. The experiment served to keep
alive the concession, and the next year, on November 13, 1851, a
protected core or true cable was laid from a Government hulk, the
Blazer, which was towed across the Channel.

Next year Great Britain and Ireland were linked together. In May, 1853,
England was joined to Holland by a cable across the North Sea, from
Orfordness to the Hague. It was laid by the Monarch, a paddle steamer
which had been fitted for the work. During the night she met with such
heavy weather that the engineer was lashed near the brakes; and the
electrician, Mr. Latimer Clark, sent the continuity signals by jerking
a needle instrument with a string. These and other efforts in the
Mediterranean and elsewhere were the harbingers of the memorable
enterprise which bound the Old World and the New.

Bishop Mullock, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland, was
lying becalmed in his yacht one day in sight of Cape Breton Island, and
began to dream of a plan for uniting his savage diocese to the mainland
by a line of telegraph through the forest from St. John's to Cape Ray,
and cables across the mouth of the St. Lawrence from Cape Ray to Nova
Scotia. St. John's was an Atlantic port, and it seemed to him that the
passage of news between America and Europe could thus be shortened by
forty-eight hours. On returning to St. John's he published his idea in
the COURIER by a letter dated November 8, 1850.

About the same time a similar plan occurred to Mr. F. N. Gisborne, a
telegraph engineer in Nova Scotia. In the spring of 1851 he procured a
grant from the Legislature of Newfoundland, resigned his situation in
Nova Scotia, and having formed a company, began the construction of the
land line. But in 1853 his bills were dishonoured by the company, he was
arrested for debt, and stripped of all his fortune. The following year,
however, he was introduced to Mr. Cyrus Field, of New York, a wealthy
merchant, who had just returned from a six months' tour in South
America. Mr. Field invited Mr. Gisborne to his house in order to discuss
the project. When his visitor was gone, Mr. Field began to turn over a
terrestrial globe which stood in his library, and it flashed upon him
that the telegraph to Newfoundland might be extended across the Atlantic
Ocean. The idea fired him with enthusiasm. It seemed worthy of a man's
ambition, and although he had retired from business to spend his days
in peace, he resolved to dedicate his time,