Read Ebook: The mighty deep by Giberne Agnes

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Ebook has 1075 lines and 58905 words, and 22 pages

An Iceberg, showing the section under water " 86

Diatom Cases " 154

Part of Diatom Case " 156

Deep-sea Fishes " 182

Beam-trawl and Tow-net employed in deep-sea research " 188

A Deep-sea Crab " 220

A Blue Whale " 254

THE MIGHTY DEEP

"THE SEA! THE OPEN SEA!"

"How cheery are the mariners, Those lovers of the sea, Their hearts are like its yesty waves, As bounding and as free."--P. BENJAMEN.

Once upon a time, over two thousand years ago, our ancestors lived in a country smaller than ours, to the north-east.

They had not yet taken possession of two Isles, which in the then distant future were to become the Headquarters of a world-wide Empire. Already one characteristic of the race was prominent; they delighted in the Sea. Within their small limits of power they ranged the Ocean, they wrestled with its fury, they subdued it to their will, they rejoiced in its strength, they found often their graves beneath its surface. The English then, as now, were Ocean-folk.

May it not be that we in modern days love the sea, and flock to its shores, and carry our Flag to its furthest bounds, because our forefathers, the Norsemen, the Angles, the ancient Vikings, found their joy in it? Their march, like ours, was on the mountain-wave; their Home, like ours, was on the deep.

Probably with them, as with us, it was not always an unchastened joy. Even a hardy Viking might know the unpleasant consequences of Ocean's rougher moods. But no such discomforts drove him to stay ashore.

Had our forefathers been made of feebler stuff, had they been easily checked in their enterprises, centuries of history must have been changed. The development of English nature would have followed other lines.

In those days the fight could not but be severe. No mighty ironclads, no huge three-deckers, existed. No P. and O. liners, no great merchant ships ranged the seas. Our forefathers tackled the waste of waters with what we should consider the merest cockleshells. Even in these days we know what is meant by "perils of the seas;" but in those days the term must have carried a hundred-fold deeper meaning, both to the brave fellows who ventured on the stormy main, and to the waiting wives and mothers on land.

All the more honour to them that they were not daunted. Each man's victory or failure in life's battle cannot but help to shape the course which his descendants in future ages will pursue.

The Sea for us has a vivid personality. We know grand old Neptune so well, with his trident and his snowy hair, his dashing waves and his impenetrable depths, his gentle breezes and his furious gales, his moods of mild serenity and his fits of vehement wrath. He has his faults; but in spite of all we love him.

At one time the Sea was for men a type of the Infinite, of the Immeasurable, of the Boundless. We use still the same words; but they have lost some of their force.

In these days the whole ocean has been mapped out from shore to shore. We know exactly what countries lie round each part of it. We can tell how long and how wide it is in any direction. As we stand on the shore, and talk of the "boundless ocean," we are perfectly well aware that we are looking across to France or Spain, to Germany or Ireland or America. Grand and far-reaching the sea still is, but to us no longer "boundless."

In ages gone by, those who stood upon the coasts of Palestine or Egypt, of Greece or Italy, gazed towards unknown horizons, across what was to them an illimitable ocean. The civilised world consisted of a few countries bordering the Mediterranean on the east; and those countries shaded off into unexplored barbaric regions. As for the "great Sea," as they called that which we regard as hardly more than a huge inland lake, it was in their eyes the embodiment of Infinitude.

At a very early period, long before the English Nation was dreamt of, before the Roman Empire had grown into being, while the polished Greek of the future was still a semi-savage, a nation of Ocean-lovers already existed. These were the Phenicians, foreshadowing in their pluck and enterprise the sea-going British of later times.

They, unlike the sailors of other nations, did not merely hug the shore, but ventured out into the trackless ocean. They, unlike the sailors of other nations, did not go upon the sea only in daylight, but they traversed it also in the dark hours of night.

At first they were content with the nearer reaches of the Indian Ocean, and with the more eastern parts of the Mediterranean. But gradually they wandered farther. Colony after colony was planted beyond Egypt, till they reached the Pillars of Hercules, known to us as the Straits of Gibraltar, to face a wild and strange Ocean, full of mystery.

There they made a startling discovery, enough to impress the more thoughtful minds among them. Far to the east, in the "Indian Ocean" of our days, their sailors had been acquainted with high and low tides; while throughout the Mediterranean scarcely any tides existed. But in the open sea, outside the narrow Channel, they found the very same tidal changes as in the eastern ocean.

It is hardly to be supposed that any one of them had a mind of such far-seeing grasp that he should be able to conjecture the grand truth of eastern and western oceans being ONE--swayed by the same influences, governed by the same laws.

A Phenician of those days, catching a glimpse of this truth, would have been worthy to take rank beside our Sir Isaac Newton of after days. They are believed to have observed the coincidence; no doubt with a feeling of wonder; and probably it was to them merely a coincidence. Very little was then understood of the most everyday and commonplace workings of Nature.

Not much, indeed, can be said with certainty of what the Phenicians did truly discover. Some observations they must have made of the heavenly constellations; and the Pole-star at least must have been known to them, otherwise it is impossible to imagine how they could have steered their vessels at night, in an age when the Mariner's Compass was unknown. They are supposed to have sailed far south on the west coast of Africa, if they did not actually round the Cape of Good Hope.

