THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 375 



In 1849 tlie labors of tlie Observatory in tire hyclrograpHcal 

 department of its duties appear to have attracted the favorable 

 consideration of Congress ; for in Marcli of tliat year a law was 

 passed directing tlie Secretary of the ISTavy "to detail three suit- 

 able vessels of the navy in testing new routes and perfecting the 

 discoveries made by Lieutenant Maury in the course of his inves- 

 tigations of the winds and currents of the ocean ; and to cause the 

 vessels of the navy to co-operate in procuring materials for such 

 investigations, in so far as said co-operation may not be incom- 

 patible with the public interest." 



Under this law the United States schooner Taney, Lieutenant 

 J. C. Walsh commanding, was sent to sea in 1849. She was di- 

 rected, among other things, to make a series of deep-sea sound- 

 ings. She was provided therefor with fourteen thousand fLithoms 

 of steel wire, and a self-registering deep-sea sounding apparatus, 

 made by Mr. Baur, of New York, from drawings and according 

 to a plan designed in this of&ce. She. got a cast with 6700 fath- 

 oms of line out, when it parted, losing the apparatus. She then 

 proved unseaworthy, was condemned, and sent back under escort. 



This reported sounding served to stimulate that longing which 

 is implanted in the human breast touching the mysteries and the 

 wonders of the great deep ; for up to this time no systematic at- 

 tempt had ever been made to fathom the deep sea. Sporadic casts 

 of the lead had been made here and there in "blue water," but 

 though the reported depths had been great, yet, as with that of 

 the Taney, there always remained a doubt as to whether bottom 

 had been reached or not, and at what depth. Up to this time we 

 were as ignorant as to the real depths of the ocean, and the true 

 character of that portion of the solid crust of our planet which 

 constitutes its bed, as we are at this moment of the interior of one 

 of the satellites of Jupiter. Using astronomical elements, the 

 mean depth of the ocean had been calculated to be, according to 

 theory, about 23 miles. 



My excellent friend, the late Commodore "Warring-ton, who was 

 then the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography, of 

 which the Observatory is a branch, took, as was his wont, liberal 

 and enlightened views touching the plan of deep-sea soundings 

 now proposed. The Secretary of the 'Nslvj regarded it with a 

 lively interest ; he was ready to afford every facility that the law 



