Thus with her spacious chambers prepared for the reception of her guest, the Great Eastern opened her doors to take in the Atlantic cable; and long as it was, and wide and high the space it filled, it found ample verge and room within her capacious sides. Indeed, it was the wonder of all who beheld it, how, like a monster of the sea, she devoured all that other ships could bring. The Iris and the Amethyst came up time after time and disgorged their iron contents. Yet this leviathan swallowed ship-load after ship-load, as if she could never be satisfied. A writer who visited her when the cable was nearly all on board, was at a loss to find it. He looked along the deck, from stem to stern, but not a sign of it appeared. How he searched, and how the wonder grew, he tells in a published letter. After describing his approach to the ship, and climbing up her sides and his survey of her deck, he proceeds: "But it is time that we should look after what we have mainly come to see, the telegraph cable. To our intense astonishment, we behold it nowhere, although informed that there are nearly two thousand miles of it already on board, and the remaining piece--a piece 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 gigantic chain which is to bind together the Old and the New World; and it is only on having the place pointed out to us that we find where the cable lies and by what process it is taken on board. On the side opposite to where we landed, deep below the deck of our giant, there 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 world-wide fame--a thing which may influence the life of whole nations; nay, which may affect the march of civilization. Following the direction in which the iron rope goes, we now come to the most marvellous sight yet seen on board the Great Eastern. We find ourselves in a little wooden cabin, and look down, over a railing at the side, into an immense cavern below. This cavern is one of the three 'tanks' in which the two-thousand-mile cable is finding a temporary home. The passive agent of electricity comes creeping in here in a beautiful, silent manner, and is deposited in spiral coils, layer upon layer. It is almost dark at the immense depth below, and we can only dimly discern the human