found to be one hundred and seventy-five miles
from Malta. Thus the calculations founded on
electric tests had been only thirteen miles out in a
distance of one hundred and seventy-five miles.
These tests were only taken from one end; had
it been possible to test from Cagliari also, a
more accurate result would have been obtained.
The same witness stated that he had grappled
and lifted cables at one hundred and sixty
fathoms, but he did not consider that there
would be any difficulty in destroying a cable at
five hundred or six hundred fathoms.

Some curious submarine discoveries are made
in the course of these cable liftings. Cables
have been found completely protected by an
outer casing of marine animals. In the case of
the Cagliari and Bona cable, "off Cape
Spartivento, it was covered with young coral. It
could not have laid on the ground, but must
have been suspended over some gulf, for the
young clean coral grew from it equally all round,
radiating outwards so completely that not a
particle of the cable was to be seen, and for forty
or fifty fathoms it came out of the water like a
huge coral necklace."

Encouraged by the early successes we have
described, cables were manufactured and laid
with a degree of carelessness that would be
comic if it were not for the serious discouragement
which has thus been inflicted on really
sound schemes for submarine telegraphs. For
instance: " One of the directors of the
Mediterranean Telegraph Company—not an engineer
—undertook to manage the whole engineering;
and after making use of a competent engineer to
lay down the first section from Spezzia to
Corsica, tried his own hand at laying down the
cable from the island of Sardinia to Algeria.
He took no engineer even to assist him, and
after two starts in 1855, when he never got
farther than thirty miles from land, he failed,
and brought back eighty miles of cable. It has
since been stated that the second of these starts
must positively have been made with less cable
on board than the actual distance to the opposite
coast. He was then allowed to throw on
one side the eighty miles of cable, and have
another longer lighter cable manufactured.
With this, again, two fresh starts were made in
1856, with equal want of success—the only
difference, that this time no cable was brought
back. In 1858, competent contractors
recovered the whole of the first cable and a large
portion of the second. Finally, the company let
the laying of a third cable by contract; but, as
no engineer was employed to specify the work,
the cable was designed with such a thin covering
of gutta-percha as to render perfect insulation
impossible, while the contract only specified
that it should work for a week."

"Contractors are always willing to contract
to lay down a cable that shall work for a week
between any two points, provided they design
it themselves and have no competition!"

For an excellent illustration of what may be
called the "happy-go-lucky" style of laying
cables, we have only to turn to the self-
complacent evidence of an energetic speculator, a
projector, or, to use one of the last words
borrowed from imperial France, a concessionnaire,
who has a talent for buying monopolies from
governments and selling them to companies. In
this capacity he was on board a steamer with a
cable for connecting Algeria with Cagliari, in
Sardinia. It was the first attempt to lay in very
deep seas—over sixteen hundred fathoms. "We
passed the greatest depths with perfect safety
in the night. From some cause or other we
drifted out of course to the west. At daylight
I saw the French vessel which accompanied
us decorated with flags—the officers
were drinking champagne to celebrate their
triumph. Our captain, who had never been out
of the British Channel before, had given us
warning in the night that we were drifting very
much out of our course. I communicated this
to the officer appointed by the French government
to accompany us. He replied, 'We know
what we are doing,' and offered to guarantee
that we should arrive at Galita with ten miles of
cable to spare.

"In the morning the captain said, 'Certainly,
sir, we have been out of our course in the night;
ask the French captain to give us the latitude
and longitude.' Accordingly, by the aid of a
black board they exchanged their figures. The
French officers, after examining our black board,
on which the figures were chalked two feet long,
seemed in great consternation. They retired to
their cabin, and on returning, signalled that we
were right and they were wrong; with only
eleven English miles of cable left, they were
eleven nautical miles from the coast of Algeria."
The witness did not explain why he was not
provided with buoys, by which the cable might
have been safely anchored, but he proceeds:

"We sent a message through the cable to
Messrs. Glass and Elliott, to put in hand
immediately from thirty to fifty miles of cable. That
message was received. We held on for five days
and nights in a very heavy sea. Most of the
young clerks, who were Italians, were sick. On
the fifth morning I was alone on deck watching
the instruments, when I saw a message coming.
I got up one of the clerks, as it came in Italian.
It was a message from Messrs. Glass and Elliott,
saying that several miles of cable were in
progress. Within a few minutes the vessel gave a
sudden plunge, and the cable broke."

Mr. Cromwell Varley, one of the Blue-book
committee, gives us some idea of the rate at
which communications may be transmitted
through long distances, by relating an experiment
he made in the International Telegraph
Office. A slip written in London was sent round
from Odessa, through Moscow, St. Petersburg,
Riga, Königsberg, Berlin, Hanover, and Amsterdam,
to London. The highest speed attained between
London and Odessa was six words per minute.
English land lines are seldom worked at a
higher rate than twenty-two words per minute.
An entire hour's work will seldom show a higher
speed than twelve or fifteen words per minute.
The average length of words is four and a half