APPENDIX. 309 



jecture, go a step fartlier in tliis direction, and fancy that the sea 

 embalms its dead — that all the corpses which, with weights at- 

 tached, have been committed to the deep in blue water, are now 

 standing on the bottom, their lineaments and features as perfect as 

 the}^ were the day their comrades were called to '' bury the dead.""^ 



This circumstance of the fresh- water shells with fleshy matter 

 from the bottom of the deep sea is one of the most beautiful and 

 suggestive facts that this new system of deep-sea' soundings has 

 revealed. 



The projectors of the Atlantic Telegraph, having acted upon the 

 information derived from these researches concerning the bottom 

 and bed of the ocean, formed their company, and ordered their 

 cable, sought other information from the Observatory. I received 

 in March, 1857, a letter from Cyrus "W. Field, asking, in behalf of 

 the company, for the best route and time for laying the cable. 

 Considering the practical difi&culties of actually steering .along an 

 arc of such a great circle as that which passes through the ends 

 of the Atlantic cable. Professor Hubbard was requested to com- 

 pute the perimeter of a polygon, described in such a manner, that 

 every side between Yalentia" and Trinity Bay should be trisected 

 by the arc of the great circle between the two ends of the cable, 

 and that a ship in steering along this perimeter should, to pass 

 from one side to the next, have to change her course but the quar- 

 ter of a point. Thus a polygonal route was given by which each 

 ship, by increasing her great-circle distance only three hundred 

 and fifty fathoms, and changing her course only six times after 

 joining cables, would be enabled to reach her port by steering 

 straight courses. Lieutenant AiUick j^rojected in duplicate the 

 sides of this polygon on charts, which were sent to the company 

 for the paying-out vessels to steer by. 



Lieutenant Bennett was called on to assist in the investigations 



* When a person dies on board of a man-of-war, and is to be buried at sea, his 

 body is sewed np in his hammock, witli one or two cannon balls secm-ed to his feet. 

 When it is ready for the burial, it is placed on a plank at the gangway, and all 

 hands are mustered on deck by the boatswain's call to "bury the dead." After 

 reading the burial service, the plank is tilted, and the body slides off, feet foremost, 

 into the sea. In this position the body sinks, in this position it reaches the bottom, 

 and in this position it may remain, beyond the reach of decay, a perfect human form 

 for ages. 