It does not appear that their knowledge was passed on to the Greek nation. Either they were curiously reticent of what they knew, or else such records as they may have left were destroyed and forgotten.

In after times the Carthaginians, descendants of Phenician Colonists, were, like their forefathers, sea-lovers, sea-explorers, searching the main, not as travellers search now from pure love of knowledge, or from a liking for adventure, but for the sake of commerce. The Carthaginians, however, instead of being able to make use of previous discoveries, and to work onwards from a point already gained, had to start afresh and to find their way--just as if it had never been found before--to and beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

To the Greek imagination that wide mysterious Ocean, opening out from the narrow Strait, was unattractive and terrible. It was a sea of limitless distances, of fog and gloom, of blackness and death; not an unexplored Ocean of possible glory and beauty and wealth.

Time glided by, and man advanced in his acquaintance with Land and Sea; but with the latter slowly. It was not until five centuries ago--and five centuries are but as a day, compared with the full stretch of history--that two weighty steps were taken.

One step was southward. One step was westward.

The African Continent, all along its northern region, had been the scene of very old-world history. But the south was shrouded in darkness. A brief glimmer of light, perhaps thrown there in Phenician days, had been long long lost sight of.

But that Continent had to be searched out. And the Ocean, though its limits were widened in men's imaginations, was very far from being mapped and fenced around with definite boundaries. Years of exploration still lay ahead; and many a valiant explorer had to fall a martyr in the cause of Science, before mystery should yield to knowledge.

Doubtless, in those days as in these, there was always somebody to ask, "But what is the use? What good can it do to us to learn that there are lands beyond the sea? What shall we gain by it all?"

Time alone, with its developments, with the growth of the human race, with the enormous possibilities then undreamt-of, could answer such questionings. Happily, brave explorers have seldom been lacking, who loving knowledge for its own sake have been content to labour patiently, not for money, not for fame, not for immediate results, but for the simple delight of better understanding the world around them, and for the benefit of future generations.

And indeed, if once we begin clearly to realise that the things which we see and hear, the wonders of Land and Ocean, are the outcome and expression of Divine Thought, we shall scarcely deem time wasted, which is spent in trying to find out a little more about those wonders.

SALT WATER

"The new sight, the new wondrous sight, The waters around me turbulent." E. B. BROWNING.

"Water, water, everywhere, And not a drop to drink."--S. T. COLERIDGE.

The annual stampede of Britons to the coast says much for our National belief in Sea-breezes. In other countries also people go to the sea for change; but perhaps nowhere does the rush excel that on our Island. This revivifying gift, though partly due to the wide and free expanse through which the breezes have travelled, is largely owing to the briny ocean with which they have been in contact.

Still, though the ocean includes in its composition every kind of land-water, Sea-water as such is different from them all. Not only in its vast extent, in its enormous depth, but in its strong flavour of Salt.

One of the commonest of substances is Salt. It is in the ground, in air, in water. We even know that it does not belong to our earth alone, but to many heavenly bodies also.

Perhaps one reason for this abundance, at least upon our Earth, is that it is necessary for life. There is salt in the make of blood and of brain, of muscle and of tendon. Salt is perpetually passing out of a man's body; therefore continual fresh supplies of it are needed. Without a certain amount of salt in his food, he cannot keep in good health.

This at one time was not understood; and salt was looked upon as a mere luxury, easily to be dispensed with. Condemned criminals were forbidden that luxury; and they went through a good deal of suffering, the reason for which was not guessed. If plenty of animal and vegetable food was given to them, they managed to get along, since both contain salt; but if they were kept on purely farinaceous fare, they broke down.

Where all the salt in the Ocean comes from, is a complex question. Large supplies are brought down annually by rivers and streams, from various minerals in their beds, as well as from rock-salt regions. But if we ask, "How comes the rock-salt to be there?" we are told that it is a deposit, once formed beneath ocean-waters, or at least left by the drying up of salt lakes and seas. A proof of the latter theory is found in multitudes of sea-shells, often distributed through layers of rock-salt.

If much sea-salt came originally from rock-salt on land, and if rock-salt came originally from ocean-deposits, we are led into a curious circle of cause and effect--not unlike that of oak and acorn, or of hen and egg, with the attendant puzzle of--Which first? It is a query which we are not able to answer.

In former days the salt used for household and mercantile purposes was almost entirely prepared by the evaporation of sea-water. We no longer depend on this, however; and in England the sea-salt trade has gone down greatly before that of rock-salt, which is found to be the better for table use. It has not the same tendency to stick together in lumps, after being packed in sacks.

Great districts of rock-salt are found in many places--such as those in the Carpathian Mountains, in the Swiss Alps, in Germany, and in Great Britain. One huge mine in Galicia has been worked for six hundred years; and this supply is said to reach through about five hundred miles. From British works alone the quantity carried away every year amounts to a cubic mile of salt.

But land-supplies grow pale and insignificant before the quantities which float in the ocean. It has been reckoned that, if the waters of the whole ocean could be dried up, the amount of salt left lying on the ocean-bed would be something like four-and-a-half millions of cubic miles.

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