The one person in whose absolute integrity he had faith was Amos Kendall, and yet he must sometimes have thought that his friend was too severe in his judgment of others, for I find in a letter of Mr. Kendall's of January 4, 1857, the following warning: "I earnestly beseech you to give up all idea of going out again on the cable-laying expedition.

" In spite of this warning, or, perhaps, because Peter Cooper succeeded in overcoming Mr. Kendall's objections, Morse did go out on the next cable-laying expedition, and yet he found in the end that Mr. Kendall's suspicions were by no means unjustified.

The Agamemnon, one of the largest of England's war-ships, and the Niagara, giant of the United States Navy, were to do the actual work of cable-laying, the cable being divided between them.

The work of cable-laying was begun by the Niagara, which steamed slowly away, accompanied by the fleet.

Both Thomson and Bright had recommended a larger and stronger cable, and other failures in cable-laying in the Red Sea and elsewhere in the next few years bore out their contentions.