board. The testing-room brightens up and the spot of light shines cheerfully once more. The cable is cut and handed over to the electricians to be tested. Very shortly the verdict is delivered to the effect that it is in perfect condition, and at once the operation of splicing it to a new length of cable in one of the tanks is commenced; this concluded, we start paying-out, and all goes well until we reach the buoy on the shore-end.

Here a double disaster occurred; the experience of the Cosmopolitan was repeated, as the moorings broke shortly after we commenced heaving-in. It was then necessary to pick up a short length of the cable we had just laid, so as to cut and buoy further out.

While this was going on we dropped into the testing-room to see that matters were all right there, and scarcely had we commenced to watch the spot of light, when it quivered, oscillated, and finally darted off the scale. Something was wrong, and we made for the deck, where our suspicions were confirmed; the cable had broken, and a few minutes later we were all gazing mournfully at the jagged end-a mere bunch of tangled wires and hemp! Both ends were now lost, and there was nothing for it but to start grappling again. Drag after drag did we make with the same lack of success; occasionally the strain went up with a rush as the grapnel clutched a rock, only to decrease with equal suddenness as the rock gave way and the grapnel flew off. Our spirits rose and fell with the pointer of the dynamometer, and when it only indicated the normal strain of the rope and grappling-iron, we all sank, mentally speaking, far below

zero.

This sort of thing went on all day. At 12 P.M. the grapnel was at the bows but no cable, so work was suspended for the night and everyone turned in for a wellearned rest. The following day our luck changed. The cable was hooked at the first drag and brought safely on board; the tests showed that it was still perfect, and the splicing and paying-out were proceeded with in due course. Meanwhile the Cosmopolitan had grappled and rebuoyed the other lost end, so we had no more difficulties to encounter. While paying-out, the submarine crater over

which we had evidently been working, and which had given us so much trouble, was carefully avoided by taking a circuitous route. The buoy was soon reached and the other end hauled on board. Both cables were carefully tested and pronounced to be perfect, the final splice was made, and with three hearty cheers the completed cable was lowered overboard.

Finis coronat opus. Our first complete section was finished, and Teneriffe and La Palma were in telegraphic communication with each other.

The rest of the work among the islands was carried out without a hitch of any sort, the long cable from Teneriffe to Cadiz being left to the last. This was of course a matter of several days, and may be taken as a good example of the routine on board when laying a long cable. Mile after mile of cable goes steadily out; the machinery whirrs and revolves as if it never would stop, the spot of light in the testing-room behaves with perfect propriety, and only oscillates once every five minutes, when those on board exchange a signal with the man on watch in the cable-hut at Teneriffe. Every four hours tired engineers and electricians go below and take their share of refreshment and rest, as sleepy substitutes come on deck to take their places. One startling incident relieves the monotony of this prosperous state of affairs. On the third night out, the eccentric behavior of the dynamometer indicating a varying strain, shows signs of an irregular bottom. At the same moment the Cosmopolitan, engaged in taking soundings a few miles ahead, is seen to fire a rocket. Shoal water is immediately suspected, and the Dalmatia is put full speed astern and cable paid out freely. It was found that the Dalmatia's course lay directly across bank with only eighty-four fathoms of water on top, and nothing but the prompt way in which the situation was grasped by the engineer on watch averted an accident; for if paying-out had been continued at full speed, the cable would have festooned from the edge of the bank and most infallibly been broken.

a

The foregoing narrative of a cablelaying expedition is a typical description

of the manner in which the great work of lessening the separation set up between continent and continent by the trackless ocean is carried out. Nowadays it is not the good fortune of all cable expeditions to open up new ground and be welcomed and feasted by the natives, as much of the cable work which is being constantly carried on in all parts of the world consists of the renewing, duplication, or triplication of existing lines; and the laying of a new cable has come to be so much a matter of course that such an event arouses the merest spark of passing interest, although books which have become classical were published chronicling the progress of the early Atlantic cable expeditions.

The reader has taken a glance at the manufacture of the submarine cable of to-day, he has seen how the ocean depths are surveyed almost with as much care as the land for a new railroad; he has watched the landing of a shore-end, and has seen the deep-sea cable trailing steadily out into blue water; he has participated in the joy and enthusiasm of dropping overboard a final splice, and in the disappointments and anxiety attendant on grappling for a broken cable on rocky bottom. Altogether he has made a fair acquaintance with life on board a cable-ship; and if he can point out any other branch of electrical work equally interesting and fascinating, I should much like to know which he would select.

