wire into fourteen miles of strand. There were several strand machines at work in the factories, and these every twenty-four hours made 2,058 miles of wire into 294 miles of strand. As much as thirty miles of Cable were made in a single day. The entire length of wire, copper, and iron employed in the manufacture, amounted to 332,500 miles, enough to girdle the earth thirteen times.

As the closed Cable was completed, it was drawn out from the wall of the factory, and passed through a cistern containing pitch and tar, and was then coiled in broad pits in the outer yard (each layer of the coil having been again brushed over with pitch and tar), and there remained until embarked on board the vessel which conveyed it to its final home. At both the Greenwich and Birkenhead works, four Cables, each three hundred miles long, were simultaneously in process of construction. These were finally united together into one continuous rope, as the Cable was stowed away in the vessel which carried it to sea.

Such is a description of the Cable finally adopted, and which when completed weighed from nineteen hundredweight to one ton per mile, and bore a direct strain of from four to five tons without breaking.

The next question which arose for consideration was, how the Cable was to be laid in the ocean. The Great Eastern, then known as the Leviathan, alone could embrace it within her gigantic hold; but then the vast fabric had never been tried. She might prove a failure, and in doing so, involve that of a far greater and a far more important experiment.

It was then determined that the responsibility should be divided, and the burden be entrusted to two vessels of smaller dimensions. The British Government placed at the service of the Company the Agamemnon line-of-battle ship, and the government of the United States of America sent over the Niagara.

The Agamemnon was considered to be admirably adapted for receiving the Cable, by reason of her peculiar construction; her engines being situated near the stern, and there, being amidships a magnificent hold, forty-five feet square and twenty feet deep between the lower deck and the keel. In this receptacle one half of the Cable was distributed round a central core in a compact, single, and nearly circular coil. She lay moored off the wharf at Greenwich, and the Cable was drawn into her hold by a small journeyman engine of twelve-horse power, the rope running over sheaves borne aloft upon the masts of two or three barges, so moored between the wharf and the ship as to afford intermediate support. The Niagara, though not by construction well adapted for the Cable, was rendered so by judicious alterations at Portsmouth. She arrived in the Mersey on 22nd June, and was regarded with much curiosity and interest in Liverpool, where Captain Hudson and his officers received every attention. The Cable was coiled on board her in three weeks. Cork Harbour was selected as the place where these vessels should rendezvous, and make all final arrangements; from whence they were to proceed to the completion of the task, piloted by the U.S. frigate Susquehanna and H.M. frigate Leopard, both paddle-wheel steamers of great power.

Within the barony of Iveragh, in the county of Kerry, on an island six miles long by two broad, lies the village of Knightstown and harbour of Valentia, the most westerly port in Europe. It is at the southern entrance of the open bay of Dingle towards the sea. Doulas Head on the east, and Reenadroolan Point on the west, mark the entrance to the narrows. It can boast of two forts erected by Cromwell. The Skelligs—two picturesque and rugged pinnacles of slate—pierce the surface of the sea about eight miles S.W. of the harbour; and one of these, the “Great Skellig,” crowned with a light-house, towers to a height of 700 feet.

It was decided by the Company that the Niagara should land the shore end in Valentia, and pay it out till her cargo was exhausted mid-way, where the Agamemnon was to take up the tale and carry it on to Newfoundland. The time best adapted for depositing the Cable in the ocean was determined after much thought and deliberation. The result of Lieutenant Maury’s observations was, that in the months of June and July the risk of storms is very small, unless immediately on the coast of Ireland, while the records of the Meteorological Departments, both in England and America, showed that for fifty years no great storm had taken place at that period. It was finally arranged to adopt Lieutenant Maury’s views, “that between the 20th July and the 10th of August both sea and air were in the most favourable condition for laying down the Cable,” and that the vessels should be dispatched so as to reach the rendezvous in mid-ocean, where the Cable was to be spliced, as soon after the 20th of July as possible. It had been ascertained that the distance over which the Cable was to be laid was 1,834 miles, but 600 additional miles of Cable were provided, being an allowance of 33 per cent. of “slack.”

Arrangements had been made that when the vessels joined company off Cork the entire length of the Cable should be temporarily joined up for the purpose of being tested through its entire length, as also to allow of some experiments being made to prove the efficiency of the signalling apparatus. The Cable was arranged so as to come up from the hold of the ship sweeping round a central block or core planted in the midst, to prevent any interference of the unrolling strands with one another, or too sudden turns, which might twist the Cable into kinks; having reached the open space above the deck, it was to be wound out and in, round four grooved sheaves, geared together by cogs, and planted so firmly on girders as to render it impossible that they should be thrown out of the square. From sheaves accurately grooved the Cable proceeded three or four feet above the poop-deck, until it passed over a fifth grooved sheave standing out upon rigid arms over the stern. From this it would make its plunge into the deep still sea, and as the vessel moved away to be dragged out by its own weight, and by the hold which it would have acquired upon the bottom of the sea. The paying-out sheaves were large grooved drums, five feet in diameter, and set in a vertical plane, one directly before the other, and having a friction drum geared to them in such a way that its shaft revolved three times as fast as theirs, the axis of the drum being encircled by two blocks of hard wood, which could be gripped close upon its circumference by screw power, so as either to retard or arrest altogether the movement of the sheaves. The screw was worked by a crank, at which a trustworthy officer was stationed, to keep a wary eye upon an indicator near to express the exact amount of strain thrown upon the Cable at each instant. In the electrician’s department there were to be signals every second by electrical currents passing through the entire length of the Cable, from shore-end, or from ship to ship. At the side of the vessels patent logs hung down into the water, to measure the velocity of the ship. One of these wheels, in the immersed log, was arranged to make and break an electric circuit at every revolution, a gutta percha covered wire running up from the revolving wheel on to the deck of the ship, that it might carry the current whenever the circuit was made, and record there, upon a piece of apparatus provided for the purpose, the speed of the vessel. The brakesman was to watch the tell-tale which would indicate the strain on the rope, and work his crank and loosen his grip whenever this seemed to be too great; or tighten his grip if ever the bell ceased to report that the electrical way from end to end of the Cable was free and unimpaired. An external guard had been placed over the screws of the vessels to defend the Cable from fouling in case any necessity should arise for backing the vessels. The Agamemnon had been jury-rigged for the service, her heavy masts and rigging removed, and lighter ropes and spars