The same vessels sailed again in June of the next year, and as arranged before starting, reached a point of junction in mid‐stream, where the ends of the two cables were spliced, and the ships parted, the _Agamemnon_ steering for Valentia, and the _Niagara_ for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Both vessels arrived at their ports of destination on August 5th, and the fact of the completion of the enterprise was for the first time “cabled” under the wide Atlantic two days later, to the great rejoicing, it may fairly be said, of two worlds. Congratulatory messages were flashed from either end, and success seemed secured. Alas! less than a month later all communication ceased; the electric current would not pass through the great wire‐rope; there was a leakage somewhere. But it had been shown conclusively that messages _could_ be transmitted under the given conditions. This was something. Passing over all the financial arrangements connected with a new attempt, which was not made till 1865, we find Brunel’s prediction fulfilled. The largest ship in the world was chartered to lay another cable. [Illustration: EXTERIOR AND SECTION OF THE 1865 ATLANTIC CABLE.] The work of stowing away the cable on board the _Great Eastern_, where it was coiled up in three immense tanks—one aft, one amidships, and one forward—began in January and was not completed until June. It will give the reader an idea of the enormous size and capacity of the _Great Eastern_ when he is told that though the cable measured 2,700 miles, a visitor to the mammoth ship was at first unaware of its being on board! Here is the account given by a writer who went to see the ship and its novel cargo. Its details are interesting. “It is time,” he says, after a general survey of the wonders of the huge vessel—“it is time we should look after what we have mainly come to see—the telegraph cable. To our intense astonishment we beheld it—nowhere, although informed that there are nearly 2,000 miles of it already on board, and that the remaining piece, which is long enough to stretch from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s, is in course of shipment. We walk up and down on the deck of the _Great Eastern_ without seeing this chain which is to bind together the Old World and the New, and it is only on having the place pointed out to us that we find out where the cable lies.” The writer then describes the process of taking it on board:—“On the side opposite to where we landed, deep below the deck of our giant, is moored a vessel surmounted by a timber structure resembling a house, and from this vessel the wonderful telegraph cable is drawn silently into the immense womb of the _Great Eastern_. The work is done so quietly and noiselessly, by means of a small steam‐engine, that we scarcely notice it. Indeed, were it not pointed out to us, we would never think that that little iron cord, _about an inch in diameter_, which is sliding over a few rollers and through a wooden table, is a thing of