UC-NRLF
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
THE OCEAN AND ITS WONDERS.
THE OCEAN.
THE OCEAN
AND ITS WONDERS.
R. M. BALLANTYNE,
AUTHOR, OF " THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS," " MAN ON THE OCEAN,'
" THE GORILLA HUNTERS," ETC.
LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK.
1876.
it.
1HE Voice of Ocean is constantly discours-
ing of many interesting and stirring
truths and events to those who are
disposed to listen.
The particular discourse recorded in this volume
is that which treats chiefly of the causes and
effects of those grand oceanic and atmospheric
currents which modify the climates of the Earth,
and diversify the face of Nature from the Equator
to the Poles.
Our information has been gathered from many
sources chief among which we may mention that
delightful book, " Maury's Physical Geography of
the Sea."
R. M. BALLANTYNE.
EDINBURGH, 1873.
M377C92
(STonttnts.
CHAPTER T.
WHAT THE OCEAN HAS TO SAY ITS WHISPERS ITS THUNDERS
ITS SECRETS 13
CHAPTER II.
COMPOSITION OF THE SEA ITS SALTS POWER AND USES OF WATER
ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE OF SALTS ANECDOTE
DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS BROOKE'S APPARATUS IMPORTANCE
OF THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH ILLUSTRATIONS DISCOVERIES
RESULTING FROM DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS 11
CHAPTER III.
WAVES SYSTEM IN ALL THINGS VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTE HEIGHT OF WAVES DR. SCORBSBY
SIZE, VELOCITY, AND AWFUL POWER OF WAVES ANECDOTES
REGARDING THEM TIDES 32
CHAPTER IV.
THE GULF STREAM ITS NATURE CAUSE ILLUSTRATION EFFECT
OF SMALL POWERS UNITED ADVENTURES OF A PARTICLE OF
WATER EFFECT OF GULF STREAM ON CLIMATE ITS COURSE IN-
FLUENCE ON NAVIGATION SARGASSO SEA SCIENTIFIC EFFORTS
OF PRESENT DAY WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS EFFECTS ON
COMMERCE CAUSE OF STORMS INFLUENCE OF GULF STREAM
ON MARINE ANIMALS 50
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
THE ATMOSPHERIC OCEAN ORDER IN ITS FLOW OFFICES OF THE
ATMOSPHERE DANGERS LESSENED BY SCIENCE CURRENTS OF
ATMOSPHERE CAUSE OF WIND TWO GREAT CURRENTS DIS-
TURBING INFLUENCES CALMS VARIABLE WINDS CAUSES
THEREOF LOCAL CAUSES OF DISTURBANCE GULF STREAM'S
INFLUENCE THE WINDS MAPPED OUT A SUPPOSED CASE.. .. 74
CHAPTER VI.
TRADE-WINDS STORMS THEIR EFFECTS MONSOONS THEIR VALUE
LAND AND SEA BREEZES EXPERIMENTS HURRICANES
THOSE OF 1831 ROTATORY STORMS THEIR TERRIBLE EFFECTS
CHINA SEAS HURRICANE IN 1837 WHIRLWINDS WEIGHT
OF ATMOSPHERE VALUE OF ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION
HEIGHT OF ATMOSPHERE j 90
CHAPTER VII.
WATERSPOUTS CAUSES OF APPEARANCE ELECTRICITY EXPERI-
MENTS ARTIFICIAL WATERSPOUTS SHOWERS OF FISH MR.
ELLIS ON WATERSPOUTS IN THE SOUTH SEAS Ill
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ARCTIC SEAS THEIR CHARACTER, SCENERY, AND ATMOSPHERI-
CAL ILLUSIONS 126
CHAPTER IX.
FORMATION OF ICE DANGERS OF DISRUPTING ICE ANECDOTE
DRIFTING ICE DRIFT OF THE "FOX" "NIPPING" ANECDOTE
LOSS OF THE " BREAD ALBANE " 134
CHAPTER X.
ICEBERGS THEIR APPEARANCE AND FORMS THEIR CAUSE
GLACIERS THEIR NATURE AND ORIGIN ANECDOTE OF SCORESBY
RISK AMONG ICEBERGS M'CLURE'S EXPERIENCE 150
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
ICE AN AGENT IN TRANSPORTING BOULDERS HOW THIS COMES ABOUT
DR. KANE'S OBSERVATIONS LONG NIGHT IN WINTER AND LONG
DAY IN SUMMER EXTREME DARKNESS INFLUENCE ON DOGS
INTENSE COLD EFFECT ON THE SSA 166
CHAPTEE XII.
QUESTION OF AN OPEN SEA ROUND THE POLES UPPER AND UNDER
CURRENTS OF THE OCEAN CAUSE THEREOF HABITS OF THE
WHALE AS BEARING ON THE QUESTION DR. KANE'S DISCOVERY
OF AN OPEN SEA IN THE FAR NORTH NOTES ON THE EXPEDI-
TION A BEAR-HUNT 176
I
CHAPTER XIII. '
MISCELLANEOUS PHENOMENA OF THE POLAR SEAS AND REGIONS
THE AURORA BOREALIS ICE-BLINK OPTICAL ILLUSIONS
ANECDOTE OF SCORESBY HALOS CORONAS MOCK SUNS
REFRACTION FROSTS 194
CHAPTER XIV.
ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA MEDUSA FOOD OF THE WHALE
PHOSPHORIC LIGHT CAUSE THEREOF LUMINOSITY OF THE
OCEAN 206
CHAPTER XV.
CORAL INSECTS AND CORAL ISLANDS POLYNESIA OPERATIONS OF
THE CORAL INSECT GROWTH OF CORAL REEFS 219
CHAPTER XVI.
VOLCANIC ISLANDS OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENTS "ATLANTIS"
INSTANCE OF THE FORMATION OF A VOLCANIC ISLAND CON-
CLUSION 228
THE OCEAN AND ITS WONDERS.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THE OCEAN HAS TO SAY ITS WHISPERS ITS THUNDERS
ITS SECRETS.
IHERE is a voice in the waters of the
great sea. It calls to man continu-
ally. Sometimes it thunders in the
tempest, when the waves leap high and strong, and
the wild winds shriek and roar, as if to force our
attention. Sometimes it whispers in the calm, and
comes rippling on the shingly beach in a still,
small voice, as if to solicit our regard. But
whether that voice of ocean comes in crashing bil-
lows or in gentle murmurs, it has but one tale to
tell, it speaks of the love, and power, and majesty
of Him who rides upon the storm, and rules the
wave.
Yes, the voice of ocean tells but one tale ; yet
14 THE OCEAN'S TALE :
there are many chapters in that wonderful story.
The sea has much to say; far more than could
possibly be comprehended in one volume, however
large. It tells us of the doings "of man on its
broad bosom, from the day in which he first
ventured to paddle along shore in the hollow trunk
of a tree, to the day when he launched his great
iron ship of 20,000 tons, and rushed out to sea,
against wind and tide, under an impulse equal to
the united strength of 11,500 horses. No small
portion of the ocean's tale this, comprising many
chapters of deeds of daring, blood, villany, hero-
ism, and enterprise. But with this poi^ion of its
story we have nothing to do just now. It tells us,
also, of God's myriad and multiform creatures that
dwell in its depths, from the vast whale, whose speed
is so great, that it might, if it chose, circle round
the world in a few days, to the languid zoophyte,
which clings to the rock, and bears more re-
semblance to a plant than to a living animal.
The sea has secrets, too, some of which it will
not divulge until that day when its Creator shall
command it to give up its dead ; while others it is
willing to part with to those who question it
closely, patiently, and with intelligence.
Among the former kind of secrets are those foul
deeds that have been perpetrated, in all ages, by
abandoned men ; when no human ears listened to
the stifled shriek, or the gurgling plunge ; when
no human eyes beheld the murderous acts, the
ITS SECRETS. ] 5
bloody decks, the blazing vessels, or the final hiss
of the sinking wrecks.
Among the latter kind of secrets are the lives
and habits of "the creatures of the deep, and the
causes and effects of those singular currents of
air and water, which, to the eye of ignorance, seem
to be nothing better than irregularity and con-
fusion; but which, to the minds of those who search
them out, and have pleasure therein, are recognised
as a part of that wonderful, orderly, and systematic
arrangement of things that we call Nature : much of
which we now know, more of whiclu we shall cer-
tainly know, as each day and year adds its quota
to the sum of human knowledge ; but a great deal
of which will, doubtless, remain for ever hidden in
the mind of nature's God, whose ways are wonder-
ful, and past finding out. It is the latter class
of secrets to which we purpose directing the
reader's attention in the following pages.
On approaching so vast a subject, we feel like
the traveller who, finding himself suddenly trans-
ported into the midst of a new and magnificent
region, stands undecided whither to direct his steps
in the endlessly varied scene. Or, still more, like
the visitor to our great International Exhibition of
1862, who, entering abruptly that gigantic palace,
where were represented the talent, the ingenuity,
the wealth, and industry of every people and
clime, attempts, in vain, to systematize his ex-
plorations, or to fix his attention. It is probable
16
THE PROPOSAL.
that, in each of these supposed cases, the traveller
and visitor, resigning the desire to achieve what is
impossible, would give themselves up to the agree-
able guidance of a wandering and wayward fancy.
Let us, reader, act in a somewhat similar manner.
Let us touch here, and there, and everywhere, on
the wonders of the sea, and listen to such notes
of the Ocean's Voice as strike upon our ears most
pleasantly.
(451)
CHAPTER II.
COMPOSITION OF THE SEA ITS SALTS POWER AND USES OF WATER
ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE OF SALTS ANECDOTE
DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS BROOKED APPARATUS IMPORTANCE
OF THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH ILLUSTRATIONS DISCOVERIES
RESULTING FROM DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS
EFORE proceeding to the consideration of
the wonders connected with and con-
tained in the sea, we shall treat of the
composition of the sea itself, and of its extent,
depth, and bottom.
What is the sea made of? Salt water, is the
ready reply that rises naturally to every lip. But
to this we add the question, What is salt water 1
or, as there are many kinds of salt water, of what
sort of salt water does the sea consist 1 To these
queries we give the following reply, which, we
doubt not, will rather surprise some of our
readers.
Fresh water, as most people are aware, is com-
posed of two gases oxygen and hydrogen. Sea
water is composed of the same gases, with the
addition of muriate of soda, magnesia, iron, lime,
(451) Q
/6
18 COMPOSITION OF THE SEA.
sulphur, copper, silex, potash, chlorine, iodine,
bromine, ammonia, and silver. What a dose !
Let bathers think of it next time they swallow a
gulp of sea water.
Most of these substances, however, exist in com-
paratively small quantity in the sea, with the ex-
ception of muriate of soda, or common table salt;
of which, as all bathers know from bitter experience,
there is a very considerable quantity. The quantity
of silver contained in sea water is very small in-
deed. Nevertheless, small though it be, the ocean
is so immense, that, it has been calculated, if all
the silver in it were collected, it would form a
mass that would weigh about two hundred million
tons !
The salt of the ocean varies considerably in
different parts. Near the equator, the great heat
carries up a larger proportion of water by evapora-
tion than in the more temperate regions; and thus,
as salt is not removed by evaporation, the ocean in
the torrid zone is salter than in the temperate or
frigid zones.
The salts of the sea, and other substances con-
tained in it, are conveyed thither by the fresh- water
streams that pour into it from all the continents
of the world. Maury, in his delightful work, " The
Physical Geography of the Sea," tells us that "water
is Nature's great carrier. With its currents it con-
veys heat away from the torrid zone, and ice from the
frigid ; or, bottling the caloric away in the vesicles
A BEAUTIFUL COMPENSATION. 19
of its vapour, it first makes it impalpable, and then
conveys it by unknown paths to the most distant
parts of the Earth. The materials of which the
coral builds the island, and the sea-conch its shell,
are gathered by this restless leveller from moun-
tains, rocks, and valleys, in all latitudes. Some it
washes down from the Mountains of the Moon in
Africa, or out of the gold-fields of Australia, or from
the mines of Potosi; others from the battle-fields, of
Europe, or from the marble quarries of ancient
Greece and Rome. The materials thus collected,
and carried over falls and down rapids, are trans-
ported to the sea."
Here, as these substances cannot be evaporated,
they would accumulate to such a degree as to
render the ocean uninhabitable by living creatures,
had not God provided against this by the most
beautiful compensation. He has filled the ocean
with innumerable animals and marine plants, whose
special duty it is to seize and make use of the sub-
stances thus swept from the land, and reconvert
them into solids. We cannot form an adequate
conception of the extent of the great work carried
on continually in this way ; but we see part of it
in the chalk cliffs, the marl beds of the sea shore,
and the coral islands of the South Seas, of which
last more particular notice shall be taken in a suc-
ceeding chapter.
The operations of the ocean are manifold. Be-
sides forming a great reservoir, into which what
20 OPERATIONS OF WATEfc.
may be termed the impurities of the land are con-
veyed, it is, as has been shown, the great laboratory
of Nature, where these are reconverted, and the
general balance restored. But we cannot speak of
these things without making passing reference to
the operations of water, as that wonder-working
agent of which the ocean constitutes but a
part.
Nothing in this world is ever lost or annihilated.
As the ocean receives all the water that flows from
the land, so it returns that water, fresh and pure,
in the shape of vapour, to the skies; where, in the
form of clouds, it is conveyed to those parts of the
earth where its presence is most needed, and pre-
cipitated in the form of rain and dew, fertilizing
the soil, replenishing rivers and lakes, penetrating
the earth's deep caverns; whence it bubbles up in
the shape of springs, and, after having gladdened
the heart of man by driving his mills and causing
his food to grow, it finds its way again into the
sea : and thus the good work goes on with ceaseless
regularity.
Water beats upon the rocks of the sea-shore
until it pounds them into sand, or rolls them into
pebbles and boulders. It also sweeps the rich soil
from the mountains into the valleys. In the form
of snow it clothes the surface of the temperate and
frigid zones with a warm mantle, which preserves
vegetable life from the killing frosts of winter.
In the form of ice it splits asunder the .granite
OPERATIONS OF WATER.
21
ACTION OF WAVES UPON A 11OCKY SHORE.
hills ; and in the northern regions it forms great
glaciers, or masses of solidified snow, many miles
in extent, and many hundred feet thick. These
glaciers descend by slow, imperceptible degrees, to the
sea ; their edges break off and fall into it, and,
floating southward, sometimes in great mountainous
masses, are seen by man in the shape of .icebergs.
Frequently huge rocks, that have fallen upon these
glaciers from cliffs in the arctic regions, are carried
22 ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE OF SALTS.
by them to other regions, and are deposited on
flat beaches, far from their native cliffs.
FORMATION O* 1 ICEBERGS.
The saltness of the sea rendering it more dense,
necessarily renders it more buoyant, than fresh
water. This is obviously a great advantage to
man in the matter of commerce. A ship does not
sink so deep in the sea as it does in a fresh-water
lake ; hence it can carry more cargo with greater
facility. It is easier to swim in salt than in fresh
water.
The only disadvantage to commerce in the salt-
ness of the sea is the consequent unfitness of its
water for drinking. Many and harrowing are the
A USEFUL CONTRIVANCE. 23
accounts of instances in which sailors have been
reduced to the most terrible extremities for want
of fresh water ; and many a time, since navigation
began, have men been brought to feel the dread
reality of that condition which is so forcibly ex-
pressed in the poem of the " Ancient Mariner :"
"Water, water everywhere,
And not a drop to drink."
Science, however, at length enabled us to over-
come this disadvantage of saltness. By the process
of distillation, men soon managed to procure enough
water at least to save their lives. One captain of
a ship, by accident, lost all his fresh water; and,
before he could put into port to replenish, a gale
of wind, which lasted three weeks, drove him far
out to sea. He had no distilling apparatus on
board, and it seemed as if all hope of the crew
escaping the most horrible of deaths were utterly
taken away. In this extremity the captain's in-
ventive genius came to his aid. He happened to
have on board an old iron pitch-pot, with a wooden
cover. Using this as a boiler, a pipe made of a
pewter plate, and a wooden cask as a receiver, he
set to work, filled the pot with sea water, put an
ounce of soap therein to assist in purifying it, and
placed it on the fire. When the pot began to boil,
the steam passed through the pipe into the cask,
where it was condensed into water, minus the
saline particles, which, not being evaporable, were
left behind in the pitch-pot. In less than an hour
24 EXTENT AND DEPTH OF OCEAN.
a quart of fresh water was thus obtained; which,
though not very palatable, was sufficiently good to
relieve the thirst of the ship's crew. Many ships
are now regularly supplied with apparatus for dis-
tilling sea water; and on the African coasts and
other unhealthy stations, where water is bad, the
men of our navy drink no other water than that
which is distilled from the sea.
The salts of the ocean have something to do
with the creating of oceanic currents; which, in
their turn, have a powerful influence on climates.
