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 Europe, including Great Britain, is united to the North American continent by no less than sixteen cables. The actual cost of the most recent British cable laid across the Atlantic from Ireland to Newfoundland was £450,000, which works out at a cost of £220 per mile. This was, indeed, a somewhat expensive cable. The Pacific Cable Committee of 1897 reported that the average cost of cable in round figures was £200 a mile (Blue-book C. 9247; Report of Pacific Cable Committee, paragraph 54, dated January 5, 1897). But prices fluctuate, and the figures are only quoted with the object of showing how great a capital outlay is entailed in cable enterprise.

Besides the initial cost of a cable, there is the cost of its maintenance, repair, and replacement We have to consider not only the natural causes of decay, but also damage from external causes. No doubt the causes of faults and breakages, as well as the cost of repairs and maintenance, vary in every sea and with every cable. In the deep waters of the Atlantic 'the cost of the repair of a submarine cable may be from £20,000 to £80,000.' For, though the bed of that ocean is usually of a nature favourable to cables, yet there is a danger arising from banks, due to the deposit of great blocks of rock brought down from Greenland into the North Atlantic by the icebergs. As the icebergs pass Newfoundland they sail into warmer waters and melt, so that for hundreds of miles a new Ireland is being formed down below. To give, however, a general figure, the cost of maintaining and repairing a deep-sea cable was put by the Pacific Cable Committee at £70,000 a year