vely near neighbors, he said to himself: "Why not cross the
ocean and connect the New World with the Old?" He had heard that Morse
long ago had prophesied that this link would some day be welded, and he
became possessed with the idea that he was the person to accomplish this
marvel, just as Morse had received the inspiration of the telegraph in
1832.

A letter to Morse, who was just then in Washington, received an
enthusiastic and encouraging reply, coupled with the information that
Lieutenant Maury of the Navy had, by a series of careful soundings,
established the existence of a plateau between Ireland and Newfoundland,
at no very great depth, which seemed expressly designed by nature to
receive and carefully guard a telegraphic cable. Mr. Field lost no time
in organizing a company composed originally of himself, his brother the
Honorable David Dudley Field, Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Marshall O.
Roberts, and Chandler White. After a liberal charter had been secured
from the legislature of Newfoundland the following names were added to
the list of incorporators: S.F.B. Morse, Robert W. Lowber, Wilson G.
Hunt, and John W. Brett. Mr. Field then went to England and with
characteristic energy soon enlisted the interest and capital of
influential men, and the Atlantic Telegraph Company was organized to
cooperate with the American company, and liberal pledges of assistance
from the British Government were secured. Similar pledges were obtained
from the Congress of the United States, but, quite in line with former
precedents, by a majority of only _one_ in the Senate. Morse was
appointed electrician of the American company and Faraday of the English
company, and much technical correspondence followed between these two
eminent scientists.

In the spring of 1855, Morse, in a letter to his friend and relative by
marriage, Thomas R. Walker, of Utica, writes enthusiastically of the
future: "Our _Atlantic line_ is in a fair way. We have the governments
and capitalists of Europe zealously and warmly engaged to carry it
through. _Three years_ will not pass before a _submarine telegraph
communication will be had with Europe_, and I do not despair of sitting
in my office and, by a touch of the telegraph-key, asking a question
simultaneously to persons in London, Paris, Cairo, Calcutta, and Canton,
and getting the answer from all of them in _five minutes_ after the
question is asked. Does this seem strange? I presume if I had even
sug