They also retard evaporation to some extent, and
have some effect in giving to the sea its beautiful
blue colour.
The ocean covers about two-thirds of the entire
surface of the Earth. Its depth has never been
certainly ascertained ; but from the numberless
experiments and attempts that have been made, we
are warranted in coming to the conclusion that it
nowhere exceeds five miles in depth, probably does
not quite equal that. Professor Wyville Thomp-
son estimates the average depth of the sea at about
two miles.
Of the three great oceans into which the sea is
naturally divided the Atlantic, the Pacific, and
the Arctic the Atlantic is supposed to be the
deepest. There are profundities in its bosom which
have never yet been sounded, and probably never
will be.
The difficulty of sounding great depths arises
DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS. 25
from the fact that, after a large quantity of line
has been run out, the shock of the lead striking
the bottom cannot be felt. Moreover, there is
sufficient force in the deep-sea currents to sweep
out the line after the lead has reached the
bottom ; so that, with the ordinary sounding-lines
in use among navigators, it is impossible to sound
great depths. Scientific men have, therefore, taxed
their brains to invent instruments for sounding
the deep sea for touching the bottom in what
sailors call " blue water." Some have tried it with
a silk thread as a plumb-line, some with spun-yarn
threads, and various other materials and contriv-
ances. It has even been* tried by exploding petards
and ringing bells in the deep sea, when it was
supposed that an echo or reverberation might be
heard, and, from the known rate at which sound
travels through water, the depth might thus be
ascertained. Deep-sea leads have been constructed
having a column of air in them, which, by com-
pression; would show the aqueous pressure to which
they had been subjected ; but the trial proved to
be more than the instrument could stand.
Captain Maury, of the -American Navy whose
interesting book has been already referred to
invented an instrument for sounding the deep sea.
Here is his own description of it : " To the lead
was attached, upon the principle of the screw-
propeller, a small piece of clock-work for registering
the number of revolutions made by the little screw
26 BROOKE'S APPARATUS.
during the descent; and it having been ascertained
by experiment in shoal water that the apparatus, in
descending, would cause the propeller to make one
revolution for every fathom of perpendicular descent,
hands provided with the power of self-registering
were attached to a dial, and the instrument was
complete. It worked beautifully in moderate
depths, but failed in blue water, from the difficulty
of hauling it up if the line used were small, and
from the difficulty of getting it down if the line
used were large enough to give the requisite strength
for hauling it up." One eccentric old sea captain
proposed to sound the sea with a torpedo, or shell,
which should explode the instant it touched the
bottom. Another gentleman proposed to try it by
the magnetic telegraph, and designed an instrument
which should telegraph to the expectant measurers
above how it was getting on in the depths below. But
all these ingenious devices failed, and it is probable
that the deepest parts of the ocean-bed still remained
untouched by man.
.At last an extremely simple and remarkably
successful deep-sea sounding apparatus was invented
by Mr. Brooke, an American officer. It consisted
of nothing more than thin twine for a sounding-
line, and a cannon ball for a sinker. The twine
was made for the purpose, fine but very strong, and
was wound on a reel to the extent of ten thousand
fathoms. The cannon ball, which was from thirty-
two to sixty-eight pounds' weight, had a hole quite
BROOKE S APPARATUS.
27
through it, into which was fixed a sliding rod, the
end of which, covered with grease, projected several
inches beyond the ball. By an ingenious and
simple contrivance, the cannon ball was detached
BROOKE'S SOUNDLNG APPARATUS.
when it reached the bottom of the sea, and the light
rod was drawn up with specimens of the bottom
adhering to the grease.
With this instrument the Americans went to
work with characteristic energy, and, by always
using a line of the same size and make, and a sinker
of the same shape and weight, they at last ascer-
28 IMPORTANCE OF THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH.
tained the law of descent. This was an important
achievement, because, having become familiar with
the precise rate of descent at all depths, they were
enabled to tell very nearly when the ball ceased to
carry out the line, and when it began to go out in
obedience to the influence of deep-sea currents. The
greatest depth reached by Brooke's sounding-line
is said to have been a little under five miles in
the North Atlantic.
The value of investigations of this kind does not
appear at first sight, to unscientific men. But those
who have paid even a little attention to the methods
and processes by which grand discoveries have been
made, and useful inventions have been perfected,
can scarcely have failed to come to the conclusion
that the search after TRUTH, pure and simple, of any
kind, and of every kind, either with or without refer-
ence to a particular end, is one of the most useful
as well as elevating pursuits in which man can
engage.
All truth is worth knowing and labouring after.
No one can tell to what useful results the discovery
of even the smallest portion of truth may lead.
Some of the most serviceable and remarkable inven-
tions of modern times have been the result of dis-
coveries of truths which at first seemed to have no
bearing whatever on those inventions. When
James Watt sat with busy reflective mind staring
at a boiling kettle, and discovered the expansive
power of steam, no one could have for a moment
RESULTS OF DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS. 29
imagined that in the course of years the inventions
founded on the truth then discovered would result
in the systematic driving of a fleet of floating palaces
all round the world at the rate of from twelve to
fifteen or twenty miles an hour ! Instances of a
similar kind might be multiplied without end. In
like manner, deep-sea sounding may lead to great,
as yet unimagined, results. Although yet in its
infancy, it has already resulted in the discovery of
a comparatively shallow plateau or ridge in the
North Atlantic Ocean, rising between Ireland and
Newfoundland; a discovery which has been turned
to practical account, inasmuch as the plateau has
been chosen to be the bed of our electric telegraph
between Europe and America. The first Atlantic
cable was laid on it ; and although that cable suffered
many vicissitudes at first, as most contrivances do
in their beginnings, communication between the
two continents was successfully established. Sound-
ings taken elsewhere showed that somewhat similar
plateaus existed in other parts of the Atlantic, and
now the whole of Western Europe is being bound
more firmly, by additional cables, to the eastern
sea-bord of America.
This great and glorious achievement has been the
result of the discovery of two truths, of a truth in
science on the one hand, and a truth in regard to
the structure of the bed of the sea on the other.
The study of electricity and of deep-sea soundings
was begun and carried on for the sake of the dis-
30 RESULTS OF DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS.
covery of truth alone, and without the most distant
reference to the Atlantic Telegraph, yet that tele-
graph has been one of the results of that study.
Who can tell how many more shall follow 1 And
even were no other result ever to follow, this one
may prove to be of the most stupendous importance
to the human race.
Another discovery that has been made by deep-
sea sounding is, that the lowest depths of the ocean
are always in a state of profound calm. Oceanic
storms do not extend to the bottom. When the
tempest is lashing the surface of the sea into a state
of the most violent and tremendous agitation, the
caverns of the deep are wrapped in perfect repose.
This has been ascertained from the fact that in
many places the bottom of the sea, as shown by
the specimens brought up by Brooke's apparatus,
and more recently by Professor Thompson's deep-sea
dredge, is composed of exceedingly minute shells of
marine insects. These shells, when examined by
the microscope, are found to be unbroken and
perfect, though so fragile that they must certainly
have been broken to pieces had they ever been
subjected to the influence of currents, or to the
pulverizing violence of waves. Hence the conclu-
sion that the bottom of the sea is in a state of
perpetual rest and placidity.
Indeed, when we think of it, we are led to con-
clude that this must necessarily be the case. There
are, as we shall presently show, currents of vast size
A WONDERFUL ARRANGEMENT. 31
and enormous power constantly flowing through
the ocean ; and when we think of the tremendous
power of running water to cut through the solid
rock, as exemplified in the case of Niagara, and
many other rivers, what would be the result of the
action of currents in the sea, compared with which
Magara is but a tiny rivulet 1 Ocean currents,
then, flow on a bed of still water, that protects the
bottom of the sea from forces which, by calculation,
we know would long ago have torn up the founda-
tions of the deep, and would probably have destroyed
the whole economy of nature, had not this beautiful
arrangement been provided by the all-wise Creator.
CHAPTER III.
WAVES - SYSTEM IN ALL THINGS VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTE HEIGHT OF WAVES DR. SCORESBY
- SIZE, VELOCITY, AND AWFUL POWER OF WAVES ANECDOTES
REGARDING THEM TIDES.
a man stands on the deck of some
tight-built ship, holding on to the weather
bulwarks, and gazing with unphilosophic
eye through the blinding spray at the fury of the
tempest by which the billows are made to roll
around him like liquid mountains, and the ship is
tossed beneath him like a mere chip, the sport and
plaything of the raging waters he is apt to think,
should his thoughts turn in that direction at all,
that all is unmitigated confusion ; that the winds,
which blew west yesterday and blow east to-day,
shifting, it may be, with gusty squalls, now here,
now there, in chaotic fury, are actuated by no
laws, governed by no directing power.
Yet no thought could be more unphilosophical
than this. Apart altogether from divine revelation,
by which we are informed that " all deeps, fire, and
hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are
SYSTEM IN ALL THINGS. 33
" fulfilling God's word " (which information we are
bound to receive as a matter of faith if we be
Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we be
men of common sense, because it is mere absurdity
to suppose that the " stormy winds," &c., are not
fulfilling God's word or will), we now know, to a
great extent from practical experience and scientific
investigation, that the winds blow and the waters of
the ocean flow in grand, regular, uninterrupted cur-
rents. Amongst these there are numberless eddies,
which, perhaps, have tended to fill our minds with the
idea of irregularity and confusion ; but which, never-
theless, as well as the grand currents themselves,
are subject to law, and are utterly devoid of caprice.
In regard to these matters there is much about
which we are still in ignorance. But the investi-
gations of late years especially those conducted
under the superintendence of Captain Maury of the
American Navy, and Drs. Carpenter and Thompson
of England have shown that our atmosphere and
our ocean act in accordance with a systematic
arrangement, many facts regarding which have
been discovered, and turned, in some cases, to prac-
tical account.*
A very interesting instance of the practical use to
which scientific inquiry can be turned, even in its
beginnings, is given by Maury. After telling us of
the existence and nature of a current in the ocean
* The gentlemen here referred to are agreed as to the fact of syste-
matic arrangement of currents, though they differ in regard to some
of the causes thereof and other mattei'S.
34 VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE.
called the Gulf Stream, he gives the following ac-
count of the manner in which upon one occasion he
made use of his theoretical knowledge :
In the month of December 1853, the fine
steam-ship San Francisco sailed from New York
with a regiment of United States troops on board,
bound for California by way of Cape Horn. She
was overtaken, while crossing the Gulf Stream, by
a gale of wind, in which she was dreadfully crippled.
Her decks were swept, and, by one single blow of
those terrible seas that the storms raise in the Gulf
Stream, more than in any other part of the Atlantic,
one hundred and seventy-nine souls, officers and
soldiers, were washed overboard and drowned.
The day after this disaster she was seen by one
vessel, and again, the next day, December 26th, by
another ; but neither of them could render her any
assistance.
When these two vessels arrived in the United
States and reported what they had seen, the most
painful apprehensions were entertained by friends
for the safety of those on board the steamer. Ves-
sels were sent out to search for and relieve her.
But where should these vessels go ? Where should
they look ?
An appeal was made to know what light the
system of researches carried on at the National
Observatory concerning winds and currents could
throw upon the subject.
The materials they had been discussing were
VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 35
examined, and a chart was prepared to show the
course of the Gulf Stream at that season of the
year. Two revenue cutters were then appointed
to proceed to sea in search of the steamer, and
Maury was requested to "furnish them with in-
structions."
It will be observed here that the gentleman thus
appealed to was at the time engaged in his study at
Washington, utterly ignorant of all that had occurred
within the previous few weeks on the stormy
Atlantic, except through the reports brought thence
by ships. These reports furnished him with meagre
data to proceed upon : simply that a crippled
steamer had been seen in a certain latitude and
longitude on a particular day.
But this information was sufficient for the prac-
tical man of science. Proceeding upon the suppo-
sition that the steamer had been completely disabled,
he drew two lines on the chart to define the limits
of her drift. This his previous knowledge of the
flow of the Gulf Stream at all seasons of the year
enabled him to do. Between these two lines, he
said, the steamer, if she could neither steam nor
sail after the gale, had drifted. And that she could
neither steam nor sail he had good reason to suppose
from the account of her brought in by the vessels
above mentioned. A certain point was marked on
the chart as being the spot where the searching
vessels might expect to fall in with the wreck.
While these preparations were being, made, two
36 HEIGHT OF WAVES.
ships fell in with the wreck and relieved the crew.
This, however, was not known at the time by the
anxious friends on shore. The cutters sailed on
their mission, and reached the indicated spot in the
sea, where, of course, their assistance was now
unnecessary. But when the vessels that had relieved
the crew of the wreck arrived in harbour and
reported where the wreck had been last seen, it was
found to be within a few miles of the spot indicated
by Maury !
Thus, upon very slight data, a man of science
and observation was enabled, while seated in his
study, to follow the drift of a wrecked vessel over
the pathless deep, and to indicate to a rescue party,
not only the exact course they ought to steer, but
the precise spot where the wreck should be found.
The waves of the ocean are by no means so high
as people imagine. Their appearance in the Atlantic
or Pacific, when raised by a violent storm, is indeed
very awful, and men have come to speak of them as
being " mountains of water." But their sublime
aspect and their tumultuous state of agitation have
contributed much to deceive superficial observers as
to their real height. Scientific men have measured
the height of the waves.
Not many years ago a vessel, while crossing the
Atlantic, was overtaken by a violent storm. The
sea rose in its might ; the good ship reeled under the
combined influence of wind and waves. While the
majority of the passengers sought refuge from the
SIZE AND VELOCITY OF WAVES. 39
driving spray in the cabin, one eccentric old gentle-
man was seen skipping about the deck with un-
wonted activity now on the bulwarks, now on the
quarter-deck, and anon in the rigging; utterly
regardless of the drenching sea and the howling
wind, and seeming as though he were a species of
human stormy petrel. This was the celebrated Dr.
Scoresby; a man who had spent his youth and
manhood in the whale-fishing; who, late in life,
entered the Church, and, until the day of his death,
took a special delight in directing the attention of
sailors to Him whose word stilled the tempest and
bade the angry waves be calm. Being an enthusiast
in scientific research, Dr. Scoresby was availing
himself of the opportunity afforded by this storm to
measure the waves! Others have made similar
measurements, and the result goes to prove that
waves seldom or never rise much more than ten feet
above the sea-level. The corresponding depression
sinks to the same depth, thus giving the entire
height of the largest waves an elevation of some-
where between twenty and thirty feet. When it is
considered that sometimes the waves of the sea
(especially those off the Cape of Good Hope) are so
broad that only a few of them occupy the space of a
mile, and that they travel at the rate of about forty
miles an hour, we may have some slight idea of the
grandeur as well as the power of the ocean billows.
The forms represented in our illustration are only
wavelets on the backs of these monster waves.
40
AWFUL POWER OF WAVES.
A GREAT WAVK AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
Waves travel at a rate which increases in pro-
portion to their size and the depth of water in
which they are formed. Every one knows that on
most lakes they are comparatively small and harm-
less. In some lakes, however, such as Lake Superior
in North America, which is upwards of three hundred
miles long, the waves are so formidable as to re-
semble those of the ocean, and they are capable of
producing tremendous effects. But the waves of
the sea, when roused to their greatest height, and
travelling at their greatest speed, are terrible to
behold. Their force is absolutely irresistible. Some-
A TOWN SWEPT AWAY. 41
times waves of more than usually gigantic propor-
tions arise, and, after careering over the broad sea
in unimpeded majesty, fall with crushing violence
on some doomed shore. They rush onward, pass
the usual barriers of the sea-beach, and do not retire
until horrible devastation has been carried far into
the land.
Maury gives the following anecdote from the
notes of a Russian officer, which shows the awful
power of such waves :
" On the 23rd of December 1854, at 9.45 A.M., the
shocks of an earthquake were felt on board the
Russian frigate Diana, as she lay at anchor in the
harbour of Simoda, not far from Jeddo in Japan.
In fifteen minutes afterwards (10 o'clock) a large
wave was observed rolling into the harbour, and the
water on the beach to be rapidly rising. The town,
as seen from the frigate, appeared to be sinking.
This wave was followed by another; and when the
two receded, which was at fifteen minutes past ten,
there was not a house, save an unfinished temple,
left standing. These waves continued to come
and go until half-past two P.M., during which
time the frigate was thrown on her beam-ends
five times ; a piece of her keel, eighty-one feet
long, was torn off; holes were knocked in her by
striking on the bottom, and she was reduced to a
wreck. In the course of five minutes the water in
the harbour fell, it is said, from twenty-three to three
feet, and the anchors of the ship were laid bare.
42 A FEARFUL SIGHT.
There was a great loss of life ; many houses were
washed into the sea, and many junks carried up
one two miles inland and dashed to pieces on the
shore. The day was beautifully fine, and no warn-
ing was given of the approaching convulsion : the
sea was perfectly smooth when its surface was
broken by the first wave."
