Juinr 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TELEGRAPH. 531 



his brow ; and none of them have been ashamed to ask God's blessing 

 on them when they ventured on the sea. Nevertheless, I think I am 

 not wrong in stating, that purely warlike, and purely religious naval 

 expeditions, have been much more accessory, and episodical, than lead- 

 ing events in the history of the world. 



Strangely enough that most aristocratic badge and symbol of lordly 

 leisure, the order of the Golden Fleece, which emperors wear and kings 

 covet, is the memorial of that almost archaic Argonautic expedition 

 which the semi-mythical Jason led forth to the nearest gold-nugget 

 land, the California of his day. Great Britain is now the light and 

 envy of the world, not because foreign priest or warrior foresaw and 

 ministered to its destiny, but because the Phenicians, the most adven- 

 turous sailors of classical antiquity, had discovered that it produced the 

 best of tin and the best of oysters. 



The Hebrews did not voyage much. But the sacred chronicles do 

 not count it beneath them to tell us that they did make industrial 

 voyages. " King Solomon's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of 

 Hiram. Every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing 

 gold and silver, ivory and apes, and peacocks." (2 Chron. ix. 21.) 



Vasco di Gama sailed from Portugal round the Cape of Storms in 

 search of a new route to the treasures of the East. The greatest perhaps 

 of admirals, Columbus, a most noble, brave and religous man, went 

 forth avowedly to seek an El Dorado and to enrich Europe with the 

 gold which the far West contained. 



Lastly, though for the time its fame is under eclipse, let us not for- 

 get the ever memorable voyages of the Agamemnon and the laying of 

 the Atlantic cable. It has been likened to a sea-serpent, and to many 

 seems at present to have nothing living in it but a sting in the head and 

 a sting in the tail. But even a dead serpent is a wondrous thing, and 

 the inanimate body, if it be inenimate, of this one, will serve, like the 

 bones of perished camels in the desert, to show others the path of safety. 

 The serpent's teeth which Cadmus sowed, have borne this serpent among 

 other things, and by-and-by it will coil round the world, increasing by 

 its abolition of Time, its ancient claim to be the symbol of Eternity. 



If then, we add all these motives together, and look upon man as the 

 paragon of animals on the one hand, and as but a little lower than the 

 angels on the other, our wonder will be, not that he does telegraph, but 

 that he has been so long of bringing telegraphy to its present perfection. 



On this point, suffer me to make two remarks. In one respect 

 our forefathers were more telegraphic than we are, and mankind 

 are more telegraphic than all the animals taken together. The 

 circle within which animal intelligence busies itself, is strictly 

 limited to this earth ; but we, and most of all in ancient times, have 

 instinctively realised that there were other worlds in space than our 

 globe, and other intelligences in the universe than ourselves. That they 

 should be utterly indifferent to us, that they should be devoid of all 



