ATLANTIC OCEAN-ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 219 Atlantic O'cean, so called either from Mount Atlas or 80°. Animal life abounds at much greater depths than was forfrom the fabulous island of ATLANTIS, (q. v.,) is that part of merly supposed, a.though beyond 6,000 ft. it gradually diminthe ocean that divides the Old World from the New. Its ex-ishes. A great part of the bottom of the North Atlantic is covtreme w. is about 5,000 m., and its narrowest part, between ered with a slimy ooze, composed for the most part of the chalkCape St. Roque in Brazil and the nearest point in Africa, producing globigerina; in very deep parts this is replaced by about 1,600 m. If the A. O. be supposed to include the Carib- a brown clay-like mud, with few traces of animal forms. Rebean Sea, Hudson's Bay, Mediterranean Sea, and the other garding the depth of the A. O., it is only recently that reliable connected water-surfaces, it covers an area of 35,000,000 sq. data have been obtained; along certain tracts, especially m. The A. O. is divided into three portions-the North, South, those of the Challenger, the profile of the bottom can now be and Inter-tropical Atlantic. It stands in open connection laid down with considerable certainty. The deepest soundwith the N. and S. polar seas, and in the remarkable parallel- ing made was 3,875 fathoms, or 23,250 ft., at a point about ism of its coasts resembles rather a vast river than an ocean. 90 m. off St. Thomas, West Indies. A remarkable ridge, Its N. half sends off numerous ramifications on both sides, about 400 m. w. and 10,000 to 12,000 ft., or 2 to 2 m., besome of them forming almost shut seas: on the W., Hudson's low the surface of the sea, extends along the bottom of the Bay, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Gulf of Mexico; on A. O. from Cape Clear in Ireland to Cape Race in Newfoundthe E., the Baltic; N., Mediterranean and Black Seas. In land, a distance of 1,640 m. Along this, which is known as the S., again, both coasts present a comparatively unbroken the "Telegraph Plateau," the Atlantic cables are laid. See line; and there is a remarkable correspondence between their infra. projecting and retiring angles, the convex coast of Brazil ly. ing opposite to the Gulf of Guinea, and the projection of Senegambia answering to the retirement of the Amer. coast in the Caribbean Sea. The chief islands in the open ocean are Iceland, Farö, Bermudas, Azores, Ascension, St. Helena, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Sandwich Land. The A. O. is the great highway of the civilized world, and every thing that concerns its navigation is of great importance. Under the system of observations carried on for many yrs. by the governments of Holland, Great Britain, | Atlantic Tel'egraph. In the yr. 1842 Prof. S. F. B. Morse, of New York, having stretched a submarine cable between Castle Garden and Governor's Island, succeeded in transmitting an electric current from one end to the other, and expressed his opinion that it would be possible to effect an electrical communication through the sea. After further investigations he announced to the Sec. of the Treasury of the U. S. "that a telegraphic communication on his plan might with certainty be established across the Atlantic." Three yrs. prior to that Sir William O'Shaughnessy gave the U. S., and France, much has been done to amass informa- | practical proof that electrical messages could be conveyed tion as to its currents, winds, depth, temperature, etc., the through water; but it was the successful submarine telechief results of which either have been or are in the course of graphic undertakings of the Messrs. Brett, who, in June, 1845, being published. The operations connected with the laying registered a "General Oceanic Telegraph Co.," with the of the telegraph cable were also the means of furnishing val- object, among others, of joining England with Am. by uable information regarding the A. O. The chief Atlantic means of a telegraph "across the Atlantic Ocean," and 6 yrs. currents are two. The Equatorial Current, which, starting afterward united England with France, that first fairly confrom the island of St. Thomas, in the Gulf of Guinea, with a vinced the public mind that the New World might be put on rate of motion varying from 18 to 24 m. a day, proceeds W. on conversational terms with the Old. But it was not until 1854 both sides of the equator till near Cape St. Roque, where it that Cyrus W. Field and others discussed the means of pracdivides, one branch running S. along the coast of Brazil, and tically realizing the idea. Lieut. Maury discovered that the the other along the coast of Guiana into the Caribbean Sea. bed of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland forms The other great current is the Gulf Stream. This, originally a kind of plateau, covered with soft ooze, favorably situated part of