ADDRESS, 25 



speak from personal experience ; on one occasion it enabled tbose in 

 charge of the cable s.s. Faraday to find the end of an Atlantic cable, 

 which had parted in a gale of wind, with no other indication of the 

 locality than a single sounding, giving a depth of 950 fathoms. To 

 recover the cable a number of soundings in the supposed neighbourhood 

 of the broken end were taken, the 950 fathom contour line was then 

 traced upon a chart, and the vessel thereupon trailed its grapnel two 

 miles to the eastward of this line, when it soon engaged the cable 

 20 miles away from the point where dead reckoning had placed the 

 ruptured end. 



Whether or not it will ever be practicable to determine oceanic depths 

 without a sounding line, by means of an instrument based upon gravi- 

 metric differences, remains to be seen. Hitherto the indications obtained 

 by such an instrument have been encouraging, but its delicacy has been 

 such as to unfit it for ordinary use on board a ship when rolling. 



The time allowed me for addressing you on this occasion is wholly 

 insufficient to do justice to the great engineering works of the present 

 day, and I must therefore limit myself to making a short allusion to a few 

 only of the more remarkable enterprises. 



The great success, both technically and commercially, of the Suez 

 Canal, has stimulated M. de Lesseps to undertake a similar work of even 

 jiore gigantic proportions, namely, the piercing of the Isthmus of 

 Panama by a ship canal, 40 miles long, 50 yards wide on the surface, 

 and 20 yards at the bottom, upon a dead level from sea to sea. The 

 estimated cost of this work is 20,000,000Z., and, more than this sum 

 having been subscribed, it appears unlikely that political or climatic 

 difficulties will stop M. de Lesseps in its speedy accomplishment. 

 Through it, China, Japan, and the whole of the Pacific coasts will be 

 brought to half their present distance, as measured by the length of 

 voyage, and an impulse to navigation and to progress will be given 

 which it will be difficult to over-estimate. 



Side by side with this gigantic work. Captain Eads, the successful 

 improver of the Mississippi navigation, intends to erect his ship railway, to 

 take the largest vessels, fully laden and equipped, from sea to sea, over a 

 gigantic railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a distance of 95 

 miles. Mr. Barnaby, the chief constructor of the navy, and Mr. John 

 Fowler have expressed a favourable opinion regarding this enterprise, 

 and it is to be hoped that both the canal and the ship railway will be 

 accomplished, as it may be safely anticipated that the ti'affio will be 

 amply sufficient to support both these undertakings. 



Whether or not M. de Lesseps will be successful also in carrying into 

 effect the third great enterprise with which his name has been promi- 

 nently connected, the flooding of the Tunis-Algerian Chotts, thei-eby 

 re-establishing the Lake Tritonis of the ancients, with its verdure-clad 

 chores, is a question which could only be decided upon the evidence of 



