"In the spring of the following year (1851), Mr. Gisborne visited Newfoundland, appeared before the Legislature, then in session, and explained the details of his plan, which was an overland line from St. John's to Cape Ray, nearly four hundred miles in length, and (the submarine cable between Dover and Calais not having then been laid) a communication between Cape Ray and Cape Breton by steamer and carrier-pigeons, eventually, it was hoped, by a submarine cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Legislature encouraged the project, granted £500 sterling to enable Mr. Gisborne to make an exploratory survey of the proposed line to Cape Ray, and passed an act authorizing its construction, with certain privileges, and the appointment of commissioners for the purpose of carrying it out. Upon this, Mr. Gisborne, who was then the chief officer of the Nova Scotia Telegraph Company, returned to that province, resigned his situation, and devoted himself to the project of the Newfoundland telegraph. Having organized a local company for the purpose of constructing the first telegraph line in the island, from St. John's to Carbonear, a distance of sixty miles, he, on the fourth of September, set out upon the arduous expedition of a survey of the proposed line to Cape Ray, which occupied upward of three months, during which time himself and his party suffered severe privations, and narrowly escaped starvation, having to traverse the most rugged and hitherto unexplored part of the island.[A] On his return, having reported to the Legislature favorably of the project, and furnished estimates of the cost, he determined to proceed to New York, to obtain assistance to carry it out.... Mr. Gisborne returned to St. John's in the spring of 1852, when, at his instance, an act, incorporating himself (his being the only name mentioned in it) and such others as might become shareholders in a company, to be called the Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company, was passed, granting an exclusive right to erect telegraphs in Newfoundland for thirty years, with certain concessions of land, by way of encouragement, to be granted upon the completion of the telegraph from St. John's to Cape Ray. Mr. Gisborne then returned to New York, where he organized, under this charter, a company, of which Mr. Tebbets and Mr. Holbrook[B] were prominent members, made his financial arrangements with them, and proceeded to England to contract for the cable from Cape Ray to Prince Edward Island, and from thence to the mainland. Returning in the autumn, he proceeded in a small steamer, in November of that year, 1852, to stretch the first submarine cable, of any length, in America, across the Northumberland Strait from Prince Edward Island to New