But the Atlantic had always been considered unfathomable. No line had ever sounded its depths, and its strong currents had invariably swept away the heaviest weights before they reached its bed. Its great feature, so far as known, was that strange ocean river first noted and described by Franklin, and known to us as the Gulf Stream. In 1853 a circumstance occurred which again turned the attention of a few men to the question of an Atlantic cable. Lieutenant Berryman, of the Navy, made a survey of the bottom of the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland, and the wonderful discovery was made that the floor of the ocean was a vast plain, not more than two miles below the surface, extending from one continent to the other. This plain is about four hundred miles wide and sixteen hundred long, and there are no currents to disturb the mass of broken shells and unknown fishes that lie on its oozy surface. It was named the "Telegraphic Plateau," with a view to its future use. At either edge of this plateau huge mountains, from four to seven thousand feet high, rise out of the depths. There are precipices of sheer descent down which the cable now hangs. The Azores and Bermudas are peaks of ocean mountains. The warm river known as the Gulf Stream, coming northward meets the ice-bergs and melts them, and deposits the shells, rocks and sand they carry on this plain. When it was discovered the difficulty in the way of an Atlantic cable seemed no longer to exist, and those who had been anxious to engage in the enterprise began to bestir themselves. Of these the most active was the American, Cyrus W. Field. He began life as a clerk in New York City. When thirty-five years old he became engaged in the building of a land line of telegraph across Newfoundland, the purpose of which was to transmit news brought by a fast line of steamers intended to be established, and the idea is said to have occurred to him of making a line not only so far, but across the sea. In November, 1856, he had succeeded in forming a company, and the entire capital, amounting to 350,000 pounds, was subscribed. The governments of England and the United States promised a subsidy to the stockholders. The cable was made in England. The _Niagara_ was assigned by the United States, and the _Agamemnon_ by England, each attended by smaller vessels, to lay the cable. In August, 1857, the Niagara left the coast of Ireland, dropping her cable into the sea. Even when it dropped suddenly down the steep escarpment to the great plateau the current still flowed. But through the carelessness of an assistant the cable parted. That was the beginning of mishaps. The task was not to be so easily done, and the enterprise was postponed until the following year.