82 OUR - ISLAND STORY

erected; and the whole line to the Capes was completed within '

a few days of the laying of the cable. On this Island ten or twelve miles of telegraph line had also been erected; and within two weeks telegraphic communication with Charlottetown was es-

etablishd. ,

Mr. Michael Quinlan was the first telegraph, operator of the line and Mr. Charles A. Hyndman, appointed in the year 1854, was the first superintendent of the Island Telegraph system. In the legislative sesSion of 1855 an Act was passed granting certain

privileges to the New York, Newfoundland and London Tele— '

graph Company; and at the end of the session Lieut. Governor Bannerman said: “I cannot conclude without alluding to the advantages whichlmust accrue to the inhabitants of the colony from the electric telegraph which, notwithstanding their insular

, position, will enable them not only to interchange intelligence pwith their neighbors ”in the adjoining provinces but with the

people in the remotest corner of the vast American continent in the” Shortest space of time. Man’s intellect, the gift of his Creator, graciously bestowed to carry out His beneficent purposes for the good of the human race, cannot be more wonderfully ex- emplified than by the discovery that the electric cable, in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, may convey to the shore of New- foundland one hundred and fifty miles distant, in a very few minutes, the words I am now addressing to you. Such will be

the result when this great undertaking is completed, and to the

enterprising gentlemen who have embarked their capital, to ac- complish it this colony is much indebted. I hope that they will meet with that support and success which they so well deserve.”

In the Legislative session of 1857 it was provided that for»

ten years the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph

Company should be paid, in half-yearly instalments, a subsidy ‘

of, three hundred pounds per annum. Another compan‘y-—-“The Gulf Express and Telegraph Company’L—Was. afterwards in- corporated for the purpose of “establishing and maintaining

telegraphic. COmmunication between Summerside and Char- '

lottetown," the said Company to afford “direct telegraphic com- munication with some part of the neighboring provinceof New