Monster waves of this kind occur at regular
intervals, among the islands of the Pacific, once and
sometimes twice in the year ; and this without any
additional influence of an earthquake, at least in the
immediate neighbourhood of the islands, though it
is quite possible that earthquakes in some remote
part of the world may have something to do with
these waves.
One such wave is described as breaking on one of
these islands with tremendous violence. It appeared
at first like a dark line, or low cloud, or fog-bank,
on the sea-ward horizon. The day was fine though
cloudy, and a gentle breeze was blowing; but the
sea was not rougher, or the breaker on the coral
reef that encircled the island higher, than usual. It
was supposed to be an approaching thunder-storm;
but the line gradually drew nearer without spread-
ing upon the sky, as would have been the case had
it been a thunder-cloud. Still nearer it came, and
soon those on shore observed that it was 'moving
swiftly towards the island ; but there was no sound
until it reached the smaller islands out at sea. As
it passed these, a cloud of white foam encircled each
TOTAL DESTRUCTION. 43
and burst high into the air. This appearance was
soon followed by a loud roar, and it became evident
that the object was an enormous wave. When it
approached the outer reef, its awful magnitude be-
came more evident. It burst completely over the
reef at all points, with a deep, continuous roar; yet,
although part of its force was thus broken, on it
came, as if with renewed might, and finally fell upon
the beach with a crash that seemed to shake the
solid earth ; then, rushing impetuously up into the
woods, it levelled the smaller trees and bushes in its
headlong course; and, on retiring, left a scene of
wreck and desolation that is quite indescribable.
" Storm- waves/' as those unusually 'gigantic bil-
lows are called, are said to be the result of the re-
moval of atmospheric pressure in certain parts of
the ocean over which a storm is raging. This re-
moval of pressure allows the portion thus relieved to
be forced up high above the ordinary sea-level by
those other parts that are not so relieved.
The devastating effects of these storm-waves is
still further illustrated by the total destruction of
Coringa, on the Coromandel Coast, in 1789. Dur-
ing a hurricane, in December of that year, at the
moment when a high tide was at its highest point,
and the north-west wind was blowing with fury, ac-
cumulating the waters at the head of the bay, three
monstrous waves came rolling in from the sea upon
the devoted town, following each other at a short dis-
tance. The horror-stricken inhabitants had scarcely
44 OF WAVES " TRAVELLING."
time to note the fact of their approach, when the
first wave, sweeping everything in its passage, carried
several feet of water into the town. The second
swept still further in its destructive course, inun-
dating all the low country. The third, rushing on-
ward in irresistible fury, overwhelmed everything,
submerging the town and twenty thousand of its
inhabitants. Vessels at anchor at the mouth of the
river were carried inland ; and the sea on retiring
left heaps of sand and mud, which rendered it a
hopeless task either to search for the dead or for
buried property.
We have spoken of waves " travelling " at such
and such a rate, but they do not in reality travel at
all. It is the undulation, or, so to speak, the motion
of a wave, that travels; in the same manner that a
wave passes from one end of a carpet to the other
end when it is shaken. The water remains sta-
tionary, excepting the spray and foam on the sur-
face, and is only possessed of a rising and sinking
motion. This undulatory motion, or impulse, is
transmitted from each particle of water to its neigh-
bouring particle, until it reaches the last drop of
water on the shore. But when a wave reaches
shallow water it has no longer room to sink to its
proper depth ; hence the water composing it acquires
actual motion, and rushes to the land with more
or less of the tremendous violence that has been
already described.
Waves are caused by wind, which first ruffles the
ORIGIN OF WAVES. 45
surface of the sea into ripples, and then, acting with
ever -increasing power on the little surfaces thus
raised, blows them up into waves, and finally into
great billows. Sometimes, however, winds burst
SCATTERED INTO FOAM.
upon the calm ocean with such sudden violence that
for a time the waves cannot lift their heads. The
instant they do so, they are cast down and scattered
46
THE TIDES.
in foam, and the ocean in a few minutes presents
the appearance of a caldron of boiling milk ! Such
squalls are extremely dangerous to mariners, and
vessels exposed to them are often thrown on their
beam-ends, even though all sail has been previously
taken in. Generally speaking, however, the im-
mediate effect of wind passing either lightly or
furiously over the sea is to raise its surface into
waves. But these waves, however large they may
be, do not affect the waters of the ocean more than
a few yards below its surface. The water below
their influence is comparatively calm, being affected
only by ocean currents.
The tides of the sea as the two great Sowings
THE FLOWING TIDE.
and ebbings of the water every twenty-four hours
are called are caused principally by the attractive
CAUSES OF TIDES. 47
influence of the moon, which, to a small extent,
lifts the waters of the ocean towards it as it passes
over them, and thus causes a high wave. This
wave, or current, when it swells up on the land,
forms high tide. When the moon's influence has
completely passed away, it is low tide. The moon
raises this wave wherever it passes; not only in
the ocean directly under it, but, strange to say, it
causes a similar wave on the opposite side of the
globe. Thus there are two waves always follow-
ing the moon, and hence the two high tides in the
twenty-four hours. This second wave has been ac^
counted for in the following way : The cohesion of
particles of water is easily overcome. The moon, in
passing over the sea, separates the particles by her
attractive power, and draws the surface of the sea
away from the solid globe. But the moon also at-
tracts the earth itself, and draws it away from the
water on its opposite side, thus causing the high
wave there, as represented in the diagram, fig. 1.
-e
Fig. 1.
The sun has also a slight influence on the tides, but
not to such an extent as the moon. When the
two luminaries exert their combined influence in
the same direction, they produce the phenomenon
ELEVATION OF TIDES.
of a very high or spring-tide, as in Jig. 2, where the
tide at a and b has risen extremely high, while at
c and d it has fallen correspondingly low. When
Fig. 2.
they act in opposition to each other, as at the moon's
quarter, there occurs a very low or neap-tide. In
fig. 3 the moon has raised high tide at a and 6, but
the sun has counteracted its influence to some ex-
tent at c and d, thus producing neap-tides, which
Fig. S.
neither rise so high nor fall so low
as do other tides. Tides attain vari-
ous elevations in different parts of
the world, partly owing to local influ-
ences. In the Bristol Channel the
tide rises to nearly sixty feet, while in the Medi-
terranean it is extremely small, owing to the land-
locked nature of that sea preventing the tidal
wave from having its full effect. Up some gulfs
and estuaries the tides sweep with the violence of a
VALUE OF TIDES. 49
torrent, and any one caught by them on the shore
would be overtaken and drowned before he could
gain the dry land. In the open sea they rise and
fall to an elevation of little more than three or
four feet.
The value of the tides is unspeakable. They
sweep from our shores pollution of every kind, purify
our rivers and estuaries, and are productive of fresh-
ness and health all round the world.
(451)
CHAPTER IY.
THE GULF STREAM ITS NATURE CAUSE ILLUSTRATION EFFECT
OF SMALL TOWERS UNITED ADVENTURES OF A PARTICLE OP
WATER EFFECT OF GULF STREAM ON CLIMATE ITS COURSE IN-
FLUENCE ON NAVIGATION SARGASSO SEA: SCIENTIFIC EFFORTS
OF PRESENT DAY WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS EFFECTS ON
COMMERCE CAUSE OF STORMS INFLUENCE OF GULF STREAM
ON MARINE ANIMALS.
1 all the varied motions of the sea, the most
important, perhaps, as well as the most
wonderful, is the Gulf Stream. This
mighty current has been likened by Maury to a
" river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it
never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never
overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold
water, while its current is of warm. It takes its
rise in the Gulf of Mexico (hence its name), and
empties into the arctic seas. Its current is more
rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its
volume more than a thousand times greater."
This great current is of the most beautiful indigo-
blue colour as far out as the Carolina coasts ; and its
waters are so distinctly separated from those of the
CAUSE OF THE GULF STREAM. 53
sea, that the line of demarcation may be traced by
the eye. Its influences on the currents of the sea,
and on the climates and the navigation of the world,
are so great and important, that we think a some-
what particular account of it cannot fail to interest
the reader.
The waters of the Gulf Stream are salter than
those of the sea; which fact accounts for its deeper
blue colour, it being well known that salt has the
effect of intensifying the blue of deep water.
The cause of the Gulf Stream has long been a
subject of conjecture and dispute among philosophers.
Some have maintained that the Mississippi river
caused it; but this theory is upset by the fact that
the stream is salt salter even than the sea while
the river is fresh. Besides, the volume of water
emptied into the Gulf of Mexico by that river is
not equal to the three thousandth part of that which
issues from it in the form of the Gulf Stream.
Scientific men are still disagreed on this point.
They all, indeed, seem to hold the opinion that
difference of temperature has to do with the origina-
tion of the stream ; but while some, such as Captain
Maury, hold that this is the chief cause, others,
such as Professor Thompson, believe the trade- winds
to be the most important agent in the matter. We
venture to incline to the opinion that not only the
Gulf Stream, but all the constant currents of the sea
are due chiefly to difference of temperature and salt-
ness. These conditions alter the specific gravity of
54 CAUSE OF THE GULF STREAM.
the waters of the ocean in some places more than in
others ; hence the equilibrium is destroyed, and cur-
rents commence to flow as a natural result, seeking to
restore that equilibrium. But as the disturbing agents
are always at work, so the currents are of necessity
constant.' Other currents there are in the sea, but
they are the result of winds and various local causes ;
they are therefore temporary and partial, while the
great currents of the ocean are permanent, and are,
comparatively, little affected by the winds. Every
one knows that when a pot is put on the fire to boil,
the water contained in it, as soon as it begins to get
heated, commences to circulate. The heated water
rises to the top, the cold descends. When heated
more than that which has ascended, it in turn rises
to the surface; and so there is a regular current
established in the pot, which continues to flow as
long as the heating process goes on. This same
principle of temperature, then, is one of the causes
of the Gulf Stream. The torrid zone is the furnace
where the waters of the ocean are heated. But in
this process of heating, evaporation goes on to a
large extent ; hence the waters become salter than
those elsewhere. Here is another agent called into
action. The hot salt waters of the torrid zone at once
rush off to distribute their superabundant caloric
and salt to the seas of the frigid zones ; where the ice
around the poles has kept the waters cold, and the
absence of great heat, and, to a large extent, of
evaporation, has kept them comparatively fresh.
ADVENTURES OF A PARTICLE OF WATER. 55
In fact, the waters of the sea require to be stirred,
because numerous agents are at work day and night,
from pole to pole, altering their specific gravity and
deranging, so to speak, the mixture. This stirring
is secured by the unalterable laws which the Creator
has fixed for the carrying on of the processes of
nature. The currents of the sea may be said to be
the result of this process of stirring its waters.
It is curious and interesting to note the apparently
insignificant instruments which God has- seen fit to
use in the carrying out of his plans. The smallest
coral insect that builds its little cell in the southern
seas exercises an influence in the production of the
Gulf Stream. It has been said, with some degree of
truth, that one such insect is capable of setting in
motion the entire ocean ! The coral insect has, in
common with many other marine creatures, been
gifted with the powder of extracting from sea water
the lime which it contains, in order to build its cell
The lime thus extracted leaves a minute particle of
water necessarily destitute of that substance. Be-
fore that particle can be restored to its original con-
dition of equality, every other particle of water in
the ocean must part with a share of its super-
abundant lime ! The thing must be done. That
bereaved particle cannot rest without its lime. It
forthwith commences to travel for the purpose of lay-
ing its brother-particles under contribution; and it
travels far and wide round and round the world.
Myriads upon myriads of coral insects are perpetu-
56
ADVENTURES OF A PARTICLE OF WATER.
ally engaged in thus robbing the sea water of its
lime; shells are formed in a similar manner : so that
BRANCH OF RED CORAL WITH THE POLYPS IN.
A, branch of coral ; a, the stony stem ; b, ves-
sels spreading ; c, vessels going in straight lines ;
B, a germ set free ; c, a full-grown polyp.
our particle soon finds itself in company with in-
numerable other particles of water in a like destitute
condition. It rises to the surface. Here the sun,
as if to compensate it for the loss of its lime, be-
stows upon it an unusual amount pf heat; and the
surrounding particles, not to be out-done, make it
almost unlimited presents of salt. Full to overflow
with the gifts of its new companions, it hastens to
bestow of its superabundance on less favoured
ADVENTURES OF A PARTICLE OF WATER. 57
particles ; joins the great army of the ocean's cur-
rents ; enters, perchance, the Gulf of Mexico, where
it is turned back, and hastens along with the Gulf
Stream, with all its natural warmth of character,
to ameliorate the climate of Great Britain and the
western shores of Europe. Having accomplished
this benevolent work, it passes on, with some of its
heat and vigour still remaining, to the arctic seas
where it is finally robbed of all its heat and nearly
all its salt, and frozen into an icicle there for many
a long day to exert a chilling influence on the waters
and the atmosphere around it. Being melted at last
by the hot sun of the short arctic summer, it hurries
back with the cold currents of the north to the
genial regions of the equator, in search of its lost
caloric and salt, taking in a full cargo of lime, &c.,
as it passes the mouths of rivers. Arrived at its old
starting-point, our wanderer receives once more heat
and salt to the full, parts with its lime, and at once
hastens off on a new voyage of usefulness to give
out of its superabundance in exchange for the super-
abundance of others : thus quietly teaching man the
lesson that the true principles of commerce were
carried out in the depths of the sea ages before he
discovered them and carried them into practice on
its surface.
Perchance another fate awaits this adventurous
particle of water. Mayhap, before it reaches the
cold regions of the north, it is evaporated into the
clouds, and descends upon the earth in fresh and re-
58 COURSE OF THE GULF STREAM.
freshing rain or dew. Having fertilized the fields,
it flows back to its parent ocean, laden with a
superabundant cargo of earthy substances, which it
soon parts with in exchange for salt. And thus on it
goes, round and round the world ; down in the ocean's
depths, up in the cloudy sky, deep in the springs of
earth; ever moving, ever active, never lost, and
always fufilling the end for which it was created.
All ocean currents are composed of water in one
or other of the conditions just described; the hot
and salt waters of the equator, flowing north to be
cooled and freshened ; the cold and fresh waters of
the north, flowing south to be heated and salted.
The Gulf Stream is simply the stream of equatorial
hot water that flows towards the pole through the
Atlantic. Its fountain-head is the region of the
equator, not the Gulf of Mexico ; but it is carried,
by the conformation of the land, into that gulf and
deflected by it, and from it out into the ocean in the
direction of Europe. This stream in the Atlantic
is well defined, owing to the comparative narrow-
ness of that sea.
The Gulf Stream, then, is like a river of oil in the
ocean, it preserves its distinctive character for more
than three thousand miles. It flows towards the
polar regions, and the waters of those regions flow
in counter-currents towards the equator, because of
the fixed law that water must seek its equilibrium
as well as its level, thus keeping up a continuous
circulation of the hot waters towards the north and
ITS EFFECT ON CLIMATE. 59
the cold towards the south. There are similar cur-
rents in the Pacific, but they are neither so large
nor so regular as those of the Atlantic, owing to the
wide formation of the basin of the former sea.
The effect of the Gulf Stream on climate is very
great. The dreary fur-trading establishment of
York Factory, on the shores of Hudson's Bay, is
surrounded by a climate of the most rigorous char-
acter the thermometer seldom rising up so high
as zero during many months, and often ranging
down so low as 50 below zero, sometimes even
lower, while the winter is seven or eight months
long : the lakes and rivers are covered with ice
upwards of six feet thick, and the salt sea itself is
frozen. Yet this region lies in the same latitude
with Scotland, York Factory being on the parallel
of 57 north, which passes close to Aberdeen ! The
difference in temperature between the two places
is owing very much, if not entirely, to the influence
of the Gulf Stream.
Starting from its caldron in the Gulf of Mexico,
it carries a freight of caloric towards the North
Atlantic. Owing partly to the diurnal motion of
the Earth on its axis, its flow trends towards the
east ; hence its warm waters embrace our favoured
coasts, and ameliorate our climate, while the eastern
sea-bord of North America is left, in winter, to the
rigour of unmitigated frost.
But besides the powerful influence of this current
on climate, it exerts a very considerable influence
60 EFFECT OF GULF STREAM ON NAVIGATION.
on navigation. In former times, when men re-
garded the ocean as a great watery waste utterly
ignorant of the exquisite order and harmonious
action of all the varied substances and conditions
which prevail in the sea, just as much as on the
land they committed themselves to the deep as to
a blind chance, and took the storms and calms they
encountered as their inevitable fate, which they had
no means' of evading. Ascertaining, as well as they
could from the imperfect charts of those days, the
position of their desired haven, they steered straight
for it through fair weather and foul, regarding in-
terruptions and delays as mere unavoidable matters
of course.
