Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next six months in journeying through the mountains of South America.  Upon his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business, and to engage in no new schemes.

He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D. Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe, and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the two countries.  The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr. Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear his statements.  Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr. Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say.  At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the “Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland.”  This company had gone into bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne hoped to be able to revive it by the aid of American capital.  The scheme which he laid before Mr. Field, can not be better stated than by quoting the following extract from the charter which the Legislature of Newfoundland had granted the bankruptcy company: 

“The telegraph line of this company is designed to be strictly an ‘Inter-Continental Telegraph,’ Its termini will be New York, in the United States, and London, in the Kingdom of Great Britain; these points are to be connected by a line of electric telegraph from New York to St. John’s, Newfoundland, partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and partly through the water, and a line of the swiftest steamships ever built, from that point to Ireland.  The trips of these steamships, it is expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time will be occupied in transmitting messages between St. John’s and New York, the communication between the latter city and London or Liverpool, will be effected in six days, or less.  The company will have likewise stationed at St. John’s a steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting the European and American steamships, so that no opportunity may be lost in forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of communication.”