The Sun.
London, England, 1859-06-16 00:00:00

at one of the entrances to the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
a little to the north of Newfoundland. The way
selected is longer by 150 miles than the route chosen
between Valentia and New-
by the old company,
foundland. But it ensures the total submergence
of the cable--instead of having it exposed to injury
along the wilds of Newfoundland. It secures, be-
sides, a considerable diminution of the average depth
along the whole distance. It effectually escapes the
perilous range of submarine mountains—the sus-
pension upon the apex of which it is believed cost
the loss of the costly cable sunk last year to the
bottom of the Atlantic, beyond the possibility of
• redemption. It enables a message, moreover, to be
I transmitted from this country direct to its trans-
atlantic destination—thereby economising the
expenditure both of time and money in the trans-

mission.
Conspicuous among the other peculiarities of the
new enterprise is the circumstance that the outer
covering of spiral wire is entirely got rid of—its
weight being, by this means, of course very consi-
derably diminished. The conductor, consisting of
seven copper wires—" seven 's the main"—will 1.;.P
coated over with gutta percha, intermingled with
manifold insulators. Wound about this will be a
textile fabric of a peculiar construction—and the
outermost covering of all being made of longitudi-
nally twisted hemp soaked in a solution of gutta
percha or of indiarubber. The compactness, the
strength, the tenuity, the lightness, the durability
of the whole being insured by the subjecting of the
cable throughout its entire length to extraordinary
mechanical compression. Altogether the weight of
the new cable, it is estimated, will be something
less than eight cwt. a mile, the " breaking strain"'
(averaging about two tons) being equivalent to a.
strength capable of sustaining nearly six miles of
its own weight in rani air, or, otherwise to express
it, of nearly a quarter of a hundred miles of its own
weight in sea water ! So that the projected cable
might be suspended across a submarine chasm
I measuring no less than twenty-five miles asunder
from edge to edge without endangering the strength
of the cable thus held in extraordinary suspension
Pre-eminent above all these obvious and remarkable
advantages, to our thinking, is that other and most
extraordinary advantage implied at the very out-
set—the one indicated by the announcement that
the route will be directly between Canada and
Cornwall. The Transatlantic Telegraph Company
will consequently be a purely British achievement.
We shall reserve the glory of it entirely to our-
selves. We need no longer go halves with the
United States in the credit and value and interest
of the enterprise. Between the rocky extremity of
the Land's•end and the entrance to the St. Law-
rence a bond of union the most intimate will be
established, binding to the mother country one of
the noblest of her colonial possessions. Stretching
eventually across the whole width of the great
North American continent, that subtle and magical
bond of union will doubtless extend overland
before the world is much older, bringing us into
instant communication also with the heart of
the Hudson's Bay Territory, with the Red River
settlement, with British Columbia, with Van-
couver's Island. Knit together thus will inevi-
tably, sooner or later, be the opposite sea-
boards of the Atlantic and Pacific. Linked thus
one with another will be the most scattered and
the most remote of the grander and the minor colo-
nies of our world-wide empire. Then, with but
the slightest alteration of that famous couplet of
POPE about the sentient gossamer of the marvellous
insect, might be truthfully, no less than powerfully
written : _ _

"Britannia's power, how exquisitely fine;
Feels at each wire, and lives along the line !"

In aid of the dominant strength of the Royal Navy of
England, in aid of the thunders of our war-vessels
borne over the waters of the deep by the steam-
engine and the screw propeller, will come, in turn
infallibly this mysterious 'submarine messenger-
voice of the lightning, the true Promethean spark
stolen from heaven.