But when men began to study the causes and
effects of the operation of those elements in the
midst of which they dwelt, they soon perceived that
order reigned where before they had imagined that
confusion revelled ; and that, by adapting their
operations to the ascertained laws of Providence,
they could, even upon the seemingly unstable sea,
avoid dangers and delays of many kinds, and often-
times place themselves in highly favourable cir-
cumstances. Navigators no longer dash recklessly
into the Gulf Stream, and try to stem its tide, as
they did of yore ; but. as circumstances require,
they either take advantage of the counter-currents
which skirt along it, or avail themselves of the
warm climate which it creates even in the midst
of winter.
THE SARGASSO SEA.
63
There is a certain spot in the Atlantic known by
the name of the Sargasso Sea, which is neither more
nor less than a huge ocean-eddy, in which immense
quantities of sea- weed collect. The weed floats so
thickly on the surface as to give to the sea the ap-
SARGASSO WEED.
pearance of solid land ; and ships find extreme diffi-
culty in getting through this region, which is ren-
dered still further unnavigable by the prevalence of
long-continued calms. This Sargasso Sea is of con-
siderable extent, and lies off the west coast of Africa,
a little to the north of the Cape Verd Islands.
64 SCIENTIFIC EFFORTS.
In former years, ships used to get entangled in
this weedy region for weeks together, unable to
proceed on their voyage. The great Columbus fell
in with it on his voyage to America, and his fol-
lowers, thinking they had reached the end of the
world, were filled with consternation. This Sar-
gasso Sea lies in the same spot at the present day,
but men now know its extent and position. In-
stead of steering straight for port, they proceed a
considerable distance out of their way, and f by avoid-
ing this calm region, accomplish their voyages with
much greater speed.
The ocean currents have been, by repeated and
long - continued investigation, ascertained and
mapped out ; so also have the currents of the at-
mosphere : so that, now-a-days, by taking advan-
tage of some of these currents and avoiding others,
voyages are performed, not only in much shorter
time, but with much greater precision and certainty.
As it was with ocean currents long ago, so was it
with atmospheric. Navigators merely put to sea,
steered as near as possible on their direct course,
and took advantage of such winds as chanced to blow.
Now they know whither to steer in order to meet
with such winds and currents as will convey them
in the shortest space of time to the end of their
voyage. The knowledge necessary to this has not
been gained by the gigantic effort of one mind, nor
by the accidental collocation of the results of the
investigations of many ordinary minds. But a few
WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS : 65
master-minds have succeeded in gathering within
their own grasp the myriad facts collected by thou-
sands of naval men, of all countries, in their various
voyages ; and, by a careful comparison and philo-
sophical investigation of these facts, they have ascer-
tained and systematized truths which were before
unknown, and have constructed wind and current
charts, by the use of which voyages are wonderfully
shortened, commercial enterprises greatly facilitated,
and the general good and comfort of nations mate-
rially advanced.
The truth of this has of late been proved by in-
contestable facts. For instance, one year particular
note was taken of the arrival of all the vessels at
the port of San Francisco, in California; and it
was found that of 124 vessels from the Atlantic
coast of the United States, 70 were possessed of
Maury's wind and current charts. The average
passage of these 70 vessels, on that long voyage
round Cape Horn, was 135 days; while the average
of those that sailed without the charts (that is,
trusted to their own unaided wisdom and expe-
rience) was 146 days. Between England and Aus-
tralia the average length of the voyage out used,
very recently, to be 124 days. With the aid of
these charts it has now been reduced to 97 days on
the average.
The saving to commerce thus achieved is much
greater than one would suppose. At the risk of
becoming tedious to uninquiring readers, we will
(451) 5
G6 EFFECTS OF WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS.
make a brief extract from Hunt's " Merchants*
Magazine" of 1854, as given in a foot-note in
Maury's " Physical Geography of the Sea : "
" Now, let us make a calculation of the annual
saving to the commerce of the United States effected
by these charts and sailing directions. According
to Mr. Maury, the average freight from the United
States to Rio Janeiro is 17.7 cents per ton per day ;
to Australia, 20 cts. ; to California, also about
20 cts. The mean of this is a little over 19 cts.
per ton per day; but, to be within the mark, we
will take it at 15, and include all the ports of South
America, China, and the East Indies.
" The sailing directions have shortened the pas-
sage to California 30 days ; to Australia, 20 ; to Rio
Janeiro, 10. The mean of this is 20 ; but we will
take it at 15, and also include the above-named
ports of South America, China, and the East Indies.
" We estimate the tonnage of the United States
engaged in trade with these places at 1,000,000 tons
per annum.
" With these data, we see that there has been
effected a saving for each one of these tons, of 15
cents per day for a period of 15 days, which will give
an aggregate of $2,250,000 (468,750) saved per
annum. This is on the outward voyage alone, and
the tonnage trading with all other parts of the
world is also left out of the calculation. Take
these into consideration, and also the fact that there
is a vast amount of foreign tonnage trading between
THE GULF STREAM AS A REFUGE. 67
these places and the United States, and it will be
seen that the annual sum saved will swell to an
enormous amount."
Before the existence of the Gulf Stream was as-
certained, vessels were frequently drifted far out of
their course in cloudy or foggy weather, without the
fact being known, until the clearing away of the
mists enabled the navigators to ascertain their posi-
tion by solar observation. Now, not only the ex-
istence, but the exact limits and action of this
stream are known and mapped; so that the current,
which was formerly a hindrance to navigation, is
now made to be a help to it. The line of demarca-
tion between the warm waters of the Gulf Stream
and the cold waters of the sea is so sharp and dis-
tinct, that by the use of the thermometer the pre-
cise minute of a ship's leaving or entering it can be
ascertained. And by the simple application of the
thermometer to the Gulf Stream the average pas-
sage from England to America has been reduced
from upwards of eight weeks to little more than four !
But this wonderful current is useful to navigators
in more ways than one. Its waters, being warm,
carry a mild climate along with them through the
ocean even in the depth of winter, and thus afford
a region of shelter to vessels when attempting to
make the Atlantic coast of North America, which
at that season is swept by furious storms and chilled
by bitter frosts. The Atlantic coasts of the United
States are considered to be the most stormy in
68 A PLEASANT CHANGE.
the world during winter, and the difficulty of
making them used to be much greater in former
days than now. The number of wrecks that take
place off the shores of New England in mid- winter
is frightful. All down that coast flows one of the
great cold currents from the north. The combined
influence of the cold atmosphere above it, and the
warm atmosphere over the Gulf Stream, far out at
sea, produces terrific gales. The month's average
of wrecks off that coast has been as high as three a
day. In making the coast, vessels are met fre-
quently by snow-storms, which clothe the rigging
with ice, rendering it unmanageable, and chill the
seaman's frame, so that he cannot manage his ship
or face the howling blast. Formerly, when unable
to make the coasl, owing to the fury of these bitter
westerly gales, he knew of no place of refuge short
of the West Indies, whither he was often compelled
to run, and there await the coming of genial spring
ere he again attempted to complete his voyage.
Now, however, the region of the Gulf Stream is
sought as a refuge. When the stiffened ropes re-
fuse to work, and the ship can no longer make
head against the storm, she is put about and steered
for the Gulf Stream. In a few hours she reaches
its edge, and almost in a moment afterwards she
passes from the midst of winter into a sea of sum-
mer heat ! " Now," as Maury beautifully expresses
it, " the ice disappears from her apparel ; the sailor
bathes his limbs in tepid waters. Feeling himself
THE GULF STREAM A CAUSE OF STORMS. 69
invigorated and refreshed with the genial warmth
about him, he realizes out there at sea the fable of
Antaeus and his mother Earth. He rises up and
attempts to make his port again, and is again, per-
haps, as rudely met and beat back from the north-
west ; but each time that he is driven off from the
contest, he comes forth from this stream, like the
ancient son of Neptune, stronger and stronger, until,
after many days, his freshened strength prevails,
and he at last triumphs, and enters his haven in
safety though in this contest he sometimes falls to
rise no more, for it is terrible."
The power of ocean currents in drifting vessels
out of their course, and in sweeping away great
bodies of ice, is very great; although, from the fact
that there is no ]and to enable the eye to mark the
flow, such drifts are not perceptible. One of the
most celebrated drifts of modern times, and the
most astonishing on account of its extent, was that
of the Fox in Baffin's Bay in the year 1857, a some-
what detailed account of which will be found in a
succeeding chapter.
The Gulf Stream is the cause of many of the most
furious storms. The fiercest gales sweep along with
it, and it is supposed that the spring and summer
fogs of . Newfoundland are caused by the immense
volumes of warm water poured by it into the cold
seas of that region. We are told that Sir Philip
Brooke found the temperature of the sea on each
side of this stream to be at the freezing-point, while
70 THE GULF STREAM OVER WHAT IT FLOWS.
that of its waters was 80. From this it may be
easily seen how great are the disturbing influences
around and above it; for, as the warm and moist
atmosphere over it ascends in virtue of its lightness,
the cold air outside rushes in violently to supply its
place, thus creating storms.
The warm waters of this stream do not, it is be-
lieved, anywhere extend to the bottom of the sea.
It has been ascertained, by means of the deep-sea
thermometer, that they rest upon, or rather flow
over, the cold waters which are hastening from the
north in search of those elements which, in their
wanderings, they have lost. As cold water is one
of the best non-conductors of heat, the Gulf Stream
is thus prevented from losing its caloric on its way
across the Atlantic to ameliorate the climates of the
western coasts of Europe, and moderate the bitter-
ness of the northern seas. Were it otherwise, and
this great stream flowed over the crust of the Earth,
so much of its heat would be extracted, that the
climates of France and our own islands would pro-
bably resemble that of Canada. Our fields would
be covered, for two, three, or four months, with
deep snow ; our rivers would be frozen nearly to
the bottom ; our land traffic would perhaps be
carried on by means of sledges and carioles ; our
houses would require to be fitted with double win-
dow-frames and heated with iron stoves ; and our
garments would have to be made of the thickest
woollens and the warmest furs !
THE GULF STREAM MARINE ANIMALS. 71
The presence and the unchanging regularity of
these great hot and cold currents in the ocean is in-
dicated very clearly by the living inhabitants of the
deep. These, as certainly as the creatures of the
land, are under the influence of climate ; so much
so, that many of them never quit their native re-
gion in the sea. All the beautiful and delicate ma-
rine creatures and productions which dwell in the
warm waters of the south are utterly absent from
those shores which are laved by the cold currents
that descend from the north ; while, owing to the
influence of the Gulf Stream, we find many of those
lovely and singular creatures upon our compara-
tively northern shores. Of late years, as every one
knows, we have all over the land been gathering
these marine gems, and studying their peculiar
habits with deep interest in that miniature ocean
the aquarium. In the same parallel on the other
side of the Atlantic none of these little lovers of
heat are to be found.
On the other hand, the whale, delighting as it
does to lave its huge warm-blooded body in iced
water, is never found to enter the Gulf Stream.
Thus these fish, to some extent, define its position.
Other fish there are which seem to resemble man
in their ability to change their climate at will ; but,
like him also, they are apt in so doing to lose their
health, or, at least, to get somewhat out of condition.
Some kinds of fish, when caught in the waters off
Virginia and the Carolinas, are excellent for the
72
WHALES AND MEDUSAE.
fill
table; but the same species, when taken off the warm
coral banks of the Bahamas, are scarcely worth
eating. In fact, we see no reason for doubting that
when these fish find their health giving way in the
warm regions of the south, they seek to re'invigorate
themselves by change of water ; and, quitting for a
time the beauteous coral groves, spend a few of the
summer- months of each year in gambolling in the
cool regions of the north, or, what is much the same
thing, in those cool currents that flow from the
north in clearly defined channels.
Besides its other use-
and .manifold pur-
the Gulf Stream
would seem to be one of
the great purveyors of
food to the whales.
Sea-nettles, or medusae,
are well known to consti-
tute the principal food
of that species of whale
which is termed the right
whale. Navigators have
frequently observed large
quantities of these me-
dusae floating along with
the Gulf Stream ; and
one sea captain in partic-
ular fell in with an extraordinarily large quantity
of them, of a very peculiar species, off the coast of
A MEDUSA.
WHAT IS THE SEA? 73
Florida. As we have said, no whales ever enter
the warm waters of the Gulf Stream ; therefore, at
that time at least, the leviathan could not avail
himself of this rich provision. The captain referred
to was bound for England. On his return voyage he
fell in with the same mass of medusae off* the Western
Islands, and was three or four days in sailing through
them. Now, the Western Islands is a great place
of resort for the whale, and thither had the Gulf
Stream been commissioned to convey immense
quantities of its peculiar food.
We might enlarge endlessly on this great ocean
current, but enough, we think, has been said to show
that the sea, instead of being an ocean of unchanging
drops, driven about at random by the power of
stormy winds, is a mighty flood flowing in an
appointed course steady, regular, and systematic
in its motions, varied and wonderful in its actions,
benign and sweet in its influences, as it sweeps
round and round the world, fulfilling the will of its
great Creator.
CHAPTER V.
THE ATMOSPHERIC OCEAN ORDER IN ITS FLOW OFFICES OF THE
ATMOSPHERE DANGERS LESSENED BY SCIENCE CURRENTS OF
ATMOSPHERE CAUSE OF WIND TWO GREAT CURRENTS DIS-
TURBING INFLUENCES CALMS VARIABLE WINDS CAUSES
THEREOF LOCAL CAUSES OF DISTURBANCE GULF STREAM'S
INFLUENCE THE WINDS MAPPED OUT A SUPPOSED CASE.
|ISH are not the only creatures that live in
an ocean. We, the human inhabitants of
this Earth, dwell at the bottom of an ocean
of air, which encircles the globe. Fish, however,
have the advantage of us, inasmuch as they can float
and dart about in their ocean, while we, like the
crabs, can only crawl about at the bottom of ours.
This atmospheric ocean is so closely connected
with the sea, and exercises upon it so constant,
universal, and important an influence, that to omit,
in a work of this kind, very special reference to the
winds, would be almost as egregious an oversight as
to ignore the waves.
Wind, or atmospheric air in motion, is the cause
of storms, of waves, of water-transport through the
sky, and of an incalculable amount of varied phe-
THE ATMOSPHERIC OCEAN. 75
nomena on land and sea. Without this great agent
no visible motion would ever take place in the sea.
Its great currents, indeed, might flow on (though
even that is questionable), but its surface would
never present any other aspect than that of an un-
ruffled sheet of clear glass. The air, then, becomes
in this place an appropriate subject of consideration.
The Voice of Ocean has something very emphatic to
say about the atmosphere.
In regard to its nature, it is sufficient to say that
atmospheric air is composed of two gases oxygen
and nitrogen. Like the sea, the atmosphere is an
ocean which flows, not in chaotic confusion, but in
regular, appointed courses ; acting in obedience to
the fixed, unvarying laws of the Almighty, and hav-
ing currents, counter-currents, and eddies also, just
like the watery ocean, which exercise a specific and
salutary influence where they exist.
The offices of the atmosphere are thus quaintly
enumerated by Maury : " The atmosphere is an
envelope or covering for the distribution of light and
heat over the Earth ; it is a sewer into which, with
every breath we draw, we cast vast quantities of
dead animal matter ; it is a laboratory for purifica-
tion, in which that matter is recompounded, and
wrought again into wholesome and healthful shapes ;
it is a machine for pumping up all the rivers from
the sea, and for conveying the water from the ocean
to their sources in the mountains. It is an in-
exhaustible magazine, marvellously stored ; and
76 IGNORANCE OF EARLY AGES.
upon the proper working of this machine depends
the well-being, of every plant and animal that in-
habits the Earth."
An element whose operations are so manifold and
so important could not fail to engage the study of
philosophic men in all ages ; but so difficult has
been that study that little progress was made
until very recently, when men, acting in unison in
all parts of the world, have, by collating their ob-
servations, become acquainted with some of those
laws which govern the atmosphere, and direct its
courses and velocities.
In early ages very little indeed was known about
the wind beyond the palpable facts of its existence,
its varied condition, and its tremendous power ; and
men's observations in regard to it did not extend
much beyond the noting of those peculiar and
obvious aspects of the sky which experience taught
them to regard as evidences of approaching storm.
But, although such aspects of the heavens were, and
always will be, pretty safe and correct indicators of
the weather, they are by no means infallible ; and
in some regions and under certain conditions they
are wanting altogether.
When the sea captain observes a lowering aspect
of the sky, with, it may be, a dark line above the
distant edge of the sea, he knows however calm
and unruffled may be the ocean around him that
wind may be expected ; and, calling the crew, he
orders sail to be taken in, and preparation made
A HURRICANE AT SEA.
THE FLOW OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 79
for the approaching breeze. But there are times
when no such warning is given when the atmos-
phere j.s perfectly still, the sea calm as glass, and
the vessel floats motionless with her sails hanging
idly from the yards, as if she were
"A painted ship upon a painted ocean.'*
Suddenly, and before preparation can be made to
withstand it, the hurricane bursts in appalling fury
over the sea : the sails are blown to ribbons ; the
masts, perhaps, broken down; and frequently the
vessel itself overwhelmed and sent to the bottom.
