When they merely are turning their backs to the light.
[SECRETS OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE.]
BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING.
I believe that the youngsters in our family consider my study a very pleasant room. There are some books, pictures, and hunting implements in it, and I have quite a large number of curious things stored in little mahogany cabinets, including a variety of specimens of natural history and articles of savage warfare, which have been given to me by sailors and travelers. In one of these cabinets there are the silver wings of a flying-fish, the poisoned arrows of South Sea cannibals, sharks' and alligators' teeth, fragments of well-remembered wrecks, and an inch or two of thick tarred rope.
The latter appears to be a common and useless object at the first glance, but when examined closely it is not so uninteresting. It measures one and one-eighth of an inch in diameter, and running through the center are seven bright copper wires, surrounded by a hard, dark brown substance, the nature of which you do not immediately recognize. It is gutta-percha, the wonderful vegetable juice, which is as firm as a rock while it is cold and as soft as dough when it is exposed to heat. This is inclosed within several strands of Manilla hemp, with ten iron wires woven among them. The hemp is saturated with tar to resist water, and the wires are galvanized to prevent rust. You may judge, then, how strong and durable the rope is, but I am not sure that you can guess its use.
Near the southern extremity of the western coast of Ireland there is a little harbor called Valentia, as you will see by referring to a map. It faces the Atlantic Ocean, and the nearest point on the opposite shore is a sheltered bay prettily named Heart's Content, in Newfoundland. The waters between are the stormiest in the world, wrathy with hurricanes and cyclones, and seldom smooth even in the calm months of midsummer. The distance across is nearly two thousand miles, and the depth gradually increases to a maximum of three miles. Between these two points of land—Valentia in Ireland and Heart's Content in Newfoundland—a magical rope is laid, binding America to Europe with a firm bond, and enabling people in London to send instantaneous messages to those in New York. It is the first successful Atlantic cable, and my piece was cut from it before it was laid. Fig. 2 on the next page shows how a section of it looks, and Fig. 3 shows a section of the shore ends, which are larger.
