The telegraph manual: a complete history and description of the semaphoric, electric and magnetic telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ancient and modern.

648 ATLANTIC OCEAN TELEGRAPHY.
This stupendous enterprise was started and executed with
great energy and skill. The account current of the company
up to December 1, 1858, exhibited an aggregate expenditure
of 1~379,029. The governments of Great Britain and the
United States loaned the vessels employed in 1857 and in 1858,
by which the finances of the company were materially benefited.
The governments, also, had agreed to pay an annual subsidy
upon certain conditions for a term of twenty-five years. The
colonial governments in America had also granted certain immunities for the benefit of the undertaking. In a word, the
company had lavished upon it every consideration to enable it
to effect the most signal triumph. Every effort within human
power was directed toward the consummation of success; but,
how to make the cable work effectively for commercial purposes,
was something beyond the reach of man, and known only to
the Supreme Being.
At the present time it has not been determined when another
attempt will be made to connect the New and the Old World
by telegraph.
In the meantime, other companies are being organized for
the submerging of cables on other routes, one of which is
proposed to run from England or Portugal to the Azores, and
thence to the United States, on which route the longest circuit
will be about 1,400 miles; and another project is to run a line
via the Faroe Isles, Iceland, and Greenland, to Labrador, the
longest circuit on which line will be about 500 miles. There
can be no doubt but what cables can be laid on any and all the
routes projected across the ocean; but to practically work them
after they are laid for commercial purposes, is a problem not
yet solved. We can, however, indulge the hope that some new
discovery may be made in the science of electrics that will
enable the world to realize the most complete consummation
of the great desideratum, which was, for a time, supposed to
have been accomplished on the submerging of the late Atlantic
cable between the coasts of Ireland and Newfoundland.
It is a singular coincidence that the first feat of telegraphing
was executed by order of King Agamemnon to his queen, announcing the fall of Troy, 1084 years before the birth of Christ,
and that the last great feat was executed by the ship Ag amemnon in the landing of the Atlantic cable on the coast of Ireland,
5th of August, 1858.