The Express.
London, England, 1865-07-25 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JULY 25, 1885.

THZ
ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH EXPEDITION.

UMW 001 lIPICIAL

VALIDITIS. ScaDAT, JOLT 23. I
The stioessaful laying of the &bore and of the 4
Atlantic cable yesterday morning made a tableau '
for an artist. Imagine the best of the good Irish
scenes in the Colleen Dawn, or Arrah-na-Pogue—
that is, imagine the moat lovely scenery, the most
pieturesqus costumes, and the most effective group- 1
placed in a splendid natural amphitheatre, 1
with intense human interest as the motive power,
and thoroughly impulsive enthusiasm as its accom-
paniment, and you will realise very fairly what
took place on Saturday in Foilhommerum Bay. I
But before doing this, pray understand the impedi-
menta besetting the journey thither. To sail in
the tirsat Eastern from the Nore to Valentia to wit-
ness the laying the shore end of the Atlantic cable
does not at first sight convey an idea of difficulty,
or imply a notion of adventure. But wind,
weigher, the condition of the coast, the vast size of
one cable-vessel, and the very shaky constitution of
another, the amenities of Irish travel, the lack of
oars, and the wily subterfuges of carmen, have col-
lectively combined to make reaching Valentin from
the Great Eastern a matter of more difficulty than
might be supposed. First, when she was near
Valentia, in the rough weather, the use of the boat,
sent off with so much difficulty, was restricted to
Mr. Moore, the pilot ; Mr. Canning, the chief of
the cable-laying staff ; and Mr. Temple, jun., who
acted as his aide. The waves, though both smaller
and quieter than we had experienced during the
hours when the Caroline at our stern was in actual
danger, were still turbulent and threatening, and
after the boat bad more than once narrowly escaped
destruction by boing dashed against the big ship's
I side, Captain Anderson wisely ordered her to push oft
at once, refusing to allow either passengers or lug-
gage to go on board. The Great Eastern was then
as you know taken into Bearhaven for shelter, and
all who wished to reach Valentin bad to do so from
that port. Twenty-two miles in an open boat, and
fifty-four more in the rudest jaunting cars over the
wildest and most desolate parts of the county of
Kerry, brought four of these travellers here yester-
day morning, but some of the directors and their
friends have not made their appearance up to this
time ; some are on the big ship still, some yet
on their way hither, and others speeding back
without seeing Valenti& or the real commenoement of
the enterprise atoll. Thus it is that of the forty
to fifty saloon passengers who left the Nore in the
Great Eastern, only four were present at the
interesting scene of yesterday who were not abso-
lutely occupied in laying the cable.
The first sight of Valentin from the land is disap-
pointing. From Waterville the road is uninterest.
ing and dull. Large gloomy mountains alternate
with vast patches of wild and uncultivated bog,
while the merciless showers of what is surely the
rainiest country in the world damp the spirit as they
soak the body of the traveller. Low hanging dense
clouds obscured the view, the impossibility of ob-
taining trustworthy information soured the mind,
and the uniformly evasive answers of peasant and
wayside pedestrian—who might be as impenetrably
stupid and blandly vacuous as they pretended, but
who succeeded in roasting the inquisitive Same-
neck with considerable humour and force—irritated
the tempers of those who were hurriedly pressing
on, in the hope of arriving here before the shore end
was laid. After much mortification and humbling
of the spirit and great weariness of the flesh, a ferry-
house was reached, from which, at a distance of
half-a-mile across the water, the island of Valenti*,
and the white houses and slated roofs of its little
town, were plainly visible. Two perfectly idle
steamers lay in the laud-locked harbour, but not a
vestige of either cable or electricians, or of the
Great Eastern, or her heavy supplement, the
Caroline, or her guard of honour, the Terrible and
Sphinx, or her companion steamer, the Bawk, or
her messenger steamboat, the Advice, was to be
seen. But for the palpable newness of the
roughly hewn half-barked stumps of wood
supporting the single wire which ran by
the roadside aloug which we bad been jolted
almost to dislocation—but for the strained
air of excitement and expectaucy of the
three bare-footed, bare-chested, shock-headed young
tatterdemalions on the wharf, one of whom said of
the old portmanteau and fat carpet bag he consi-
derately pounded on a stone-heap, and then
dropped into the water—" Shure, Mickey, an' these
are his bonnet's insthruments for laying hur ! "
and but for the conscientiousness of the old boat-
man, who demanded half-a-crown for taking us
across, while admitting a penny to be the price to
"our own people ;" but for these trivial circum-
stances, there was nothing to herald the mighty
stride about to be taken in the history of civiliza-
tion, or the ameliorating effect its approaching con-
summation had brought about.
Once in Valentin, however, the inquirer beard
on authority that the laying of the shore-end was
expected to commence that morning in a bay at
the other side of the island, and five miles from
the town, and that a horse and car could be hired
as a favour for a moderate sum—say the prime cost
of both—in which his "honer would thravel as
iligaut an asy as in his cradle, purvided he slipped
up tinderly, and avoided priesieg too hard on the
wake side." Seated in this precious vehicle, which
required as much trimming and careful distribution
of weight as one of Serle'e lighte►t outriggers, our
typical explorer journeyed along the bauks of the sea
channel separating Valentin from the mainland
and running from the bay. Passing groups of
peasantry, and pigs, and fowls, all strangely ani-
mated, and all journeying towards "the telegraph
to 'Meriky, yer honner !" he reached, nearly at the
summit of the last bill, a low wooden hut, painted
black, and not unlike the summer establishment of
some watering-place photographer. This is the
temporary office of the Atlantic Telegraph Com-
! parry. Along the waste land, at some distance
Ito the right, are half-a-dozen thatched hovels,
I while a few feet from the grass-grown turf-wall
I which divides the field containing this office from
the cliff, you look down upon the Caroline, which is
in communication with the land by a lengthy Ratt-
ing bridge of fishing boats. To the right and left
I precipitous rocks rise nearly 300 feet from the sea,
so hollowed at each aids as to give to the securely-
sheltered little haven, which is scarcely a mile from
end to end, the conformation of a horse-shoe.
Rugged, steep, and utterly inisootesible, save where
a rude and broken path has been formed by the amble-
men, these cliffs are studded with wild flowers and
ferns, and variegated by large patches of the
brightest verdure, which alternate with masses of
tangled sea-weed and huge blocks of slate and par-