288 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
portion most interesting to science will be the electrical history of this 
reat enterprise, the details of which have hitherto been only partially re- 
vealed, and that not in a scientific form. The only official account of the 
undertaking which we have seen is a pamphlet issued in July, 1857, by 
the company in London, entitled “ The Atlantic Telegraph, a history of 
preliminary experimental proceedings, and a descriptive account of the 
ifornia Acad. Nat. Sci., p. 104, 1857)—Among the numerous objects 
in California inviting the investigation of the scientific and the attention 
" or 
sands of a frightful waste, few persons have had the temerity to encounter 
the labor and risk of visiting them. Even the Indians, inhabiting the 
border of this Western Sahara, do not willingly venture so far into Its 
midst, unless it be during the annual rains. At any other period, to miss 
one of the few springs of brackish water, or to find the place occupied by 
drifting sands—a not unusual occurrence—would entail the certainty of 
5 
The striking peculiarities of this wild region are, however, too strikin 
re : 
Bernardino meridian. ‘The distance from San Felipe is as above g1Y #8 
