mind, saw the importance of watching the most westerly portion of Europe, or anticipated the day when Valentia would be recognised as one of the landmarks created by the necessities of commercial and social existence. Taking advantage of the shelter afforded by a gradual descent inland of the soil, a few cabins have been placed by the natives--half-fishermen, half-husbandmen--Archytas-like, spanning land and sea, and making but poor subsistence from their efforts on both. The little bay, which is not much above a mile in length, contracts from a breadth of half so much, into a watery _cul-de-sac_, terminated by steep banks of shale, earth, and high cliff, furrowed by watercourses; and on the southernmost side it is locked in by the projecting ledges of rock forming the northern entrance to the Port Magee channel. It is so guarded from wind and sea, that on one side only is it open to their united action, but as the entrance looks nearly west, the full roll of the Atlantic may break in upon it when the wind is from that point; and indeed there is not wanting evidence that the wild ocean swell must tumble in there with frightful violence. Jagged fragments of masts and spars are wedged into the rocks immovably by the waves, and the cliffs are gnawed out by the restless teeth of the hungry water into deep caves. But then a sea from that point would run parallel with the line of the Cable, and would sweep along with and not athwart its course, so that the strands would not be driven to and fro and ground out against the bottom. Except for a couple of hundred feet near the shore at the top of this cove, indeed, the bottom is sandy, and the rocks inside the sand line were calculated to form a protection to the Cable, once deposited, as the greater part of its course lay through a channel which had been cleared of the boulders with the intention of rolling them back again at low water, to cover in the shore end. Lieutenant White, and the hardy and hard-working sailors of the Coastguard Station at Valentia, had been indefatigable in sounding and buoying out a channel from the beach clear out to sea, within which the Caroline was to drop the Cable. A few yards back from the cliff, at the head of the cove, the temporary Telegraph Station reared its proportions in imitation of a dwarf Brompton boiler--a building of wood much beslavered with tar and pitch, of exceeding plainness, and let us hope of corresponding utility. Inside were many of the adjuncts of comfort, not to speak of telegraphic luxury, galvanometers, wires, batteries, magnets, Siemens’s and B. A. unit cases, and the like, as well as properties which gave the place a false air of campaigning. A passage led from end to end, with rooms for living and sleeping in to the right and left, and an instrument room at the far extremity. Here, on a narrow platform, were the signal and speaking apparatus connected with the wires from the end of the Cable, which was secured inside the house.