ON BOARD THE "GREAT EASTERN." 103 



in three immense tanks one aft, one amidships, and one forward began in January and 

 was not completed until June. It will give the reader an idea of the enormous size and capacity 

 of the Great Eastern when he is told that though the cable measured 2,700 miks, a visitor 

 to the mammoth ship was at first unaware pf its being on board ! Here is the account given 

 by a writer who went to see the ship and its novel cargo. Its details are interesting. " It 

 is time," he says, after a general survey of the wonders of the huge vessel " it is time we- 

 should look after what we have mainly come to see the telegraph cable. To our intense 

 astonishment we beheld it nowhere, although informed that there are nearly 2,000 miles 

 of it already on board, and that the remaining piece, which is long enough to stretch from 

 Land's End to John o' Groat's, is in course of shipment. We walk up and down on the 

 deck of the Great Eastern without seeing this chain which is to bind together the Old World 

 and the New, and it is only on having the place pointed out to us that we find out where the 

 cable lies/' The writer then describes the process of taking it on board : " On the side 

 opposite to where we landed, deep below the deck of our giant, is moored a vessel surmounted 

 by a timber structure resembling a house, and from this vessel the wonderful telegraph cable 

 is drawn silently into the immense womb of the Great Eastern. The work is done so quietly 

 and noiselessly, by means of a small steam-engine, that we scarcely notice it. Indeed, were 

 it not pointed out to us, we would never think that that little iron cord, about an inch in diameter, 

 which is sliding over a few rollers and through a wooden table, is a thing of world-wide fame 

 a thing which may influence the life of whole nations, nay, which may affect the march 

 of civilisation. Following the direction in which the iron rope goes, we now come to the 

 most marvellous sight. . . . We find ourselves in a little wooden cabin, and look down 

 over a railing at the side into an immense cavern below. This cavern is one of the three 

 ( tanks ' in which the two-thousand-mile cable is finding a temporary home. The passive 

 agent of electricity comes creeping in here in a beautiful silent manner, and is deposited in 

 coils, layer above layer. It is almost dark at the immense depth below, and we can only 

 dimly discern the human figures through whose hands the coil passes to its bed. Suddenly, 

 however, the men begin singing. They intone a low, plaintive song of the sea, something 



like Kingsley's 



" Three fishers went sailing away to the west, 

 Away to the west, as the sun went down," 



the sounds of which rise up from the dark deep cavern with startling effect, and produce 

 an indescribable impression. We move on ; but the song of the sailors who are taking charge 

 of the Atlantic telegraph cable is haunting us like a dream. In vain that our guide conducts 

 us all over the big ship, through miles of galleries, passages, staircases, and promenades ; 

 through gorgeous saloons full of mirrors, marbles, paintings, and upholstery, made ' regardless 

 of expense'; and through buildings crowded with glittering steam apparatus of gigantic 

 dimensions, where the latent power of coal and water creates the force which propels this 

 monster vessel across the seas. In vain our attention is directed to all these sights ; we do not 

 admire them ; our imagination is used up. The echo of the sailors' song in the womb of the 

 Great Eastern will not be banished from our mind. It raises visions of the future of the 

 mystic iron coil under our feet : how it will roll forth again from its narrow berth ; how it 

 will sink to the bottom of the Atlantic or hang; from mountain to mountain far belov/ 



