The whole of the casting out and sinking was accomplished with great precision and success, owing to the favorable state of the day. The only conjectured difficulty on the route was at a point in midchannel, called the Ridge, between which and another inequality called the Varne, both well known and dreaded by navigators, there is a deep submarine valley, surrounded by shifting sands, the one being seventeen miles in length, and the other twelve, and in their vortex, not unlike the voracious one of Godwin Sands, ships encounter danger and lose their anchors, and trolling nets of fishermen are frequently lost. Over this, however, the wire was successfully submerged, below the reach, it is believed, of either ship's anchors, sea-animals, or fishing nets. The remainder of the route, though rougher on approaching the coast of France, was accomplished cleverly, but slowly. A communication, dated Cape Grinez, Coast of France, half past eight, P. M., and received at Dover by submarine telegraph, was as follows:--"The Goliath has just arrived in safety, and the complete connection of the under-water wire with that left at Dover this morning is being run up the face of the cliff; complimentary interchanges are passing between France and England, under the strait and through it, for the first time."
Notwithstanding this apparently successful result of the work, the line was cut asunder soon after the connection was completed on the rocks near Cape Grinez, the physical configuration of the French coast being very unfavorable. The precise point where the breakage took place was about two hundred yards out to sea, just where the twenty miles of electric line that had been laid down from Dover joins on to a leaden tube designed to protect it from the surge beating against the beach, and which also serves a similar purpose up the front of the cliff to the station upon the top. The leaden conductor, it would appear, was of too soft a texture to resist the oscillation of the sea, and thereby became detached from the coil of gutta-percha wire that was thought to have been safely encased in it. The occurrence was, of course, quickly detected by the sudden cessation of the series of communications, though it was at first a perplexing point to discover at what precise spot the wire was broken or at fault. This, however, was done by hauling up the line at intervals, a process which disclosed the gratifying fact, that, since its first sinking, it had remained in situ at the bottom of the sea, inconsequence of the leaden weights or clamps that were strung to it at every sixteenth of a mile. The experiment, as far as it has gone, proves the possibility of the gutta percha wire resisting the action of the salt water, of the fact of its being a perfect waterproof insulator, and that the weights on the wire are sufficient to prevent it being drifted away by the currents, and for sinking it in the sands.