In which way was communication by telegraph an improvement over communication by mail

Speed. Mail delivery even now takes 3 or 4 days by ordinary snail mail (that's why it is called snail mail) to get from one side of the country to the other and that's major city to major city. Telegraph communication made it simpler to communicate directly very quickly with whomever you wanted to contact. Now the problem became how many messages could be sent at once. There still was no quick or inexpensive way to deal with parcels. That's what trains were for.

the california missions began in the late 18th century as an effort to convert native americans to catholicism and expand european territory. there were 21 missions in all, lasting from 1769 until about 1833.   the missions were built by the spanish starting in 1769 in order to “colonize” the territory of alta california. so the missions were important because they were the means of settling california. it also wanted to keep other european countries out of alta california. building settlements along the coast would them meet these goals. missionaries wanted to convert the indians to the roman catholic faith. california indians did much of the work to build missions.

china has confucianism thats everywhere in asia but it isn't really a religion.