little mahogany cabinets, including a variety of specimens of natural
history and articles of savage warfare, which have been given to me by
sailors and travelers. In one of these cabinets there are the silver
wings of a flying-fish, the poisoned arrows of South Sea cannibals,
sharks' and alligators' teeth, fragments of well-remembered wrecks, and
an inch or two of thick tarred rope.

The latter appears to be a common and useless object at the first
glance, but when examined closely it is not so uninteresting. It
measures one and one-eighth of an inch in diameter, and running through
the center are seven bright copper wires, surrounded by a hard, dark
brown substance, the nature of which you do not immediately recognize.
It is gutta-percha, the wonderful vegetable juice, which is as firm as
a rock while it is cold and as soft as dough when it is exposed to
heat. This is inclosed within several strands of Manilla hemp, with ten
iron wires woven among them. The hemp is saturated with tar to resist
water, and the wires are galvanized to prevent rust. You may judge,
then, how strong and durable the rope is, but I am not sure that you
can guess its use.

Near the southern extremity of the western coast of Ireland there is a
little harbor called Valentia, as you will see by referring to a map.
It faces the Atlantic Ocean, and the nearest point on the opposite
shore is a sheltered bay prettily named Heart's Content, in
Newfoundland. The waters between are the stormiest in the world, wrathy
with hurricanes and cyclones, and seldom smooth even in the calm months
of midsummer. The distance across is nearly two thousand miles, and the
depth gradually increases to a maximum of three miles. Between these
two points of land--Valentia in Ireland and Heart's Content in
Newfoundland--a magical rope is laid, binding America to Europe with a
firm bond, and enabling people in London to send instantaneous messages
to those in New York. It is the first successful Atlantic cable, and my
piece was cut from it before it was laid. Fig. 2 on the next page shows
how a section of it looks, and Fig. 3 shows a section of the shore
ends, which are larger.

Copper is one of the best conductors of electricity known, and hence
the wires in the center are made of that metal. Water, too, is an
excellent conductor, and if the wires were not closely protected, the
electricity would pass from them into the sea, instead of carrying its
message the whole l