the Equatorial Current, after flowing past the Guiana as a resting-place for a cable. In 1855 negotiations were coast and through the Caribbean Sea, issues from the Gulf of carried on, partly in Am., but chiefly in England, to estabMexico through the Strait of Florida, and, after following the lish a company and raise capital, which objects were attained direction of the Amer. coast to about 40°, turns seaward, in 1856. The "New York and Newfoundland Telegraph touches the great Newfoundland Bank, and, gradually curving Co." connected Newfoundland with the mainland of Am. round, is lost as a distinct current about the Azores. The by cables and land-wires; but the " Electric Telegraph water of this stream is often upward of 20° warmer than the Co." undertook the laying of a cable from Newfoundsurrounding ocean. The Gulf Stream has an immense influence land to Ireland with a capital of £350,000, in shares of on the climates of some of the countries washed by the A. O. £1,000 each. A length of 2,500 English m. of cable was Besides these great currents the Atlantic abounds in smaller ordered, and was completed by the summer of 1857. The ones. Since over the whole of the E. half of the A. O., from conductor consisted of 7 fine copper wires, No. 22 gauge, about N. lat. 45° northward, the prevailing winds are S.-W., twisted tightly together, forming a cord in. thick, and there is over the same region a general flow of the water of the weighing 107 lbs. per m. This thickness was increased to ocean toward the N.-E., passing the British Isles and thence in. by a core of three layers of gutta-percha. Outside along the coast of Norway to some distance E. of the North the core was a jacket of hempen yarn, saturated with pitch, Cape. It is to this circumstance that the mild temperatures of tar, bees-wax, and boiled linseed oil. The outer sheath connorth-west Europe must be referred. The amelioration of the sisted of 18 strands, each formed of 7 No. 22 iron wires. winter climates from this cause is very great, amounting to The whole diameter was about in., and the weight 1 ton about 30° in the Hebrides and to fully 40 in the Lofoden Isl- per m. In the manufacturing processes the wires and yarns ands. The temperature of the A. O. about the equator is above were twisted round each other by revolving drums and Queensland.. Roumania servia. Siam.. PER WORD. PER WORD. .$0 39 30 Sydney, New South Wales.. 1 45 $2 56 Sweden.. 36 Switzerland.. 43 66 Tangier.. 45 88 Tasmania. 158 circular tables worked by steam-power, while the coatings of gutta-percha were applied by forcing the substance through dies which had the copper conductor passing through their center. The Niagara and the Agamemnon, the one lent by the U. S. government, and the other by the English, took 1,250 m. of the cable each and steamed forth from Valentia (west coast of Ireland) on Aug. 7, 1857. The Niagara paid out her portion of the cable as she went. On the 11th, in an attempt to slacken the rate of paying out, the cable snapped, and the end sank in 2,000 fathoms water, at 280 m. from Ireland. The appliances on board were not sufficient to remedy the disaster, and the two ships returned to Plymouth, where Atlan'tidæ, in Ethnology, according to Latham, one of the two portions of the cable were placed in tanks until the the primary varieties of the human species. The maxillary next following yr. The Atlantic Telegraph Co. raised profile is projecting; the nasal one generally flat; the frontal more capital, made 900 m. additional cable, and prepared for one retiring; the cranium dolichocephalic, the parietal diama new attempt in 1858. The Niagara and Agamemnon were eter being generally narrow; eyes rarely oblique; skin again employed; but the submersion was to begin in mid- often jet black, very rarely approaching a pure white; hair ocean, one ship proceeding E. and the other W., after splic- crisp, woolly, rarely straight, still more rarely light-colored. ing the two halves of the cable. They left Valentia June Languages with an agglutinate, rarely an amalgamate, inflec10, but it was not till the 26th that they could finish the tion. Distribution, Africa. Influence on history of the world, splice and commence the submersion. On the 29th a double inconsiderable.