20 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



boats on the water, and the other ships, while rockets licrhted up 

 the darkness of the sea. Then with thankful hearts we turned 

 our faces again to the west. But soon the wind rose, and for 

 tliirty-six hours we wei'e exposed to all the danf^ers of a storm on 

 the Atlantid. Yet, in the very height and fury of the gale, as 1 sat 

 in the electricians' room, a flash of light came up from the deep, 

 Avhich, having crossed to Ireland, came back to me in mid-ocean, 

 telling that those so dear to me, whom I had left on the banks of 

 the Hudson, were well, and following us with their wishes and 

 their i)rayers. Tiiis was like a whisper of God from the sea, bid- 

 ding me keep heart and hojie. The ' Great Eastern' l)ore herself 

 proudly through the storm, as if she knew that the vital cord 

 whiih was to join two hemispheres hung at her stern ; and so, on 

 Saturda}', the 7rh of September, we brought our second cable 

 safely to the shore. 



" Having thus accomplished our work of building an ocean tel- 

 egraph, we desire to make it useful to the public. To this end, it 

 must be kept in perfect order, and all lines connected with it. 

 The very idea of an electric telegraph is, an instrument to send 

 messages instantaneously. When a dispatch is sent from New 

 York to London, there must be no uncertainty about its reaching 

 its destination, and that promptly. This we aim to secure. Our 

 two cables do their part wt-U. There are no way-stations between 

 Ireland and Newfoundland where messages have to be repeated, 

 and tiie lightning never lingers more than a second in the bottom 

 of the sea. To those who feared that they might be used up or 

 wear out, I would say, for their relief, that tiie old cable works a 

 little better than the new one, but tiiat is because it has been 

 down longer, as time improves the quality of gutta percha. But 

 the new one is constantlv growing l)etter. To show how delicate 

 are these wonderful cords, it is enough to state that they can be 

 worked with the smallest battery power. When the first cable 

 was laid in 1858, electricians thought that to send a current 2,000 

 miles, it must be almost like a stroke of lightning. But God was 

 not in the earthquake, but in the still, small voice. The other 

 day Mr. Latimer Clark telegraphed from Ireland across the ocean 

 and back again, with a battery foi'med in a lady's thimble ! And 

 now Mr. Collett writes me from Heait's Content: 'I have just 

 sent my compliments to Dr. Gould, of Cambridge, who is at 

 Valentia, with a battery composed of a gun-cap, with a strip of 

 zinc, excited by a drop of water, the simple bulk of a tear ! ' A 

 telegraph that will do that, we think nearly perfect. It has never 

 failed for an hour or a minute. Yet there have been delajs in 

 receiving messages from Europe, but these have all been on the 

 land lines or in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and not on the sea 

 cables. It was very painful to me, when Ave landed at Heart's 

 Content, to find any interruption here ; that a message which 

 came in a flash across the Atlantic should be delayed twenty-four 

 hours in crossing 80 miles of Avater. But it was not my fault. 

 My associates in the NcAvfoundland Company Avill bear me wit- 

 ness, that I entreated them a year ago to I'cpair the cable in the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to put our land lines in perfect order. 



