But through years of good fortune
and of bad fortune the iron network has continued to spread itself,
until all the land lies embraced in its ramifications; and it is
spreading still, like some strange organism the one condition of
whose life is reproduction, knitting the greatest centres of commerce
with the loneliest and remotest villages that were wont to lie far
out of the travelled ways of men, and bringing _Ultima Thule_ into
touch with London.
[Illustration: George Stephenson]
Meanwhile the steam service by sea has advanced almost with that by
land. In 1838 three steamships crossed the Atlantic between this
country and New York, the _Great Western_, sailing from Bristol, and
_Sirius_, from Cork, distinguished themselves by the short passages
they made,--of fifteen days in the first case, and seventeen days in
the second,--and by their using steam power _alone_ to effect the
transit, an experiment that had not been risked before. It was now
proved feasible, and in a year or two there was set on foot that
regular steam communication between the New World and the Old, which
ever since has continued to draw them into always closer connection,
as the steamers, like swift-darting shuttles, weave their multiplying
magic lines across the liquid plain between.
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