-In Zool., family of mollusks belonging to breakage took place, and 144 m. of cable went to the bot-class Gasteropoda, order Nucleobranchiata. There is a symtom, wholly severed from the rest. On July 29 the two ships metrical discoidal shell, sometimes closed by an operculum. again spliced the two halves of the cable in mid-ocean, and The gills are contained in a dorsal mantle-cavity. Genera, proceeded with their work without further disaster. On Aug. Atlanta Bellerophon, etc. 6 the Agamemnon reached Valentia, and the Niagara Newfoundland, and greetings were exchanged between the queen and the President, and between many public bodies and official persons. The signals then ceased and the cable became useless. From 1858 to 1864 scientific men were making improvements in the form of the cable, and in the apparatus for submerging it. At length the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co. made an entire new cable, thicker and more costly than the former one. As the cable weighed more than 4,000 tons, the Great Eastern steam-ship was employed to lay it. On July 24, 1865, this ship started from Valentia, the main cable being joined to a more massive shore cable, drawn up the cliff at Foilhummerum Bay to a telegraph house at the top. On Aug. 2 the cable snapped, and the end sank in 2,000 fathoms of water, 1,064 m. from Ireland. A series of disasters followed, and the Great Eastern returned to Eng-navian peninsula, others have supposed that Phenician or land, leaving, including the earlier operations, nearly 4,000 tons of cable at the bottom of the sea. Another cable was made, lighter and stronger, and on July 13, 1866, the Great Eastern left Valentia, accompanied by the steamers Terrible, Medway, and Albany, to assist, and arrived at Heart's Content, Newfoundland, on the 27th. The end of the 1865 cable was recovered, an additional length spliced to it, and the squadron completed the laying of a second cable. In 1869 a French company laid a cable to Duxbury, Mass., from Brest, France; in 1884 the Commercial Cable Co. laid a duplicate line, and in the South Atlantic various lines have been projected or completed. (See TELEGRAPH.) There are now in operation throughout the world, about 130,000 nautical m. of submarine cables. The Atlantic cables are the longest and the most costly, and are maintained at the heaviest expense. Atlan'tis, according to ancient tradition, a vast island in the Atlantic Ocean. It is first mentioned by Plato, who represents an Egyptian priest as describing it to Solon, but, of course, according to Plato's view of the matter. In this description A. appeared as an island larger than Libya and Asia Minor taken together, and lying off the Pillars of Hercules in the Atlantic Ocean. Plato gives a beautiful picture of the interior of this imaginary land, and enriches it with a fabulous history. Some early writers supposed that the Canary Islands were the remains of the old A.; for Plato had stated that at the close of the long contest which its inhabitants maintained against the Athenians, 9,000 yrs. before his time, the sea suddenly engulfed the island, and had ever since been unnavigable, by reason of the shoals of mud created by the sunken island. Some found it in the ScandiCarthaginian merchant-ships had been driven by storm on the coast of Am., and that the supposed vast island of A. mentioned by Plato, as well as the great unnamed island spoken of by Pliny, Diodorus, and Arnobius, may have been the New World. Atlas, according to Hesiod's Theogony, one of the Titans, the son of Iapetus and Clymene, and brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus. Apollodorus states him to have been a son of Asia, and Hyginus a son of Ether and Gaea. He married Pleone, daughter of Oceanus, (or Hesperis, his own niece,) and became the father of the Pleiades. As leader of the Titans he attempted to storm the heavens, and for this supreme treason was condemned by Zeus to bear the vault of heaven on his head and hands-the sting of this PER WORD. mythological punishment being .$0.38 55 that A. was compelled to support 40 what he thirsted to destroy. The Chile PER WORD. $0 32 Greece. 56 Guatemala. 2.14 Havana.. 1 35 Hayti.. 34 2 16 30 Hungary. 81 Italy. 1 50 Jamaica 1 35 Japan 38 Java.. 127 Malta.. 1 50 Martinique.. Atlas. 165 later writers, however, rationalize the myth, and state that A. 34 1 23 was a mighty king who had great skill in astronomy, and only 25 tried to storm heaven intellectually.-The name A., originally mythological and cosmogonic, was introduced into geography by Mercator, who in the 16th c. gave the name A. to a collection of maps, probably because the figure of A. supporting the heavens had been given on the titles of such works. Atlas, in Anatomy, is that piece of the human vertebral column which is nearest to the skull; in other words, it is the first cervical vertebra. 1 52 32 1 14 2 21 147 36 61 Matanzas.. 192 1 52 Melbourne. 143 35 1 52 Atlas, a mass of mountain-land in the W. part of 32 North Africa. Its highest peaks are Miltsin-27 m. S.-E. of 1 45 the city of Morocco-Bibawan, and Tagherain. The most S. 152 chain diverging from the central mass bears the name Jabel-Hadnar. The heights approach the sea and form the 97 promontories jutting out into the Atlantic. From Morocco 135 the A. gradually decreases in h. toward the E. In Algeria 150 the elevation is only 7,673 ft.; in Tunis, 4,476 ft.; and in 1 91 Tripoli, 3,200 ft. The whole mountain-system is intersected 39 by the valley of the Muluia River, which flows through the 1 47 |