Many a gallant ship, which has left the harbour
ably commanded and well manned, and never more
been heard of, has doubtless gone down in sadden
storms such as those we have referred to.
But the inventions of science have now very
much lessened the danger of these storms. The
barometer, by the sudden fall of its column of mer-
cury, tells, as plainly and certainly as if it spoke with
an audible voice, that a storm is approaching, even
though all nature should appear to contradict the
fact by its calm and serene aspect; so that the crew
thus warned have time to furl the sails, fasten down
the hatches, and otherwise prepare to face the im-
pending danger.
The atmosphere flows in a grand harmonious
system of currents and counter-currents, with their
corresponding eddies, just like the ocean ; and the
grand final results of its varied action are, to equalize
80 WIND ITS PRIMARY CAUSE:
in some degree the temperatures of the world, to
carry off and distribute moisture where it is required,
to sweep away noxious vapours, and generally to
ventilate the Earth and gladden the heart of man.
The primary cause of all wind is the combined
action of heat and cold. If the world were heated
with perfect equality all round, there would be, as
far at least as heat is concerned, a perfect and per-
manent stagnation of the atmosphere; and this
would speedily result in the destruction of every liv-
ing thing. But by the varied arid beautiful arrange-
ments which the Almighty has made in nature he
has secured a regular flow of atmospheric currents,
which will continue unalterably to move as long as
the present economy of things exists. The intense
and constant action of the sun's rays in the torrid
zone produces great heat, while the less powerful
and frequently interrupted influence of his rays in
the frigid zones induces extreme cold. Hence we
have in one region heated air, in another cool air.
Now, the effect of heat upon air is to expand it,
make it light, and cause it to rise. The moment it
does so, the cold air rushes in to supply its place; and
this rushing in of tKe cold air is what we call wind.
It may surprise many people to be told that there
are only two great and never-ceasing courses of the
winds of this world namely, north and south.
They flow perpetually from the equator to the poles,
and from the poles to the equator. All the ir-
regularities and interruptions that we observe are
ITS TWO GREAT COURSES. 81
mere temporary and partial deflections from this
grand course. The heated air at the equator rises
continually and flows in an upper current towards
the pole, getting gradually cooled on its way north.
That from the pole flows in an under current
towards the equator, getting gradually heated on its
way south. We speak only of the Northern
Hemisphere, for the sake of simplifying explanation,
the action of the great wind-current in the
Southern Hemisphere is precisely similar.
But our broad simple statement about the upper
current from the equator, and the under current
from the pole, requires a slight modification, which
we thought it best not to mingle with the state-
ment itself. The heated air from the equator does
indeed commence to flow in an upper current, and
the cooled air from the pole in an under current ;
but, as the upper currents of air are speedily cooled
by exposure to space, and the under currents are
heated by contact with the earth's surface, they con-
stantly change places the lower current becoming
the upper, and vice versd. But they do not change
direction. The Equatorial Current ascends, rushes
north to a point about lat. 30, where, being suffi-
ciently cooled, it swoops down, and continues its
northward rush along the earth. At another point
the Polar Current quits the earth, and soaring up,
in consequence of its recently acquired heat, becomes
the upper current. This change in the two currents
takes place twice in their course.
(451) 6
82 DISTURBING INFLUENCES.
Of course, the effect of these changes is to produce
north winds in one latitude and south winds in
another, according to the particular wind (equatorial
or polar) that happens to be in contact with the
earth. At the points where these two currents
cross, in changing places, we necessarily have calms,
or conflicting and variable winds.
Here, then, we have the first of the constant dis-
turbing causes, and of apparent irregularities, in the
winds. The Earth, as every one knows, whirls
rapidly on its axis from west to east. At the
equator the whirl is so rapid that the atmosphere
does not at once follow the Earth's motion. It
lags behind, and thus induces an easterly tendency
to the winds, so that a north wind becomes a north-
east, and a south wind a south-east. Here we have
another constant cause of variation from the nor-
therly and southerly flow. We tnus account for an
easterly tendency to the winds, but whence their
westerly flow 1 It is simply explained thus :
The motion of the Earth is greatest at the equator.
It diminishes gradually towards the poles, where
there is no motion at all. The atmosphere partakes
of the Earth's 'motion when in contact with it ; and
when thrown upwards by heat, as at the equator, it
keeps up the motion for some time, as it meets with
no resistance there. Bearing this in mind, let us
now follow a gush of warm atmosphere from the
equator. It rushes up, and, turning north and
south, seeks the poles. We follow the northern
VARIABLE WINDS. 83
division. When it left the Earth it had acquired a
very strong motion towards the east, not so great
as that of the Earth itself, but great enough to be
equivalent to a furious gale from west to east. If
we suppose this air to redescend whence it rose,
it would, on reaching the equator, find the Earth
going too fast for it. It would lag a little, and be-
come a gentle easterly breeze. But now, throw
aside this supposition ; our breeze rushes north ;
at lat. 30 it has got cooled, and swoops down upon
the Earth ; but the Earth at this latitude is moving
much slower than at the equator; the wind, however,
has lost little or none of its easterly velocity. On
reaching the Earth it rushes east much faster than
the Earth itself, and thus becomes a westerly gale.
There are, however, many other agents at work,
which modify and disturb what we may call the
legitimate flow of the wind ; and these agents are
diverse in different places, so that the atmosphere
is turned out of a straight course, and is caused to
deflect, to halt, and to turn round : sometimes sweep-
ing off, as if in haste; at other times pausing, as if in
uncertainty ; and often whirling round, as if in mad
confusion. To the observer, who sees only the partial
effects around his own person, all this commotion
seems but the disorderly action of blind chance; but
to the eye of Him who sees the end from the begin-
ning, we may certainly conclude that naught is seen
but order and perfect harmony. And to the eye of
Science there now begins to appear, in what was
84 LOCAL CAUSES.
formerly an atmospheric chaos, an evidence of design
and system, which is not, indeed, absolutely clear,
but which is nevertheless abundantly perceptible to
minds that cannot hope in this life to see otherwise
than "through a glass, darkly."
The causes which modify the action of the winds
are, as we have said, various. Local causes pro-
duce local currents. A clear sky in one region
allows the sun's rays to pour upon, let us say, the
ocean, producing great heat ; the result of which is
evaporation. Aqueous vapour is very light, there-
fore it rises ; and in doing so the aqueous particles
carry the air up with them, and the wind necessarily
rushes in below to supply its place. The falling of
heavy rain, in certain conditions of the atmosphere,
has the effect of raising wind. Electricity has also,
in all probability, something to do with the creation
of motion in the atmosphere. Now, as these are
all local causes, they produce local or what, in regard
to the whole atmosphere, may be termed irregular
effects. And as these causes or agents are in cease-
less operation at all times, so their disturbing influ-
ence is endless ; and hence the apparent irregularity
in the winds.
But these causes are themselves, not less than
their results, dependent on other causes or laws, the
workings of which are steady and unvarying ; and the
little irregularities that appear to us in the form of
fluctuating and changing winds and calms may be
compared to the varying ripples and shifting eddies
WINDS MAPPED OtJT. 85
of a river, whose surface is affected by the compara-
tively trifling influences of wind, rain, and drought,
but whose grand onward course is never for a single
moment interrupted.
Among these disturbing influences, the Gulf
Stream is a very important one. It is constantly
sending up large volumes of steam, which, rising
into the air, induce a flow of wind from both sides
towards its centre. And many of the storms that
arise in other parts of the Atlantic make for this
stream, and follow its course.
So much has been ascertained by scientific inves-
tigation of the winds, that we can now distinctly
map out the great belts or currents which pass
right round the world. We can tell in which
parallels winds with easting, and in which those
with westing, in them, will be most frequently
found: and by directing our course to such places,
we can to a certain extent count upon profiting by
the winds that will be most suitable. Before the
facts of atmospheric circulation were known, mariners
sailed by chance. If they happened to get into the
belt of wind that suited them, their voyages were
favourable ; if they got into the wrong region, their
voyages were unfavourable, that was all. But they
had no idea that there was any possibility of turn-
ing the tables, and, by a careful investigation of
the works of the Creator, coming at last to such
knowledge as would enable them to reduce
winds and waves, in a great degree, to a state
86 ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA LONG tJNKNOWN.
of slavery, instead of themselves being at their
mercy.
The world may be said to be encircled by a suc-
cession of belts of. wind, which blow not always in
the same direction, but almost invariably with the
same routine of variations. A vessel sailing from
north to south encounters these belts in succession.
To mariners of old, these varying winds seemed to
blow in utter confusion. To men of the present
time, their varied action is counted on with some
degree of certainty. The reason why men were so
long in discovering the nature of atmospheric cir-
culation was, that they were not sufficiently alive to
the immense value of united effort. They learned
wisdom chiefly from personal experience each man
for himself; and in the great majority of cases,
stores of knowledge, that would have been of th^
utmost importance to mankind, were buried with
the individuals who had laid them up. Moreover,
the life of an individual was too short, and his ex-
perience too limited, to enable him to discover any
of the grand laws of Nature ; and as there was no
gathering together of information from all quarters,
and all sorts of men, and all seasons (as there is
now), the knowledge acquired by individuals was
almost always lost to the world. Thus men were
ever learning, but never arriving at a knowledge of
the truth.
"May we not here remark, that this evil was
owing to another evil namely, man's ignorance of,
A SUPPOSED CASE. 87
or indifference to, the duty of what we may term
human communication'? As surely as gravitation
is an appointed law of God, so surely is it an
appointed duty that men shall communicate their
individual knowledge to each other, in order that
the general knowledge of the species may advance ;
and just in proportion to the fidelity with which
men obey this duty the care and ability with which
they collate and systematize and investigate their
knowledge will be the result of their efforts.
In order to make the above remarks more clear
as regards atmospheric phenomena, let us suppose the
case of a sailor who makes the same voyage every
year, but not precisely at the same time each year (and
it must be remembered that the rigid punctuality at
starting which now holds good did not exist in for-
mer times). In his first voyage he had to cross, say,
four of the wind-belts. While crossing belt number
one, he experiences south-west winds chiefly, and,
being an observant man, notes the fact. In belt
number two he encounters westerly winds. In.
number three he is in a region of variable winds
and calms. In this region the winds blow all
round the compass, averaging about three months
from each quarter. But our sailor does not know
that ; he does not stay there all the year to make
notes ; he passes on, having recorded his experience.
In crossing belt number four, he finds the pre-
vailing winds to be easterly.
Next year he sets forth again; but merchants
88 A SUPPOSED CASE.
are not always punctual. The lading cannot be
completed in time, or adverse winds render the
setting sail unadvisable. At length, after a month
or six weeks' delay, he proceeds on his voyage, and
finds belt number one perhaps much the same as
last year. He congratulates himself on his good
fortune, and notes his observations j but in belt
number- two, the wind is somewhat modified, owing
to its being later in the season, it is rather against
him. In number three it is right in his teeth,
whereas last year it was quite in his favour. In
number four, which we will suppose is the trade-
wind belt (of which more hereafter), he finds the
wind still easterly. Here, then, is the ground-
work of confusion in our sailor's mind. He has
not the remotest idea that in belt number one the
wind blows chiefly, but not always, in one par-
ticular direction ; that in number four it blows in-
variably in one way ; and that in number three it
is regularly irregular. In fact, he does not know
that such belts exist at all, and his opportunities of
observing are not sufficiently frequent or prolonged
to enable him to ascertain anything with certainty.
Now, when we remember that in this imperfect
experience of his he is still further misled by his
frequently encountering local vicissitudes such as
storms and calms resulting from local and tem-
porary causes we see how confusion becomes worse
confounded. No doubt he does gather some few
crumbs of knowledge ; but he is called on, perhaps,
A GREAT CHANGE. 89
to change his scene of action. Another ship is
given to him, another route entered on, and he
ceases altogether to prosecute his inquiries in the
old region. Or old age comes on ; and even
although he may have been beginning to have a
few faint glimmerings as to laws and systems in his
mind, he has not the power to make much of these.
He dies ; his knowledge is, to a very large extent,
lost, and his log-books disappear, as all such books
do, nobody knows or cares where.
Now this state of things has been changing
during the last few years. Log-books are collected
in thousands. The experiences of many men, in
reference to the same spots in the same years,
months, and even hours, are gathered, collated, and
compared ; and the result is, that although there
are conflicting elements and contradictory appear-
ances, order has been discovered in the midst of
apparent confusion, and scientific men have been
enabled to pierce through the chaos of littlenesses
by which the world's vision has been hitherto
obscured, and to lay bare many of those grand pro-
gressions of nature which move unvaryingly with
stately step through space and time, as the river,
with all its minor eddies and counter-currents, flows
with unvarying regularity to the ocean.
CHAPTER VI.
TRADE-WINDS STORMS THEIR EFFECTS MONSOONS THEIR VALUE
LAND AND SEA BREEZES EXPERIMENTS HURRICANES
THOSE OF 1831 ROTATORY STORMS THEIR TERRIBLE EFFECTS
CHINA SEAS HURRICANE IN 1837 WHIRLWINDS WEIGHT
OF ATMOSPHERE VALUE OF ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION
HEIGHT OF ATMOSPHERE.
'ORE proceeding to speak of the power
and the dreadful effects of wind, it is
necessary* to say a word or two about the
trade-winds.
It is supposed that the " trades " derived their
name from the fact of their being favourable to
navigation, and, therefore, to trade. They consist
of two belts of wind, one on each side of the
equator, which blow always in the same direction.
In the last chapter it was explained that the
heated atmosphere at the equator rises, and that
the cooler atmosphere from the poles rushes in to
supply its place. That which inshes from the
south pole is, of course, a south \v_'nd, that from
the north pole a north wind ; but, owing to the
Earth's motion on its axis from west to east, the
TRADE-WINDS.
91
one becomes a north-east, the other a south-east
wind. These are the north-east and the south-
east " trades." They blow regularly sometimes
gently, sometimes fiercely all the year round.
Between the two is a belt of calms and changeable
i\ M \ \ ^P
S.E. Trade-] I'inds.
\ \
\ \ \ \ \ \ \
Counter Trade-Winds from N.W.
~
DIAGRAM OP THE TRADE-WINDS.
breezes, varying from 150 to 500 miles broad
according to the time of the year where there are
frequent and violent squalls, of very short duration,
accompanied with heavy rains. This region is
called by seamen the " doldrums," and considerable
92 TRADE-WINDS.
trouble and difficulty do ships experience in
crossing it.
It has already been explained that about lat. 30,
the upper current of wind from the south descends.
At the same point the upper current from the
north also descends. They cut through each other,
and the point where these two cut each other is the
northern limit of the north-east trade-winds. The
same explanation holds in regard to the southern
limit of the south-east trades.
In the accompanying diagram the arrows within
the circle point out the direction of the north-east
and the south-east " trades " between the tropics of
cancer and Capricorn, and also the counter currents
to the north and south of these, while the arrows
around the circle show how counter currents meet
and rise, or descend, and produce the calm belts.
We have hitherto enlarged chiefly on the grand
currents of the atmosphere, and on those modifying
causes and effects which are perpetual. Let us now
turn to the consideration of those winds which are
produced by local causes, and the effects of which
are partial.
And here we are induced to revert to the Gulf
Stream, which has been already referred to as a
local disturber of the regular flow of the atmos-
phere. This immense body of heated water, pass-
ing through cold regions of the sea, has the effect of
causing the most violent storms. The hurricanes
of the West Indies are among the most violent in
MONSOONS. 93
the world. We have read of one so violent that it
" forced the Gulf Stream back to its sources, and
piled up the water in the Gulf to the height of
thirty feet. A vessel named the Ledbury Snow
attempted to ride it out. When it abated, she
found herself high up on the dry land, having let
go her anchor among the tree-tops of Elliott's quay !
The Florida quays were inundated many feet ; and
it is said the scene presented in the Gulf Stream
was never surpassed in awful sublimity on the
ocean. The water thus dammed up rushed out
with frightful velocity against the fury of the gale,
producing a sea that beggared description."
The monsoons of the Indian Ocean are among
the most striking and regular of the locally-caused
winds. Before touching on their causes, let us
glance at their effects. They blow for nearly six
months in t)ne direction, and for the other six in
the opposite direction. At the period of their
changing, terrific gales are frequent gales such as
we, in our temperate regions, never dream of.
What is termed the rainy season in India is the
result of the south-west monsoon, which for four
months in the year deluges the regions within its
influence with rain.
The commencement of the south-west monsoon is
described as being sublime and awful beyond
description. Before it comes, the whole country is
pining under the influence of long-continued drought
and heat ; the ground is parched and rent ; scarcely
94 MONSOON STORM.
a blade of verdure is to be seen except in the beds
of rivers, where the last pools of water seem about
to evaporate, and leave the land under the dominion
of perpetual sterility. Man and beast pant for
fresh air and cool water ; but no cool breeze comes.
