“This day three hundred and sixty-five years ago Columbus sailed on his first voyage of discovery and discovered America.”

“August 4. Off the Skelligs light, of which I send you a sketch.  A beautiful morning with head wind and heavy sea, making many seasick.  We are about fifteen miles from our point of destination.  Our companion ships are out of sight astern, except the Susquehanna, which is behind us only about a mile.  In a few hours we hope to reach our expectant friends in Valencia and to commence the great work in earnest.

“Our ship is crowded with engineers, and operators, and delegates from the Governments of Russia and France, and the deck is a bewildering mass of machinery, steam-engines, cog-wheels, breaks, boilers, ropes of hemp and ropes of wire, buoys and boys, pulleys and sheaves of wood and iron, cylinders of wood and cylinders of iron, meters of all kinds,—­ anemometers, thermometers, barometers, electrometers,—­steam-gauges, ships’ logs—­from the common log to Massey’s log and Friend’s log, to our friend Whitehouse’s electro-magnetic log, which I think will prove to be the best of all, with a modification I have suggested.  Thus freighted we expect to disgorge most of our solid cargo before reaching mid-ocean.

“I am keeping ready to close this at a moment’s warning, so give all manner of love to all friends, kisses to whom kisses are due.  I am getting almost impatient at the delays we necessarily encounter, but our great work must not be neglected.  I have seen enough to know now that the Atlantic Telegraph is sure to be established, for it is practicable.”

Was it a foreboding of what was to happen that caused him to add:—­

“We may not succeed in our first attempt; some little neglect or accident may foil our present efforts, but the present enterprise will result in gathering stores of experience which will make the next effort certain.  Not that I do not expect success now, but accidental failure now will not be the evidence of its impracticability.

“Our principal electrical difficulty is the slowness with which we must manipulate in order to be intelligible; twenty words in sixteen minutes is now the rate.  I am confident we can get more after awhile, but the Atlantic Telegraph has its own rate of talking and cannot be urged to speak faster, any more than any other orator, without danger of becoming unintelligible.

“Three o’clock P.M. We are in Valencia Harbor.  We shall soon come to anchor.  A pilot who has just come to show us our anchorage ground says:  ‘There are a power of people ashore.’”

“August 8. Yesterday, at half past six P.M., all being right, we commenced again paying out the heavy shore-end, of which we had about eight miles to be left on the rocky bottom of the coast, to bear the attrition of the waves and to prevent injury to the delicate nerve which it incloses in its iron mail, and which is the living principle of the whole work.  A critical time was approaching, it was when the end of the massive cable should pass overboard at the point where it joins the main and smaller cable.  I was in my berth, by order of the surgeon, lest my injured limb, which was somewhat inflamed by the excitement of the day and too much walking about, should become worse.