es; Scilly had long been praying for telegraphic connection. A
cable of the supposed right length was procured and brought to Land's
End, where its shore end was fixed, and the vessel bearing it made
towards Scilly. Somehow or other the conveyors found themselves five
miles south of the Isles with every inch of their cable paid out. Time
was precious; it would never do to buoy the end and wait for a fresh
supply, and the present poor cable would not bear the strain of
picking up. But there was a clever man on board. He cut the cable a
few fathoms from the ship, carried its fag-end to St. Mary's, and
attached it to an old Morse instrument. Outwardly, things looked all
right; there was the cable attached at Land's End, and here was its
other end at Scilly. The difficulty was how to get messages through
in time to prove that an established telegraph was working. The
operator was equal to the occasion. Shutting himself in the little
instrument-room, he manipulated the current and produced messages. Mr.
Uren, the late Postmaster of Penzance, says, "I can testify that I saw
signals which purported to have passed over the cable, printed in
plain characters on the Morse slip; and on the faith of these signals
the contractors issued their certificate, and the Company took over
the cable. Needless to say, the whole thing was a ruse. The ruptured
cable lay dead and idle at the bottom of the Channel--lost past all
recovery." It was easy to explain afterwards that the fracture took
place naturally; and a new cable was soon laid to the island. Such
being one sample of the proceedings at the time, we may imagine that
the public paid very dearly when Government took over these
telegraphs, which have never yet shown a profit.

It is frequently stated, as a reason for its equable climate, that
Scilly lies right in the course of the Gulf Stream. Of course this is
a mistake. The true Gulf Stream does not come within a thousand miles
of Britain. There is, however, a surface-current of warm water carried
north-eastward from hot latitudes, and this materially affects not
only Scilly, but the entire western coast. Although so mild, the
climate is dry and bracing; there are no unwholesome damps. Longevity
is the rule on the islands, and the single doctor has little to do
beyond assisting sturdy young Scillonians on their entrance into the
world. At the capital, St. Mary's, there are shops, banks, and hotels,
with a public hall, a modern church,