The power of the wind, especially when it comes in sudden gusts, and with a whirling motion, against timber-trees and the upper parts of buildings, is only too well known; on wide, exposed plains, its fury, in the early part of the year, sometimes brings destruction to everything within its range. But it is on the open sea, where the hurricane, once let loose from heaven, can sweep, unchecked, perhaps for hundreds of miles, that the latent forces of this unseen element are revealed in all their terror and majesty. For here the wind not only has free scope, but it also finds another element, fluid but incompressible, to obey its impulse and follow in the course which it takes. If the WIND be like a wild spirit, the WATER is a mighty, irresistible body, endowed with motion by the other, and capable of any work, from the drowning of a sea-gull to the wrecking of a stately ship. The waves which roll in from the open sea, when the tide is _making_, are the most powerful. Fortunately, these do not reach the shore with quite the same force which they exert at the distance of some miles from it; but in exposed situations, their altitude and momentum are very great. The billows of the Atlantic which break on the western coast of Ireland run from thirty feet to fifty feet in height, and they arrive on that coast with an impetus which has (up to a certain point) been gaining strength, perhaps for half the time of a tide. It was this fearful onset, from a foe that never slumbered, which broke up and rendered useless the eastern extremity of the great Submarine Electric Telegraph Cable between Ireland and America.