A blast, as if from the mouth of a furnace, greets
the burning cheek ; no blessed drops descend ; the
sky is clear as a mirror, without a single cloud to
mitigate the intensity of the sun's withering rays.
At last, on some happy morning, small clouds are
seen on the horizon. They may be no bigger than
a man's hand, but they are blessed harbingers of
rain. To those who know not what is coming,
o"
there seems at first no improvement on the previous
sultry calms. There is a sense of suffocating heat
in the atmosphere ; a thin haze creeps over the sky,
but it scarcely affects the broad glare of the sun.
At length the sky begins to change. The
horizon becomes black. Great masses of dark
clouds rise out of the sea. Fitful gusts of wind
begin to blow, and as suddenly to cease ; and these
signs of coming tempest keep dallying with each
other, as if to tantalize the expectant creation. The
lower part of the sky becomes deep red, the
gathering clouds spread over the heavens, and a
deep gloom is cast upon the earth and sea.
And now the storm breaks forth. The violent
gusts swell into a continuous, furious gale. Rain
falls, not in drops, but in broad sheets. The black
sea is crested with white foam, which is quickly
A HURRICANE ON LAND.
MONSOONS THEIR VALUE. 97
swept up and mingled with the waters above ;
while those below heave up their billows, and rage
and roar in unison with the tempest. On the land
everything seems about to be uprooted and hurled
to destruction. The tall straight cocoa-nut trees
are bent over till they almost lie along the ground ;
the sand and dry earth are whirled up in eddying
clouds, and everything movable is torn up and
swept away.
To add to the dire uproar, thunder now peals
from the skies in loud, continuous roars, and in
sharp angry crashes, while lightning plays about in
broad sheets all over the sky, the one following so
close 011 the other as to give the impression of
perpetual flashes and an unintermitting roar ; the
whole scene presenting an aspect so awful, that
sinful man might well suppose the season of the
Earth's probation had passed away, and that the
Almighty were about to hurl complete destruction
upon his offending creatures.
But far other intentions are in the breast of Him
who rides upon the storm. His object is to restore,
not to destroy to gladden, not to terrify. This
tempestuous weather lasts for some days, but at
the end of that time the change that comes over
the face of nature seems little short of miraculous.
In the words of Mr. Elphinstone, who describes
from personal observation " The whole earth is
covered with a sudden but luxuriant verdure, the
rivers are full and tranquil, the air is pure and
(451) 7
08 MONSOONS -THEIR CAUSE.
delicious, and the sky is varied and embellished
with clouds.
" The effect of this change is visible on all the
animal creation, and can only be imagined in
Europe by supposing the depth of a dreary winter
to start at once into all the freshness and brilliancy
of spring. From that time the rain falls at
intervals for about a month, when it comes on
again with great violence ; and in July the rains
are at their height. During the third month they
rather diminish, but are still heavy. In September
they gradually abate, and are often suspended till
near the end of the month, when they depart amid
thunders and tempests, as they came."
Such are the effects of the rr .nsoons upon land
and sea. Of course the t<- .inc gales that usher
them in and out could not be expected to pass with-
out doing a good deal of damage, especially to
shipping. But this is more than compensated by
the facilities which they afford to navigation.
In many parts of the world, especially in the
Indian Ocean, merchants calculate with certainty
on these periodical winds. They despatch their ships
with, say, the north-east monsoon, transact business
in distant lands, and receive them back, laden with
foreign produce, by the south-west monsoon. If
there were no monsoons, the voyage from Canton to
England could not be accomplished in nearly so
short a time as it is at present.
And now as to the cause of monsoons. They are,
LAND AND SEA BREEZES. 99
for the most part, deflected trade-winds. And they
owe their deflection to the presence of large con-
tinents. If there were no land near the equator,
the trade- winds would always blow in the same
manner right round the world ; but the great con-
tinents, with their intensely-heated surfaces, cause
local disturbance of the trade- winds. When a
trade- wind is turned out of its course, it is regarded
as a monsoon. For instance, the summer sun,
beating on the interior plains of Asia, creates such
intense heat in the atmosphere that it is more than
sufficient to neutralize the forces which cause the
trade- winds to blow. They are, accordingly, arrested
and turned back. The great general law of the
trades is in this region temporarily suspended, and
the monsoons are created.
It is thus that the heated plains of Africa and
Central America produce the monsoons of the
Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.
We think it unnecessary to explain minutely the
causes that produce variation in the monsoons.
Every intelligent reader will readily conceive how
the change of seasons and varied configuration as
well as unequal arrangement of land and water,
will reverse, alter, and modify the direction and
strength of the monsoons.
Land and sea breezes are the next species of wind
to which we would direct attention. They occur in
tropical countries, and owe their existence to the
fact that the land is much more easily affected by
100 EXPERIMENTS.
sudden changes of temperature than the sea. Thus,
the land in warm regions is much heated by the
sun's rays during the day; the atmosphere over it
becomes also heated, in virtue of which it rises : the
cool atmosphere over the sea rushes in to supply its
place, and forms the sea breeze : which occurs only
during the day.
At night the converse of this takes place. Land
heats and cools rapidly ; water heats and cools
slowly. After the sun sets, the cooling of the
land goes on faster than that of the sea. In a
short time the atmosphere over the land becomes
cooler than that over the sea; it descends and flows
off out to sea; thus forming the land breeze. It
occurs only at night, and when the change from one
to the other is taking place there is always a short
period of calm. Land and sea breezes are of the
greatest use in refreshing those regions which, with-
out them, would be almost, if not altogether, unin-
habitable.
In " The Tempest," an interesting work on the
origin and phenomena of wind, published by the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a curi-
ous and simple experiment is described, whereby
the existence of upper and under currents of air and
the action of land and sea breezes may be clearly
seen and understood. We quote the passage :
" The existence of the upper and under currents
of air which mark the phenomena of the trade-
winds, and of land and sea breezes, may be beauti-
EXPERIMENTS. I'OI
fully illustrated in two adjoining rooms, in one of
which a good fire is burning, while in the other
there is none. If the door between the two rooms
be thrown open, the cold air will enter the heated
room in a strong current, or, in other words, as a
violent wind. At the same time the heated air of
the warm room ascends and passes the contrary
way into the cold room, at the upper part of the
same doorway; while in the middle of this opening,
exactly between the two currents, the air appears to
have little or no motion. The best way to show
this experiment is to introduce the flame of a candle
into the doorway between a hot and a cold room.
If the flame be held near the bottom of the doorway,
where the air is most dense, it will be strongly
drawn towards the heated room ; and if held near
the top of the door it will be drawn towards the
cold room with somewhat less force; while midway
between the top and bottom the flame will be
scarcely disturbed.
" There is also another pretty experiment which
illustrates well the theory of land and sea breezes.
Take a large dish, fill it with cold water, and in the
middle of this put a water-plate or a saucer filled
with warm water. The first will represent the
ocean, and the latter an island made hot by the rays
of the sun, and rarefying the air above it. Take a
lighted wax candle and blow it out ; and, if the air
of the room be still, on applying it successively to
every side of the saucer, the smoke will be seen
102
HURRICANES.
moving towards the saucer and rising over it, thus
indicating the course of the air from sea to land.
On reversing the experiment, by filling the saucer
with cold water (to represent the island at night)
and the dish with warm water, the land breeze will
be shown by 'holding the smoking wick over the
edge of the saucer ; the smoke will then be wafted
to the warmer air over the dish."
We have just tried the first of these experiments,
with complete success. We would, however, re-
commend a piece of twisted brown paper, lighted
and blown out, instead of a wax candle, because it
gives out more smoke and is probably more obtain-
able on short notice. The experiment of the door-
way, moreover, does not require that there should
be two rooms with a door between. We have
found that the door of our study, which opens into
a cold passage, serves the purpose admirably.
Were we treating chiefly of the atmosphere in
this work, it would be necessary that we should en-
large on all the varieties of winds, with their causes,
effects, and numerous modifications. But our main
subject is the Ocean. The atmosphere, although it
could not with justice have been altogether passed
over, must hold a secondary place here ; therefore
we will conclude our remarks on it with a brief ref-
erence to hurricanes.
It has been ascertained that most of the great
storms that sweep with devastating fury over the land
and sea are not, as was supposed, rectilinear in their
EFFECTS OF A HURRICANE. 103
motion, but circular. They are, in fact, enormous
whirlwinds, sometimes upwards of one hundred and
fifty miles in diameter; and they not only whirl
round their own centres, but advance steadily for-
ward through space.
In the year 1831, a memorable and dreadful series
of storms passed" over some of the West India
Islands, and caused terrible havoc, especially in the
island of Barbadoes. The peculiarity of these hur-
ricanes was that they ravaged the different islands at
different dates, and were therefore supposed to be
different storms. Such, however, was not the case.
It was one mighty cyclone, or circular storm, a
gigantic whirlwind, which traversed that region
at the rate of about sixteen miles an hour. It was
not its progressive, but its rotatory motion, that con-
stituted its terrible power. On the 10th of August
it reached Barbadoes; on the llth, the islands of St.
Vincent and St. Lucia; on the 12th it touched the
southern coast of Porto Rico; on the 13th it swept
over part of Cuba; on the 14th it encountered
Havanna; on the 17th it reached the northern
shores of the Gulf of Mexico and travelled on to
New Orleans, where it raged till the 1 8th. It thus,
in six days, passed, as a whirlwind of destruction,
over two thousand three hundred miles of land and
sea. It was finally dissipated amid heavy rains.
The effect of a hurricane is well described by
Washington Irving. "About mid-day," he says, " a
furious gale sprang up from the east, driving before
104 EFFECTS OF A HURRICANE.
it dense volumes of cloud and vapour. Encounter-
ing another tempest from the west, it appeared as if
a violent conflict ensued. The clouds were rent by
incessant flashes, or rather streams, of lightning. At
one time they were piled up high in the sky, at
another they descended to the earth, filling the air
with a baleful darkness, more impenetrable than the
obscurity of midnight. Wherever the hurricane
passed, whole tracts of forest were shivered and
stripped of their leaves and branches ; and trees of
gigantic size, which resisted the blast, were torn up
by the roots and hurled to a great distance. Groves
were torn from the mountain-precipices, and vast
masses of earth and rock precipitated into the
valleys with terrific noise, choking the course of the
rivers.
" The fearful sounds in the air and on the earth,
the pealing thunder, the vivid lightning, the howl-
ing of the wind, the crash of falling trees and rocks,
filled every one with affright, and many thought
that the end of the world was at hand. Some fled
to caverns for safety, for their frail houses were
blown down, and the air was filled with the trunks
and branches of trees, and even with fragments of
rocks, carried along by the fury of the tempest.
When the hurricane reached the harbour, it whirled
the ships round as they lay at anchor, snapped their
cables, and sunk three of them to the bottom with
all who were on board. Others were driven about,
dashed against each other, and tossed mere wrecks
o /
HURRICANE ON THE CH"INA SEAS. 105
lipoii the shore by the swelling surges of the sea,
which in some places rolled for three or four miles
upon the land. This tempest lasted for three
hours."
The China seas are the most frequently visited
by severe tempests, or typhoons ; yet of all vessels,
the Chinese junks, as they are called, seem to be
least adapted by their build for encountering such
storms.
A terrible hurricane burst upon the China seas
in the month of January 1837, as we learn from
the " United Service Journal " of that year. An
English vessel was exposed to it. The sea, rising in
mountains around and over the ship's sides, hurled
her rapidly on her passage homeward, when sud-
denly a wreck was discovered to the westward.
The order to shorten sail was given, and promptly
obeyed; and when they neared the wreck they found
her to be a Chinese junk without mast or rudder
a helpless log on the breast of that boiling sea.
There were many Chinamen on deck vehemently
imploring assistance. . The exhibition of their joy
on beholding the approach of the stranger was of
the wildest and most extravagant nature j but it
was doomed to be suddenly turned to despair, as the
violence of the storm drove the ship past the wreck.
It became necessary to put her on the other tack, a
manoeuvre which the poor creatures construed into
abandonment, and the air rang with the most
agonizing shrieks of misery. But hope was again
lOG WHIRLWINDS.
raised, when a boat was lowered and a rope thrown
on board for the purpose of to wing the junk to the
ship. This intention was frustrated by the windlass
breaking. At sight of this, one man, in a paroxysm
of despair, jumped overboard after the rope; but he
missed it. Being a good swimmer, he tried to reach
the boat ; but his feeble power could avail him noth-
ing in the midst of such raging elements : he speedily
sank to 'rise no more.
Another rope, however, was secured to the junk,
and by means of it the rest of the crew (eighteen in
number) were saved. Their gratitude was bound-
less. They almost worshipped the officers, the crew,
and the vessel, prostrating themselves and kissing
the feet of the former, and the very planks of the
latter.
Well-built ships, however, are not always able to
withstand the violence of rotatory storms. Instances
occur in which the tightest built and best manned
ships are destroyed as suddenly as the clumsiest of
ill-managed junks. Not many years ago, a vessel
was proceeding prosperously on her voyage, when
signs of a coming tempest induced the wary captain
to reduce, and, finally, to take in all sail. But his
precautions were in vain. The storm burst on the
devoted ship, and in a few minutes the masts went
over the side, and the hull lay a total wreck upon
the sea.
These hurricanes or cyclones, although in reality
whirlwinds, are so large that man's eye cannot
WHIRLWINDS.
107
EFFECTS OF A CYCLONE ON THE COAST OF MOZAMBIQUE.
measure them, and it is only by scientific investiga-
tion that we have arrived at the knowledge of the
fact. The whirlwind, properly so called, is a much
smaller body of atmosphere. Sometimes we see
miniature whirlwinds, even in our own temperate
land, passing along a road in autumn, lifting the
leaves and dust into the air and carrying them along
in the form of a rotatory pillar. In other regions
they exert a power quite equal to the tempest,
though in a more limited space, overturning houses,
uprooting trees, cutting a track twenty or thirty yards
108 WEIGHT OF THE ATMOSPHERE.
wide through the dense forest as thoroughly as if a
thousand* woodmen had been at work there for
many years.
When whirlwinds pass from the land to the sea
they create waterspouts ; of which we shall have
something to say in another chapter. Meanwhile,
we think it may be interesting to give the following
miscellaneous information regarding the atmosphere,
gathered from the work of Dr. Buist, who devoted
much earnest study to the subject of atmospheric
phenomena.
" The weight of the atmosphere is equal to that
of a solid globe of lead sixty miles in diameter. Its
principal elements are oxygen and nitrogen gases,
with a vast quantity of water suspended in them in the
shape of vapour ; and, commingled with these, a
quantity of carbon in the shape of fixed air, suffi^
cient to restore from its mass many-fold the coal
that now exists in the world Water is not com-
pressible or elastic ; it may be solidified into ice or
vaporized into steam: but the air is elastic and com-
pressible. It may be condensed to any extent by
pressure, or expanded to an infinite degree of tenuity
by pressure being removed from it. It is not liable
to undergo any changes in constitution beyond these,
by any of the ordinary influences by which it is
affected."
If the heating and cooling process which we
have described as being carried on between the
equator and the poles were to cease, we should
HEIGHT OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 109
have a furious hurricane rushing perpetually round
the globe at the rate of one thousand miles an hour,
ten times the speed of the most violent tornado that
has ever carried devastation over the surface of the
earth.
The air, heated and dried as it sweeps over the
arid surface of the soil, drinks up by day myriads
of tons of moisture from the sea, so much, indeed,
that, were none restored to it, the surface of the
ocean would be depressed eight or ten feet annually.
We do not certainly know the height of the at-
mosphere. It is said that its upper surface cannot
be nearer to us than fifty, and can scarcely be fur-
ther off than five hundred, miles. " It surrounds us
on all sides, yet we cannot see it ; it presses on us
with a weight of fifteen pounds on every square
inch of the surface of our bodies in other words,
we are at all times sustaining a load of between
seventy and one hundred tons of it on our persons
yet we do not feel it ! Softer than the finest down,
more impalpable than the lightest gossamer, it leaves
the cobweb undisturbed, and, at times, scarcely stirs
the most delicate flower that feeds on the dew it
supplies ', yet it bears the fleets of nations on its
wings round the world, and crushes the most re-
fractory substances with its weight It bends the
rays of the sun from their path to give us the aurora
of the morning and the twilight of evening. It dis-
perses and refracts their various tints to beautify
the approach and the retreat of the orb of day.
110 THE THOUSANDTH PART NOT TOLD.
But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us
in a moment and fail us in the twinkling of an eye,
removing us in an instant from midnight darkness
to the blaze of noon."
