The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-12 00:00:00

THE FRENCH ATLANTIC CABLE.

The success of the French Atlantic Cable may now be
taken as accomplished. What now remains to be done is
a mere matter of detail, about the successful completion
of which it is not too much to say that no possible
doubt exists ; and no more anxiety is felt about it
than there would be about laying a line between
Dover and Calais. The French Atlantic Cable
is virtually laid ; all its deep-sea dangers are
past. The line is in an unexampled condition
in all its tests, and all that is wanting to complete it is
to make the connection between St. Pierre and Boston
over very shallow water. A matter which tends to give
confidence is the perfect punctuality and regularity with
which the Great Eastern has done her work throughout.
With a chart of the Atlantic it has been quite easy to
mark at any hour of the day or night within a mile the
spot she was on, or to mark within a mile where ,she would
be in the next twenty-four hours. The course laid down
for her has never been appreciably deviated from, and the
amount of slack, calculated at 14 per cent., has been
expended almost to a mile. It sync expected that on
Thursday and Friday, whatever the weather, the great
ship would begin to roll very heavily, ai,d on Thursday
and Friday the reflecting galvanometer at Alinou shew'ed
that in this as in other matters she was doing exactly what
was expected and predicted of her. The Great Eastern
will probably remain at St. Pierre till the end
of this week to put en the paddle floats which
were removed before she started, and to put
out those she has in now to the full circum-
ference of the wheels. Then, having transhipped
all the staff of engineers and electricians on board
the William Cory, the great ship returns at once to
England, where she is expected at the end of this month,
to take in the Anglo-Indian Cable. In the meantime the
staff, with the William Cory, will proceed to lay about
164 miles of cable from St. Pierre towards Boston. In
this journey she will be accompanied by the Scanderia
and the Chiltern. This length of cable will take the
William Cory over water varying in depth from 150 to
200 or 250 fathoms, past Cape Breton to the Gut of Canso.
The staff will then again be transferred to the Scan-
deria, which will lay 450 more miles of intermediate
line of extra thickness. This will stretch from the
Cut of Canso to the edge of the Brown Bank, south of
Cape Table, and will be laid in water of not less than 100
fathoms ; the Chiltern then in turn takes the staff and
lays the remainder from Brown Bank to Boston, a dis-
tance of about 150 miles, and this completes the St. Pierre
and Boston section, and then all is done. Everything is
expected to be completed by the end of this month, after
which the whole line must remain in perfect order for
thirty-one days before it is formally taken over by the
French Company, which then becomes solely responsible
for its working and maintenance.

TRIAL OF CE,N,TRAL-FIRE REVOLVERS.

On Saturday a trial Nra3 made, in the covered rifle-

-round at the Crystal Palace, of improved Colt's revol-
vers, the improvement being one which has long been
desired, and which has been under the consideration of
inventors for two or three years. Since the six-chamber
" Colt " was first introduced to the notice of Englishmen,
At the Great Exhibition of 1;:'51, it has maintained its
supremacy as an accurate shooter. But it has
been surpassed by the mechanical adaptability and
handiness of use ; and it was in a dangerous way of being
gradually superseded and rendered obsolete, till the plan
of making it a central-fire pistol was perfected. The
old revolver, made on the ordinary cap and nipple pattern
which was general with fire-arms of every kind
before the system of breechioading began rapidly
to tend towards universal adoption of central-fire
cartridges, can, at a cost of twenty shillings, be
converted to the new and approved form. There
are about 17,000 Colt's revolvers in the service of the
English Government; and it is therefore a question of
some national importance whether, instead of rearming
our men, it would not be wiser to improve the weapons
with which they are already provided. With thofes
weapons it is perfectly well known that better practices can
be made, at a greater number of paces,than with anyother
kind of revolving pistol. In the matter of rapidity, some
of the repeating breechloaders may appear still to have
an advantage over the " Colt," even in its improved
shape. But the merits in this respect are balanced by the
facility with which exploded cartridges are eje,:tecl from
the new central-fire pistol bearing the redoubtable Ameri-
can colonel's name. It is an unquestionable re.oommencla-
tion of the improved " Colt" that its empty cartridges can
be readily got rid of in the simplest manner, without aid
of the lever ramrod. This appliance is used in loading
just as it was used with the capped chambers of the
old-fashioned pistol. That is to say, the central-fire
cartridge is not inserted at the breech of the chamber, but
is rammed home, and the pistol is then discharged in the
usual way. The empty shells are removed I,y cocking
and snapping the hammer---an operation which, with a
little practice, can be performed in an astonishingly short
apace of time. Another valuable quality of the improved
pistol, or of its ammunition rather, is the saving of the
metallic cases or shells, which can Le reloaded again
and again. An interchangeable nipple cy 1 i celer
is supplied with these pistols, which can thus
be loaded with loose powder and ball, a matter of no
small importance ir, countrioi where made-up ammunition
is not easily procurable. The trials on Saturday were,
without the smallest exception, satisfactory. So far from
accuracy and penetration having suffered by the change
of cartridge and the addition of the extracting apparatus,
it was found that, if anything, the pistols were improved
in these respects, as they are unquestionably improved in
all others.