The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-05-28

dIc nEOAcu SuOIco III NcWlOun0l0n0s
Our latest dispatches bring no tidings Of
success in the recent renewed attempts to
recover the end Of the broken English cable.
So arduous and difficult was the effort to fish
up the tiny wire from the bed of the ocean that
it was postponed last winter until this spring.
when, it was hoped, the season would be pro-
pitious There is reason to believe that the
recovery of the cable is very precarious, and
that, even il recovered and reunited, its safety
will always be the subject of grave appre-
tension. In this connection it is unpleasantly
suggestive to learn that the French cable be-
tween st. Pierre, Miquelon, and Duxbury,
Mass, has also failed. Fortunately, there ara
other cables working in the short distance be-
tween St. Pierre and our coast, and communi-
cation is consequently kept up; but the effect
would have been very serious had the cable
failed in waters beyond st. Pierre.
When the grand idea of stretching trans
atlantic cable was first projected scientific
men began to inquire whether the agitation Of
the deep extended to the bed on which the
delicate fabric reposed, and also whether
threaten the insulation Of the wire. Having
demonstrated the impossibility of the angriest
bllow making itself felt more than few hum
dred fathoms below ths surface, and, as they
fancied, having proved that the bed of ocean
is vast metropolis, swarming with the
sunken remains of dead animalculm, they
triumphed in their conclusions. But they
were hasty. More than year ago the English
geological exped ton, under Carpenter and
Thomson, exploded this last fallacy, finding
animal life at greater depths than those Of the,
Atlantic cable; and, indeed, the Swedish
Arctic expedition Of 1860 found the same
phenomenon at depth Of twenty-six hundred
fathoms in the icy waters between Nova
Zembla and Spitzbergen.
1t is not, however, from animal depreciation
that our deep-sea cables are likely to suffer the
most. Our Swans have overlooked the mighty
and ceaseless disturbance of the ocean bed by
the agency of the submarine polar current,
whose existence has been recently and most
brilliantly established by the exploring expedi-
ton in the Porcupine. The power of sub
maiHiC CutICubo " sldIl CaUlc, VI pA0
debris upon it, was strkingly illustrated in
the Straits Of Gibraltar in the seventeenth
century, when Dutch brig, eacountering q
hostile French corsair-the PhGnix-neaY
Ceuta (inside the Straits), was sunk by
single broadside, and three days afterwards
was washed upon the African shore near Tan.
ger Outside the Strats), more than twelve
miles from tho place where she had been
sunk.
There is every reason to doubt that
the broken ends of the cable are
now resting near the spot where they
parted, unless it be that they are buried
beneath masses of earth washed over them by
the necessarily moving submarine current.
In the deep channel between the Farce aud
Shetland Islands DR.. Carpenter, who COM
manded the Porcupine, found at depth Of
eight hundred fathoms Of warm surface water
from the tropics an under stratum, or Arctic
stream, two thousand feet in depth, with
temperature below thirty degrees, and bring
ing with it the Characteristic animals of lee
land, Greenland and Spitzbergen. This fact,
a6ording solution of the long vexed problem
of oceanic circulation, not only has its value
in science, but is destined to work great
revolution in the art Of laying ocean cables,
and must become the study of our teleyraphic
engineers.
The floor of the Atlantic Ocean, as deter
mined BY deep sonndings, consists of da
scending steps. Very broad aud some
what level terraces extend for GER
tain distance from its shores, succeeded
by steep cliffs, dropping some nine thousand
feet. For a distance of two hundred and thirty
miles from the coast Of Ireland the slope is
only six feet in mile Zone ia thousand); in
the next twenty miles there is fall of nine
thousand feet Zone in twelve); then comes the
famous Photographic Plateau" for twelve hun
dred miles. But on the American slope the
ocean bed is very rugged and marked by
abrupt falls and sharp ridges of Newfound-
land. No doubt there are deep burrows and
long gashes here from the action of submarine
polar currents, which, coming down from the
north, underrun the Gulf Stream water of
the Grand Banks and plough their silent but
majestic way through the ex rene western
basin of the Atlantic. The axial rotation Of
the earth causes this submarine flow to hug
the American coast.
Now il is evident, and the cable hunters now
at work have discovered it, that the wire,
chatting and rubbing on these sharp ridges in
the deep bottom, has been severed. What il
to be done, even after they recover the cable
Gas doubtless they willy, to avoid constant
recurrence OF disaster?
One thing is certain, as an eminent hydro
grapher has remarked, ''the tooth of running
water is very sharp" AS long as the circula-
ton of the sea continues the Submarine Polar
Stream, the counterpart Of the Gulf Stream, Q
thnuS and Enlea a larcre a Tho Miasiaa;nri a