&

HE conditions attending the development of architecture in the West have been, in almost every respect, without precedent. At no time in the history of the world has a community covering such vast and yet homogeneous territory developed with such amazing rapidity, and under conditions of civilization so far advanced. Few times in history have ever presented so impressive a sight as this resistless wave of progress, its farthermost verge crushing down primeval obstacles in nature and desperate resistance from the inhabitants; its deeper and calmer waters teeming with life and full of promise more significant than has ever yet been known. Between the period of conquest and the period of realization there is for art in this great development a distinct hiatus. It is a long time full of deadness, except of physical force, then a sudden bursting of art into exuberant flower. Up to a time twenty years ago every energy of the hardy pioneers who were opening the vast district now called "the West" was expended in the most rudimentary work-that demanded by self-protection and self-support. Even now, in remoter districts, still sounds the Indian's warwhoop, and still exists something of those wild and barbaric conditions so recently conquered farther East.

During the period of this ceaseless struggle architecture, as we understand it, was not thought of; and the most primitive log-hut served for shelter. But as cities began to spring up, the "balloon-framed" wood house was evolved. This early type of dwelling has made the growth of the West possible. Frail as its structure seems to be, it has been the very fortress of civilization, withstanding all assaults of heat and cold, and often baffling the deadly cyclone where massive structures of masonry succumbed. Nothing could be

more simple than its skeleton. Unlike the early dwellings of wood erected in the East, no expert carpenter was needed-not mortise nor tenon nor other mysteries of carpentry interfered with the swiftness of its growth. A keg of nails, some two by four inch studs, a few cedar posts for foundations, and a lot of clapboards, with two strong arms to wield the hammer and saw-these only were needed, and these were always to be had. For no sooner did the yell of the Indian grow distant upon the verge of the prairie, or over the slope of the hill, even if but for a few days, than its fierce sound was followed by the drowsy buzz of the saw-mill. Even to-day many Western cities, not only like Chicago, whose earliest growth dates back fifty years, but like Duluth, Minneapolis, Omaha, and others of later growth, are more than half made up of these frame houses. In Chicago the great West Side contains thousands of them. Their life, however, is now nearly finished; for in nearly every Western city of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants the law is passed that within city limits no wood house may be built; so that the next five years will see their total disappearance in favor of more or less substantial structures of masonry.

Thus these hardy pioneers of architecture, in their very disappearance, do architecture some service, for because of them every old Western city must be almost entirely rebuilt, and this under modern and enlightened auspices, as if it had been devastated by a great fire or cyclone. This is clearly an advantage to architecture and to civilization; that is, it may be a great advantage to architecture and to civilization. It certainly presents possibilities to the architects of the West such as have never been given to any other group men. But with these advantages, it must be confessed, are disadvantages equally palpable; for it is evident that, by virtue of its ephemeral character, the "balloon-framed" house must in nearly

of

all cases fail to become the landmark, venerated for itself, the embodiment of tradition, a monument to the conservatism of a city's history. And similarly it can never become a link in the architectural development of the country.

With the increase of population, wealth, and railroad communication this early dwelling, still retaining its essential structure, grew into more ambitious expression. Its owner, following either his own taste or the equally untrained taste of the most available carpenter or "mill man," adorned it with all sorts of "ornamental" devices in woodworkopen-work scrolls under and above its gables, jig-sawed crestings on its ridges, and wonderful frostings and finials on its gables. The architraves about its windows were no longer content to be of simple boards, but were decorated by rosettes, star-shaped ornaments, and all

one or two directions, or else in basket fashion, the joints being at right angles with each other. The verandas of these houses offered best opportunity for such display, and here jig-sawed railings and curiously turned or chamfered frosts ran riot.

This obvious and cheap form of decoration, by which a "plain" house was made "tasty" or "modern" to the citizen, persisted for many years. In wood, it was applied with great freedom to cornices and porches of houses built otherwise of stone, when such ambitious structures first began to appear; and forms thus originated in wood were afterward continued in metal, or even in stone itself. Perhaps this fashion gave to Western city houses of twenty years ago a gayer but less substantial appearance than was presented by Eastern houses of the same kind.