OVERLAND ROUTE. This line of communi cation between Europe and the E. Indies entered into the far-seeing projects of the first Emperor Napoleon, had been kept in contemplation by many a British statesman, and has been effected by a few men of spirit and enterprise. Lord Wellesley, before the close of the 18th century, had a line of the Company's cruisers running fort nightly between Bombay and Bussora, from which port letters were carried on by dromedary -post through Aleppo to Constantinople. Tidings of the victory of the Nile were sent by Nelson to the Bombay Government by way of Baghdad and Bussom. A few officers, from the year 1809 onwards, made their way to and from India by the Red Sea via Cosseir, including Sir Hudson Lowe. Sir John Malcolm came home by it in 1821. A definite proposal for a line of communi cation by that route was made by Mountstuart Elphinstone as early as 1823, and renewed in 1826, but rejected by the Court of Directors of the English East India Company. In the year
1830, Lieutenant Waghorn, after reaching Bombay by the Red Sea route, was found still to uphold at a public meeting the route by the Cape, in preference to that by the Red Sea advocated by Mr. Taylor ; but on the success of Commander Wilson's experimental trip in the Hugh Lindsay to Suez and back in the spring of the same year, he threw his undivided energy into the advocacy of the overland passage. A committee of the House of Commons having in the year 1834 formally re-. ported in its favour, a regular mail service was organized by means of the E.I. Company's steam flotilla. The Indian navy, in the person of its energetic representative, Commander Wilson, claim the practical initiation of this important line of ocean communication.