vi Florence or vi Ancona, and there is a net-work of lines running farther south than Naples, which will ultimately join at the Sole of the Boot, with the Calabro-Sicilian Railways. Summed up, the railway mileage of the whole Italian Peninsula now open for traffic is 3,040 miles. There will be further openings of them, to the extent of about 250 miles before the end of 1868; but as regards lines projected, or to which even the words “en construction” may be applied, we must wait for their realisation until the whole system of Italian finance and of Italian credit has been put upon a more solid basis than that upon which it is at present founded. But thanks to railways as they now exist towards and in Italy, the traveller, bent on tip-top speed, can leave London on any morning of the week, and even now, before the opening of the Mont Cenis Railway is accomplished, he can reach Turin before the chimes of the innumerable, and not always correctly-going public clocks in that city have struck twelve the following night. Of these clocks it is said that a person knowing them well, may start on a perambulation through the city as the first commences striking twelve and complete a circuit in which he shall never be out of public clock hearing, just as that from which he started is striking one. “When the Mont Cenis Railway is opened, the traveller in search of haste can reach Turin in time to start that night for Florence, and arrive there at eight o’clock the following morning—forty-eight hours from London to Florence—What distance? 1,122 miles. Resting in the city for thirteen hours, he can proceed at 9.10 p.m. to Rome, the distance of which from Florence, 233 miles, he can accomplish in nine hours and twenty minutes, which includes Frontier Visa, both of luggage and of passport. If he be determined not to tarry at the Eternal City more than four hours, he can proceed on his way for Naples, 163 miles farther, and be there 21 hours after he has left Florence, and (including his 13 hours pause there) 44 after he has left Turin, 70 after he has left Paris, 83 after he has left London; from which Naples is distant by railway measurement exactly 1,518 miles.

The railway distance from Florence to Rome will be lessened some thirty miles by the opening early next year of the line vi Orvietto. It will also, of course, lessen to the same extent the journey between Florence and Naples, but in some years hence the railway between Southern and Northern Italy, avoiding Florence altogether, will be shortened by 93 miles, that is, when two unfinished portions of line along the west coast of Italy, one between Genoa and Spezzia 57 miles, and the other, the portion of the line between Civita Vecchia and Leghorn, nearest to the former, 36 miles, are completed. The works required upon these lines will be extremely heavy and extremely costly. How the money is to be found for them passes even conjecture, at the time of our present writing.

“Vede Napoli e mori.” We have seen her; we obey the injunction, and we depart in peace with but one word on dying lips,

Finis.