his energies, and fortune to
the accomplishment of this grand enterprise.

A presentiment of success may have inspired him; but he was ignorant
alike of submarine cables and the deep sea. Was it possible to submerge
the cable in the Atlantic, and would it be safe at the bottom? Again,
would the messages travel through the line fast enough to make it pay!
On the first question he consulted Lieutenant Maury, the great authority
on mareography. Maury told him that according to recent soundings by
Lieutenant Berryman, of the United States brig Dolphin, the bottom
between Ireland and Newfoundland was a plateau covered with microscopic
shells at a depth not over 2000 fathoms, and seemed to have been made
for the very purpose of receiving the cable. He left the question of
finding a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough,
and a ship big enough,' to lay a line some sixteen hundred miles in
length to other minds. As to the line itself, Mr. Field consulted
Professor Morse, who assured him that it was quite possible to make and
lay a cable of that length. He at once adopted the scheme of Gisborne as
a preliminary step to the vaster undertaking, and promoted the New
York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, to establish a line
of telegraph between America and Europe. Professor Morse was appointed
electrician to the company.

The first thing to be done was to finish the line between St. John's and
Nova Scotia, and in 1855 an attempt was made to lay a cable across the
Gulf of the St. Lawrence, It was payed out from a barque in tow of a
steamer; but when half was laid a gale rose, and to keep the barque from
sinking the line was cut away. Next summer a steamboat was fitted
out for the purpose, and the cable was submerged. St. John's was now
connected with New York by a thousand miles of land and submarine
telegraph.

Mr. Field then directed his efforts to the completion of the
trans-oceanic section. He induced the American Government to despatch
Lieutenant Berryman, in the Arctic, and the British Admiralty to send
Lieutenant: Dayman, in the Cyclops, to make a special survey along the
proposed route of the cable. These soundings revealed the existence of a
submarine hill dividing the 'telegraph plateau' from the shoal water on
the coast of Ireland, but its slope was gradual and easy.

Till now the enterprise had been purely American, and the funds provided
by American capitalists, with the exception of