cable until the submergence of an Atlantic line.

In 1854 Cyrus W. Field of New York opened a new chapter in electrical
enterprise as he resolved to lay a cable between Ireland and
Newfoundland, along the shortest line that joins Europe to America. He
chose Valentia and Heart's Content, a little more than 1,600 miles
apart, as his termini, and at once began to enlist the co-operation of
his friends. Although an unfaltering enthusiast when once his great idea
had possession of him, Mr. Field was a man of strong common sense. From
first to last he went upon well-ascertained facts; when he failed he did
so simply because other facts, which he could not possibly know, had to
be disclosed by costly experience. Messrs. Whitehouse and Bright,
electricians to his company, were instructed to begin a preliminary
series of experiments. They united a continuous stretch of wires laid
beneath land and water for a distance of 2,000 miles, and found that
through this extraordinary circuit they could transmit as many as four
signals per second. They inferred that an Atlantic cable would offer but
little more resistance, and would therefore be electrically workable and
commercially lucrative.

In 1857 a cable was forthwith manufactured, divided in halves, and
stowed in the holds of the _Niagara_ of the United States navy, and the
_Agamemnon_ of the British fleet. The _Niagara_ sailed from Ireland; the
sister ship proceeded to Newfoundland, and was to meet her in mid-ocean.
When the _Niagara_ had run out 335 miles of her cable it snapped under
a sudden increase of strain at the paying-out machinery; all attempts at
recovery were unavailing, and the work for that year was abandoned. The
next year it was resumed, a liberal supply of new cable having been
manufactured to replace the lost section, and to meet any fresh
emergency that might arise. A new plan of voyages was adopted: the
vessels now sailed together to mid-sea, uniting there both portions of
the cable; then one ship steamed off to Ireland, the other to the
Newfoundland coast. Both reached their destinations on the same day,
August 5, 1858, and, feeble and irregular though it was, an electric
pulse for the first time now bore a message from hemisphere to
hemisphere. After 732 despatches had passed through the wire it became
silent forever. In one of these despatches from London, the War Office
countermanded the departure of two regiments about to leave Canada for
England, which s