THE ATLANTIC TELEGEAPH. 387 



This, however, is, as I said, mere matter of conjecture ; but it is 

 the most plausible answer that I have heard to the question, "Why 

 has the cable stopped working ?" 



1028. The first step, therefore, toward success in the establish- 

 ment of submarine lines of telegraph across oceans is to get rid of 

 the idea of iron ropes and great cables for the deep sea — ^limit 

 these to shallow water; to divert ingenuity from brakes and 

 buoys, and to direct it to cords that will require neither. 



But some will say that the heat in a ship's hold is often such as 

 to melt the gutta-percha, and therefore an iron wrapping, to hold 

 it together and so preserve the insulation, is necessary. 



■ The Kogers cord is a complete answer to this objection. After 

 insulation, he braids the conducting wire whip-cord fashion with 

 bobbin or twine, and then protects the whole with a pigment, gum 

 or cement, which shields the gutta-percha, securing it against 

 chafes, bruises, melting, etc., and still leaves the cord so small and 

 manipulahle that one ship may carry the whole of it, and "pay 

 and go" with it across the Atlantic as though she were making an 

 ordinary passage. 



The specific gravity of this Eogers cord is such as to carry it 

 down at the rate of only a mile or two an hour. Now it is evi- 

 dent that pieces of such a cord, if cut into lengths of ten miles 

 long, for instance, and thrown into the sea, would find their way 

 to the bottom as readily as pieces of one mile or of a few fathoms 

 in length would ; and since, at the greatest speed of the paying- 

 out vessel, not more than about ten miles of this cord will at any 

 one time be between the stern of the vessel and the bottom of the 

 sea, the feat of laying it in lengths often miles may be practically 

 accomplished by an artifice, and that artifice consists in paying out 

 the cord with slack enough in every ten miles of it to feed the cur- 

 rents and to spare. 



The common operation of "heaving the log" may be referred 

 to in illustration of the manner in which the Eogers cord may be 

 laid. In heaving the log, a certain quantity of what is called 

 " stray line," or slack, is always paid out. This new cord is not 

 larger than a common log line ; and the line between Yarna and 

 Balaklava, which worked so well in the Black Sea, was, I have 

 understood, paid out by hand. It was simply a copper wire insu- 

 lated by gutta percha, and without any other covering. If such 



Bb 