We have written a good deal on this subject, yet
the thousandth part has not been told of even the
grand and more obvious operations of the atmos-
phere, much less the actions and results of its minor
and invisible processes. Were we to descend with
philosophers into the minuter laboratories of the
world, and consider the permeating, ramifying, subtle
part the atmosphere plays in the innumerable trans-
formations that are perpetually going on around
and within us, we should be constrained to feel
more deeply than we have ever yet felt, that the
works of the Creator are indeed wonderful beyond
all expression or conception.
fc
CHAPTER VII.
WATERSPOUTS CAUSES OF APPEARANCE ELECTRICITY EXPERI-
MENTS ARTIFICIAL WATERSPOUTS SHOWERS OF FISH MR.
ELLIS ON WATERSPOUTS IN THE SOUTH SEAS.
IE turn back now from the atmospheric to
the aqueous ocean. Yet so intimate is
the connection between the two, that we
shall find it impossible to avoid occasional reference
to the former.
Our present subject, waterspouts, obliges us to
recur for a little to the atmosphere, which we dis-
missed, or attempted to dismiss, in the last chapter.
There is no doubt that waterspouts are to a great
extent, if not altogether, due to the presence of
electricity in the air. When the clouds have been
raging for some time in the skies of tropical regions,
rendering the darkness bright, and the air tremulous
with their dread artillery, they seem to grow un-
usually thirsty ; the ordinary means of water-supply
through the atmosphere do not appear to be suffi-
cient for the demand, or war-tax in the shape of
water-duty, that is levied on nature. The clouds
112
WATERSPOUTS.
therefore descend to the sea, and, putting down their
dark tongues, lick up the water thirstily in the form
of waterspouts.
These whirling pillars of water frequently appear
WATERSPOUT.
in groups of several at a time. They are of various
heights, sometimes ranging up to seven hundred
yards, with a thickness of fifty yards, and are very
AN ARTIFICIAL WATERSPOUT. 113
dangerous to ships that happen to come within their
influence.
That they are caused by electricity has been
proved by experiment miniature waterspouts have
been produced by artificial means; and as Dr.
Bonzano of New York gives particular directions
how the thing ought to be done, we quote his words
for the benefit of those who happen to possess- elec-
trical machines :
"From the conductor of an electrical machine
suspend, by a wire or chain, a small metallic ball
(one of wood covered with tinfoil) ; and under the
ball place a rather wide metallic basin, containing
some oil of turpentine, at the distance of about
three-quarters of an inch. If the handle of the
machine be now turned slowly, the liquid in the
basin will begin to move in different directions and
form whirlpools. As the electricity on the con-
ductor accumulates, the troubled liquid will elevate
itself in the centre, and at last become attached to
the ball. Draw off the electricity from the con-
ductor, to let the liquid resume its position ; a por-
tion of the turpentine remains attached to the ball.
Turn the handle again very slowly, and observe
now the few drops adhering to the ball assume a
conical shape, with the apex downward ; while the
liquid under it assumes also a conical shape, the
apex upward, until both meet. As the liquid does
not accumulate on the ball, there must necessarily
be as great a current downward as upward, giving
(451) 8
114 A SHOWER OF FISH.
the column of liquid a rapid circular motion, which
continues until the electricity from the conductor
is nearly all discharged silently, or until it is dis-
charged by a spark descending into the liquid. The
same phenomena take place with oil or water.
Using the latter liquid, the ball must be brought
much nearer, or a much greater quantity of elec-
tricity is necessary to raise it.
" If, in this experiment, we let the ball swing to
and fro, the little waterspout will travel over its
miniature sea, carrying its whirlpools along with it.
When it breaks up, a portion of the liquid and
with it anything it may contain remains attached
to the ball. The fish, seeds, leaves, &c., that have
fallen to the earth in rain-squalls, may have owed
their elevation to the clouds to the same cause that
attaches a few drops of the liquid, with its particles
of impurities, to the ball."
There can be no doubt whatever that fish are
carried up in waterspouts, because the descent of
those creatures from the skies in rain is a well-
established fact ; and if they did not get there in
waterspouts which, when we consider it, seems
most natural then we are driven to the conclusion
that their native region is the sky, which is by no
means so natural or so probable. Many travellers
have recorded the fact that small fish have de-
scended in rain. In a letter written not long ago
by a gentleman in Singapore we have the following
account of a shower of fish :
WATERSPOUTS THEIR APPEARANCE. 117
" We experienced a shock of earthquake here on
the 16th February last. Its duration was about
two minutes. Although it caused no damage, its
undulatory motion was sufficiently strong to affect
certain persons with a sensation akin to sea-sickness.
It was followed by rain in torrents, on the 20th,
21st, and 22nd. On the latter day especially, we
were, for half an hour, surrounded with water to a
considerable depth. We could not see three yards
before us. When the sun came out again, I saw a
number of Malays and Chinese filling their baskets
with fish contained in the pools formed by the rain.
" They told me the fish had l fallen from heaven;'
and three days later, when the pools were all dried
up, there were still many dead fish lying about
As they lay in my court-yard, which is surrounded
by a wall, they could not have been brought in by
the overflowing of a torrent ; indeed, there is none
of any considerable size in the neighbourhood.
" The space covered by these fish might be about
fifty acres, comprising the eastern part of the town.
They were very lively, and seemed to be in good
health."
The writer of the above suggests, with some
degree of hesitation, that these fish were sucked up
by waterspouts. We think that there need be no
hesitation in the matter !
The appearance usually presented by a water-
spout is that of a column of aqueous vapour reach-
ing from the sea to the clouds, sometimes straight,
118 WATERSPOUTS IN THE SOUTH SEAS.
more frequently a little bent, and thicker above and
below than in the centre of the column.
Mr. Ellis, the missionary, in his " Polynesian
Researches," mentions having, with a companion,
met and narrowly escaped being overwhelmed by
several waterspouts, when passing on one occasion
in an open boat between two islands about thirty
miles apart. On the passage they were overtaken
by a sudden and violent squall, which lasted several
hours; and, in order to avoid being sunk, they tied
their masts, oars, and sails in a bundle, and attach-
ing a rope to them, and to the boat, cast them into
the sea. Thus they lay, as it were, at anchor in
the lee of this extemporized breakwater. It was
but a feeble barrier, however, against so wild a
storm, and the native boatmen were so overcome
by fear, that they sat down in the bottom of the
boat, and covered their eyes with their hands.
After a time the rain diminished, the sky began
to clear, and the boat's crew to revive, when sud-
denly one of the men uttered a cry of consternation,
and pointed to an object towards which all eyes
were instantly turned. They beheld a large cylin-
drical waterspout, extending, like a massive column,
from the ocean to the dark and impending clouds.
It was not far distant, and seemed to move slowly
towards the boat.
Had Mr. Ellis had any doubt as to the danger of
a waterspout, the extreme terror exhibited by the
natives on this occasion must have removed it ; for
COMPLETELY SURROUNDED. 119
it was not probable that, just after escaping from
the most imminent peril, they would fall back into
a much more violent state of terror, unless former
experience had given them too good reason to dread
the presence of the object they now saw before
them.
The roughness of the sea forbade their attempting
to hoist a sail in order to avoid the waterspout.
They were compelled, therefore, to summon all the
resolution they possessed, to enable them calmly to
await its approach, and put their trust in the arm
of Jehovah.
The helm was in the hands of a seaman whose
steadiness could be depended on. The natives were
down in the bottom of the boat; they had given
way to despair.
Two other waterspouts now came into view, and
subsequently a third, if not more, so that they felt
as if completely surrounded by them. Some were
well defined, extending in an unbroken line from
the sea to the sky, like pillars resting on the ocean
as their basis, and supporting the clouds ; others,
assuming the shape of a funnel or inverted cone
attached to the clouds, extended their sharp points
to the ocean below. From the distinctness with
which they were seen, it was judged that the furthest
could not have been many miles distant. In some
they imagined they could trace the spiral motion of
the water as it was drawn up to the clouds, which
were every moment being augmented in their por-
120 CONFLICTING FEELINGS.
tentous darkness. The sense of personal danger,
Mr. Ellis confesses, and the certainty of instant
destruction if brought within their vortex, prevented
a very careful observation of their appearance and
accompanying phenomena.
The storm continued all day, and at intervals the
party in the boat beheld, through the driving clouds
and rain-, one or other of those towering waterspouts ;
which, however, did not come nearer to them.
It is interesting to read the record left by a
Christian missionary of his conflicting feelings on
that terrible occasion. Mr. Ellis believed that all
hope of escape was over, and his mind went through
that ordeal which must be the experience of every
one who sees the steady approach of speedy death.
He says that during those hours when he sat await-
ing his doom, the thought of death itself did not
make a deep impression. " The struggle, the gasp,
as the wearied arm should attempt to resist the im-
petuous waves ; the straining vision, that should
linger on the last ray of retiring light, as the deepen-
ing veil of water would gradually conceal it for ever;
and the rolling billows heaving over the sinking
and dying body, which, perhaps ere life should be
extinct, might become the prey of voracious inhabi-
tants of the deep;" these things caused scarcely a
thought, compared with the immediate prospect of
the disembodied spirit being ushered into the pres-
ence of its Maker ; the account to be rendered, and
the awful and unalterable destiny that would await
P&AYE&S AtfSWEkEi). 121
it there. "These momentous objects," he says,
" absorbed all the powers of the mind, and produced
an intensity of feeling, which, for a long time, ren-
dered me almost insensible to the storm, or the
liquid columns which threatened our destruction."
It was now that the missionary could look back
with deepest gratitude upon that mercy which had
first brought him to a knowledge of the Saviour.
" Him and Him alone," he adds, " I found to be a
refuge, a rock in the storm of contending feelings,
on which my soul could cast the anchor of its hope
for pardon and acceptance before God ...... I could
not but think how awful would have been my state,
had I in that hour been ignorant of Christ, or had
I neglected or despised the offers of his mercy ......
Our prayers were offered to Him who is a present
help in every time of danger, for ourselves and
those who sailed with us; and under these and
similar exercises several hours passed away."
Those prayers were answered, for the waterspouts
gradually disappeared, and the boat got safe to land.
In speaking of another waterspout, seen on a
subsequent voyage, Mr. Ellis tells us that it was
well defined, an unbroken column from the sea to
the clouds, which on this occasion were neither
dense nor lowering. Around the outside of the
liquid cylinder was a kind of thick mist j and within,
a substance resembling steam, ascending apparently
with a spiral motion. The water at its base was
considerably agitated with a whirling motion ; while
122 DISSIPATED BY A CANNON-SHOT.
the spray .which was thrown off from the circle
formed by the lower part of the column, rose several
feet above the level of the sea. It passed about a
mile astern of the ship.
Occasionally, when passing nearer to a ship than
was deemed safe, a waterspout has been dissi-
pated by a cannon-shot, as represented in our
engraving.
Such are the usual appearances and actions of
waterspouts. They are not, however, properly
named, being simply whirlwinds at sea, instead of
whirlwinds on land. Professor Oersted suggests
.the name "storm-pillar," as being a more appro-
priate term.
It does not follow that a large ship would in-
evitably be destroyed if brought within the vortex
of a waterspout ; but it is certain that she would
run the risk of being dismasted, and perhaps thrown
on her beam-ends. Navigators have not had suffi-
cient experience of the power of waterspouts to
pronounce authoritatively on that point, and it is
to be hoped they never will.
Captain Beechy, in his narrative of a voyage to
the Pacific, describes one into which his ship actually
entered, and from which he received extremely
rough handling before he was set free. But this
might not have been a very large waterspout; and
it is not absolutely certain whether he was quite
within its vortex, or was merely brushed by the
skirts of its outer garment.
SAILORS FIRING AT A WATERSPOUT.
FEARFUL HAVOC.
125
Certain it is that waterspouts vary in size and in
power; for we read of them passing from the sea to
the land, and there rooting up trees, unroofing and
overturning houses, dismounting cannon, empty-
ing fish ponds, half emptying harbours, and other-
wise exhibiting a degree of force that would un-
doubtedly sink the largest vessel that ever was .
built, if brought thoroughly to bear upon it.
The rate of motion in waterspouts varies. Some-
times they revolve slowly, sometimes with the ut-
most rapidity. They often produce violent noise, as,
indeed, might be expected ; and they are generally
accompanied by thunder and lightning, though not
invariably so, for they are sometimes observed when
the heavens are clear and the sea calm.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ARCTIC SEAS THEIR CHARACTER, SCENERY, AND ATMOS-
PHERICAL ILLUSIONS.
[ERE is a tendency on the part of most
writers on the subject of Polar Regions
especially compilers to dwell dispropor-
tionately on the gloomy side of the picture ; inso-
much that readers are led, not to over-estimate the
grand and the terrible aspects of the polar oceans,
but to under-estimate the sweet and the beautiful
influences that at certain periods reign there.
We quarrel not with authors for dwelling on the
tremendous and the awful. Too much cannot be
said on these points ; but while they do not by any
means paint the dark side of their picture too black,
they fail to touch in the lights with sufficient
brilliancy. We have had some personal experience
of the arctic regions, and have found it extremely
difficult to get many persons even educated men
and women to understand that there is a summer
there, though a short one ; that in many places
it is an uncommonly hot and excessively brilliant
THE POLAR REGIONS. 127
summer ; and that the sun, as if to make amends
for its prolonged absence in winter, shines all night
as well as all day, blazing on the crystal icebergs and
pure snow (which never disappear from those seas)
with a degree of splendour that renders the far
north transcendently beautiful and pre-eminently
attractive.
We admit freely that the prevailing character of
arctic seas, during the greater part of the year, is
dark, gloomy, forbidding. But this is the very
reason why their brief but cheering smiles should
be brought prominently into the foreground, and, if
they cannot in justice be dwelt on long, at least be
touched upon with emphasis.
Why, in some of our cyclopaedia accounts of the
realms of " thick-ribbed ice," so much prominence
is given to " the horrors and wide desolation of the
scene," and so much graphic power is expended in
working up the reader's imagination to a conception
of the dreadful dangers and the appalling terrors
that await the madman who should dare to venture
within the arctic circle, that persons who have not
been there might well be tempted to shrink in
affright from the very contemplation of a region in
which there does not appear to be one redeeming
quality.
We repeat, that we do not think the one side of
the picture has been too darkly painted, but the
other side has been painted too slightly.
At the same time, we would caution our readers
128 WITHIN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.
against jumping to the opposite extreme. The dark
side of the picture is in reality out of all proportion
to the light. And we do not hesitate to state our
confirmed opinion, that the arctic regions are more
interesting to read about than pleasant to dwell in.
Having, then, defended the lights, let us com-
mence our investigations with the shadows.
Those oceans lying within the arctic circle ex-
hibit 'phenomena so grand, so wonderful, and so
varied, that they claim distinct and separate treat-
ment from the ocean as a whole. Here the extreme
cold acts with such power, and produces such ex-
traordinary results, that it is difficult to find words
or similes by which to convey a just conception of
nature's aspects to the general reader.
During nearly two-thirds of the year the arctic
regions are under the absolute dominion of winter;
and for many weeks of that bitter season they are
shrouded with the mantle of a dark, sunless night.
The entire ocean is locked in the embrace of a
covering of ice many feet thick, so that its liquid
aspect is thoroughly removed; and, owing to ice-
masses scattered over its surface, together with
mounds of drifted snow, it bears a much stronger
resemblance to the land than to the sea. Gales of
wind sometimes sweep over those frozen plains in
bitter fury, hurling the snow into the air in vast
eddying masses, and threatening destruction to any
living creature that may chance to be exposed to
them not so much from their violence, however,
ANIMAL LIFE. 131
as from the intense cold of the atmosphere which is
put in motion. But in regard to gales, although
there are no lack of them, they are neither so fierce
nor so frequent as are those of the torrid zone.
It might be supposed that in such a climate
animal life could scarcely exist; but such is not
the case. The inhabitants of part of the arctic
regions, named Esquimaux (more correctly Eskimos,
with the accent on the last syllable), are a stout,
hardy, healthy race ; and the polar bears, foxes,
wolves, seals, musk-oxen, walruses, &c., that dwell
there, seem to enjoy their existence just as much
as do the animals of more favoured and warmer
climes.
During the short but hot summer of the arctic
regions, the immense masses of ice formed in winter
are by no means cleared away. A great part of
the heat of early summer (there is no season there
that merits the name of spring) is spent in breaking
up the solid crust of ice on the sea, a large propor-
tion of which is carried south by the currents that
flow to the equator, and melted long before they
reach the temperate zones. But a considerable
quantity of broken ice-masses get locked in narrow
places or stranded on shallows ; and although they
undergo the process of melting the whole sumrner,
they are not much diminished ere the returning
frost stops the process and locks them in the new
ice of a succeeding winter.
Thus there is no period of the year in which large
132
SCENERY OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN.
quantities of ice may not be seen floating about in
the arctic seas.
