The First Channel Cable—Nowadays 50,000 Miles of Submarine Wire—A Noble New Englander—The First Idea of the Atlantic Cable—Its Practicability Admitted—Maury’s Notes on the Atlantic Bottom—Deep Sea Soundings—Ooze, formed of Myriads of Shells—English Co‐ operation with Field—The First Cable of 1857—Paying Out—2,000 Fathoms down—The Cable Parted—Bitter Disappointment—The Cable Laid and Working—Another Failure—The Employment of the _Great Eastern_—Stowing Away the Great Wire Rope—Departure—Another Accident—A Traitor on Board—Cable Fished up from the Bottom—Failure—Inauguration of the 1866 Expedition—Prayer for Success—A _Lucky_ Friday—Splicing to the Shore Cable—The Start—Each Day’s Run—Approaching Trinity Bay—Success at Last—The Old and the New World Bound Together. In the year 1850 a copper wire, insulated with gutta‐percha, was submerged between England and France, and that connecting link between the two greatest countries of Europe was the first considerable success of its kind. To‐day Great Britain is connected with the European continent by a dozen cables, and there are over 50,000 miles of submerged wires silently conveying their messages over the face of the globe. Thirty years of practical scientific labour has united the whole world. You can telegraph or “wire” your commands to distant China or Japan; you can ask the market rates of wheat in the farthest west of the New World; you can correspond with your wife in England if you are at the Antipodes. Puck’s idea of putting the “girdle round the earth” has been more than accomplished. The story of the successes won at the very bottom of the ocean would take long to tell; here we can only follow the story of one of the grandest—that of the Atlantic cable. In the month of November, 1819, a noble American, whose career deserves to be put on record, first saw the light. Cyrus W. Field has deservedly earned an honourable and honoured name in two worlds for indomitable perseverance and pluck.(31) The New Englander has to‐day, and has always had, many of the best qualities of the Old Englander. In Field they were conspicuously displayed. In his “bright lexicon” there was— “No such word as _fail_,” for the worst disappointment only stirred him to fresh exertion. “’Tis not in mortals to command success; But we’ll do more, Sempronius—we’ll deserve it.” Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a rural village nook which lies calmly and peacefully cradled among the green Berkshire hills, a spot which would delight the eyes of a true artist. He was the son of a country pastor, who, in spite of a paltry stipend of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and thanks to the scholastic advantages offered to every one in the United States, gave nine children a superior education. Several of these children distinguished themselves in after life, but none more than the subject of this sketch.