This fact it is that enables us to speak appro-
priately of the scenery of the Arctic Ocean. And
assuredly this scenery of the ice is exceedingly and
THE POLAR SEA.
strikingly beautiful. The imagination cannot con-
ceive the dazzling effect of a bright summer day in
those regions, when the ocean is clear as glass, and
ice-lumps and ice-mountains of every shape and
size are <4itterin^ in the sun's rays with intense
ATMOSPHERIC ILLUSIONS.' 133
brilliancy, while the delicate whiteness of these
floating islands, and the magical atmospheric illu-
sions by which they are frequently surrounded,
render the scene pre-eminently fairy-like.
All the navigators who have penetrated into the
arctic seas speak with enthusiasm of the splendour
of floating ice-masses. They take the most curious
and fantastic shapes ; sometimes appearing like great
cities of white marble, with domes and towers and
spires in profusion ; sometimes looming huge and
grand like fortresses, and many of them with their
summits overhanging so much as to suggest the
idea that they are about to fall. This, indeed, they
often do, adding to the grandeur of the scene, and
not a little to the danger, should ships chance to be
in the neighbourhood.
The atmospheric illusions, before mentioned, are
the result of different temperatures existing within
a few miles of each other, and which are caused by
the presence of large bodies of ice. The effect of
this is to cause the ice-masses on the horizon to
appear as if floating in the air, and to distort them
into all sorts of shapes, even turning them upside
down, and thus affording to an imaginative mind a
most ample and attractive field wherein to expatiate.
To ascertain the causes of facts and effects so
curious must prove interesting to all who have
inquiring minds. We will, therefore, attempt to
describe and account for arctic phenomena in the
following chapters as simply as may be.
CHAPTER IX.
FORMATION OF ICE DANGERS OF DISRUPTING ICE ANECDOTE
DRIFTING ICE DRIFT OF THE "FOX" " NIPPING "ANECDOTE
LOSS OF THE " BREADALBANE."
IT is well known that when fresh water be-
comes so cold that its temperature is 32
of Fahrenheit's scale, it loses its liquid
form and becomes ice. A somewhat lower tem-
perature than this is necessary to freeze salt water;
the reason being, that greater force is required to
expel the salt which the sea holds in solution,
which salt is always more or less expelled in the
process of freezing.
Ice commences to form in the shape of needles,
which shoot out at angles from each other. In
smooth water, under the influence of intense cold, the
process is rapid, and a thin cake soon covers the
water, and increases in thickness hour by hour.
But when the sea is agitated the process is retarded,
and the fine needles are broken up into what arctic
navigators call sludge. This, however, soon begins
to cake, and is broken by the swell into small cakes;
DANGERS OF DISRUPTING ICE. 135
which, -as they thicken, again unite, and are again
broken up into larger masses. These masses, by
rubbing against each other, have their edges slightly
rounded up, and in this form receive the name of
pancake ice.
When a quantity of ice covers the ocean in a
wide level sheet of considerable extent, it is called
an ice-field. Fields of this kind are often seen by
navigators hundreds of miles in extent, and nearly
thirty feet thick. Ice of such thickness, however,
only shows five or six feet above water. When
fields are broken by heavy ocean-swells, the edges
are violently forced up, and fall in debris on the
surface ; thus hummocks or mounds are formed.
When field-ice breaks up under the influence of
an ocean-swell, caused by a storm, the results are
terrific.
An exceedingly graphic account of an incident of
this kind is given by Dr. Brown, in his " History
of the Propagation of Christianity." He writes :
" The missionaries met a sledge with Esquimaux,
turning in from the sea, who threw out some hints-
that it might be as well for them to return. After
some time, their own Esquimaux hinted that there
was a ground-swell under the ice. It was then
scarcely perceptible, except on lying down and ap-
plying the ear close to the ice, when a hollow, dis-
agreeable, grating sound was heard ascending from
the abyss. As the motion of the sea under the ice
had grown more perceptible, they became alarmed,
136
LEAPING OVER A CHASM.
ESQUIMAUX LEAPING OVER A CHASM.
and began to think it prudent to keep close to the
shore. The ice also had fissures in many places,
some of which formed chasms of one or two feet ;
A. TREMENDOUS PROSPECT. 137
but as these are not uncommon in ice even in its best
state, and the dogs easily leap over them, they are
frightful only to strangers.
" As the wind rose to a storm, the swell had now
increased so much that its effects on the ice were
extraordinary, and really alarming. The sledges,
instead of gliding smoothly along as on an even
surface, sometimes ran with violence after the dogs,
and sometimes seemed with difficulty to ascend a
rising hill. Noises, too, like the report of cannon,
were now distinctly heard in many directions, from
the bursting of the ice at a distance. Alarmed by
these frightful phenomena, our travellers drove with
all haste towards the shore ; and, as they approached
it, the prospect before them was tremendous. The
ice having burst loose from the rocks, was tossed to
and fro, and broken in a thousand pieces against the
precipices with a dreadful noise which, added to
the raging of the sea, the roaring of the wind, and
the driving of the snow, so overpowered them as
almost completely to deprive them of the use of
their eyes and ears.
" To make the land was now the only resource that
remained, but it was with the utmost difficulty that
the frightened dogs could be driven forward ; and
as the whole body of the ice frequently sank below
the summits of the rocks, and then rose above them,
the only time for landing was the moment it gained
the level of the coast a circumstance which ren-
dered the attempt extremely nice and hazardous.
138 A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE.
" Both sledges, however, succeeded in gaining the
shore, and were drawn up on the beach, though not
without great difficulty. Scarcely had they reached
it, when that part of the ice from which they had
just escaped burst asunder, and the water, rushing
up from beneath, instantly precipitated it into the
ocean. In a moment, as if by a signal, the whole
mass of ice for several miles along the coast, and
extending as far as the eye could reach, began to
break up, and to be overwhelmed by the waves.
The spectacle was awfully grand. The immense
fields of ice rising out of the ocean clashing against
each other, and then plunging into the deep with
a violence which no language can describe, and with
a noise like the discharge of a thousand cannon, was
a sight which must have filled the most unreflect-
ing mind with feelings of solemnity.
" The Brethren were overwhelmed with amaze-
ment at their miraculous escape, and even the
Esquimaux expressed gratitude to God for their de-
liverance."
Such is the terrible aspect in which field-ice is
seen when broken up and converted into smaller
masses or floes. When these lie closely together
the mass is called pack-ice j in which shape it usually
drifts away with the southern currents, and, sepa-
rating as it travels south, is met with in loose,
floating masses, of every fantastic form. There is
always, as we have said, a large quantity of floe and
pack-ice in the .polar seas, which becomes incorpo-
PACK-ICE.
139
FLOATING ICE.
rated with the new ice of the succeeding winter ;
and not unfrequeiitly whale and discovery ships get
frozen into the pack, and remain there as firmly
embedded as if they lay high and dry on land.
When the pack is thus re-frozen, it usually remains
stationary ; but there are occasions and circum-
stances in which the entire body of a pack drifts
slowly southward even during the whole year;
showing clearly that oceanic circulation is by no
14:0 DRIFT OF THE "FOX."
means arrested by the icy hand of the hyperborean
winter.
A very remarkable drift of this kind is recorded
by Captain M'Clintock of the Fox, which is worthy
of being noticed here, as illustrative of the subject
we are now considering, and also as showing in a
remarkable manner the awful dangers to which
navigators may be exposed by the disruption of the
pack in spring, and the wonderful, almost miracu-
lous, manner in which they are delivered from im-
minent destruction.
In attempting to cross Baffin's Bay, by pene-
trating what is called the " middle ice," the Fox
was beset, and finally frozen in for the winter ; and
here, although their voyage may be said to have
just commenced, they were destined to spend many
months in helpless inactivity and comparative peril
and privation. Their little vessel lay in the centre
of a field of ice of immense extent ; so large, in-
deed, that they could not venture to undertake a
journey to ascertain its limits. Yet this field
slowly and steadily descended Baffin's Bay during
the whole winter, and passed over no fewer than
1385 statute miles in the space of 242 days, dur-
ing which period the Fox was firmly embedded
in it!
It is with difficulty the mind can form any ade-
quate conception of the position of those voyagers ;
unable to move from their icy bed, yet constantly
drifting over miles and miles of ocean ; uncertain
SURROUNDED BY TERRORS. 141
as to the where or the when of their deliverance
from the pack ; exposed to the terrible dangers of
disrupting ice, and surrounded by the depressing
gloom of the long arctic night.
At length deliverance came ; but it came sur-
rounded by terrors. In February, M'Clintock
writes thus : " Daylight reveals to us evidences
of vast ice-movements having taken place during
the dark months, when we fancied all was still and
quiet ; and we now see how greatly we have been
favoured, what innumerable chances of destruction
we have unconsciously escaped. A few days ago,
the ice suddenly cracked within ten yards of the
ship, and gave her such a smart shock that every
one rushed on deck with astonishing alacrity. One
of these sudden disruptions occurred between me
and the ship, when I was returning from the ice-
berg. The sun was just setting as I found myself
cut off. At length I reached a place where the
jagged edges of the floes met; so crossed, and got
safely on board."
Again, in March, he says : " Last night the ice
closed, shutting up our lane ; but its opposite sides
continued for several hours to move past each other,
rubbing off all projections, crushing and forcing out
of the water masses four feet thick. Although one
hundred and twenty yards distant, this pressure
shook the ship and cracked the intervening ice."
Soon after that, a heavy gale burst upon them
from the south-east, encircling them with snow-
142 CASE OF " NIPPING."
drift so dense that they could neither hear nor see
what was going on twenty yards off. At night the
ship became suddenly detached from her wintry bed,
and heeled over to the storm, inducing them to be-
lieve that the whole pack had been broken up and
was pressing against them. This was not the case.
A large mass of ice had protected them ; but at a
distance of about fifty yards, ice of four and a half
feet thick had been crushed to atoms. Soon after,
the protecting mass yielded, and the Fox received a
" nip " which lifted her stern about a foot, while
occasional groaning from her sturdy little hull re-
plied to the wild surgings of the ice without.
But all this was as nothing compared with the
scene of desperate turmoil and confusion which took
place when the ice finally broke up, and a gale
raised a fearful swell ; so that the Fox found her-
self surrounded by huge masses, which tossed and
ground against each other furiously, and any two
of which pieces could have crushed in her sides as if
she had been made of walnut shell. Gradually the
pack opened out, and the vessel,> by aid of wind and
steam, was mercifully delivered from her dangerous
position.
Before passing from the subject of risk to navi-
gators to the consideration of other forms and aspects
of polar ice, let us take a glance at an effectual case
of nipping. There have been many partial and
severe nips, the descriptions of which are all more
or less graphic ; but few ships have come so sud-
LOSS OF THE " BREADALBANE." 143
denly to the end of their career as did the Breadal-
bane, a small vessel that was used as a transport
ship to the expedition in search of Sir John Frank-
lin in 1 852. One who was on board when it occurred
thus describes it :
" Sunday, August 21st. About ten minutes past
four, the ice passing the ship awoke me, and the
door of my cabin, from the pressure, opened. I
hurriedly put on my clothes, and on getting on deck
found some hands on the ice endeavouring to save
the boats ; but the latter were instantly crushed to
pieces. They little thought, when using their efforts
to save the boats, that the ship was in so perilous
a situation.
" I went forward to hail the Phcenix (another
ship that was fortunately near) for men to save the
boats; and whilst doing so, the ropes by which we
were secured parted, and a heavy nip took us, mak-
ing every timber creak, and the ship tremble all
over. I looked in the main hold, and saw the beams
giving way. I hailed those on the ice, and told
them of our critical situation, they not for one mo-
ment suspecting it. I then rushed to my cabin,
hauled out my portmanteau on deck, and roared
like a bull to those in their beds to jump out and
save their lives. The startling effect on them might
be more easily imagined than described. On reach-
ing the deck, those on the ice called out to me to
jump over the side, that the ship was going over.
I left my portmanteau, and jumped over the side on
144 SUDDEN DESTRUCTION.
the loose ice, and with difficulty, and with the assist-
ance of those on the ice, succeeded in getting on the
unbroken part, with the loss of the slippers I had on
when quitting the vessel, with wet feet, <fec. The
cold was little thought of at the exciting moment
life, not property, being the object to be saved.
" After being on the ice about five minutes, the
timbers, &c., in the ship cracking up as matches
would in the hand, it eased for a short time ; and
I, with some others, returned to the ship, with the
view of saving some of our effects.
" Captain Inglefield now came running towards
the ship, and ordered me to see if the ice was
through it. On looking down into the hold, I saw
all the beams, &c., falling about in a manner that
would have been certain death to me had I ven-
tured down there. But there was no occasion for
that (I mean to ascertain the fact of the ice being
through), it being too evident that the ship could
not last many minutes. I then sounded the well,
and found five feet in the hold ; and, whilst in the
act of sounding, a heavier nip than before pressed
out the starboard bow, and the ice was forced right
into the forecastle. Every one then abandoned the
ship, with what few clothes they saved some with
only what they had on. The ship now began to
sink fast, and from the time her bowsprit touched
the ice until her mast-heads were out of sight, did
not occupy abo,ve one minute and a half !
" It was a very sad and unceremonious way of
ACCOUNT OF THE "TERROR." 145
being turned out of our ship. From the time the
first nip took her, until her disappearance, did not
occupy more than fifteen minutes."
Such is the account of the fate of the Breadal-
bane. While we read it, we cannot help feeling
that many arctic ships must have perished in a simi-
lar manner. It is wonderful, nevertheless, how
many of those that dare the dangers of the ice sur-
vive the conflict. Undoubtedly this is owing, to a
large extent, to the fact that ships' bottoms are
rounded ; so that when a severe nip takes place,
there is a tendency in the ice to slip under their
rounded bottoms, and squeeze the vessels up out of
the water. Were it not for this, few ships that
have gone to those seas would ever have returned.
A catastrophe such as that which befell the Bread-
albane shows the immense power of field-ice. Hun-
dreds of somewhat similar incidents might be cited
to illustrate this power ; but we content ourselves
with the selection of one instance, which exhibits
it in a remarkable manner, and at the same time
shows the way in which heavy vessels are some-
times forced out of the water.
In the year 1836, Captain Back commanded the
Terror, which was sent out to make geographical
discoveries in the polar regions, and spent the win-
ter of that year in the ice. Few ships have under-
gone severer tests than did the Terror on that
voyage. The severest treatment she experienced
was in the spring, when the disruption of the win-
(451) 10
146 APPALLING CONCUSSION.
ter ice began to take place. The evening of the
7th of March was specially fraught with danger.
We quote the gallant commander's graphic ac-
count :
" Ominous rushing sounds were heard far off to
the north-east and north-west. These gradually
drew nearer as the flood made its way, either under
the compact bodies that withstood the shock, or
along the cracks and openings gaining in these
latter a furious velocity, to which everything seemed
to yield.
'"It happened that there were several of these
around the ship ; and when they opened on us like
so many conduits pouring their contents to a com-
mon centre, the concussion was absolutely appalling,
rending the lining and bulkheads in every part,
loosening some shores and stanchions, so that the
slightest effort would have thrown them down, and
compressing others with such force as to make the
turpentine ooze out of their extremities. One fir
plank, placed horizontally between the beams and
the shores actually glittered with globules. At the
same time the pressure was going on from the lar-
board side, where the three heaviest parts of the
ruin of the floe remained, cracked here and there,
but yet adhering in firm and solid bodies. These,
of course, were irresistible ; and after much groan-
ing, splitting, and cracking, accompanied by sounds
like the explosion of cannon, the ship rose fore and
aft, and heeled over about ten degrees to starboard."
HELD AS IN A VICE. 147
Again, on the llth, Back says: " At this time
she showed symptoms of suffering in the hull, which
was evidently undergoing a severe ordeal. Inex-
plicable noises, in which the sharp sounds of split-
ting and the harsher ones of grinding were most dis-
tinct, came in quick succession, and then again
stopped suddenly, leaving all so still that not even
a breath was heard.
" In an instant the ship was felt to rise under
our feet, and the roaring and rushing commenced
with a deafening din alongside, abeam and astern,
at one and the same instant. Alongside, the grind-
ing masses held the ship tight as in a vice ; while
the overwhelming pressure of the entire body, ad-
vancing from the west, so wedged the stern and
starboard quarter, that the greatest apprehensions
were entertained for the stern-post and framework
abaft.
" Some idea of the power exerted on this occa-
sion may be gathered from this : At the moment
which I am now describing, the fore-part of the
ship was literally buried as high as the flukes of the
anchors in a dock of perpendicular walls of ice ; so
that, in that part, she might well have been thought
immovable. Still, such was the force applied to
her abaft, that after much cracking and perceptible
yielding of the beams, which seemed to curve up-
wards, she actually rose by sheer pressure above the
dock forward; and then, with sudden jerks, did the
same abaft. During these convulsions, many of the
148 AN AWFUL CRISIS.
carpenters and others stationed below were violently
thrown down on the deck, as people are in an
earthquake. It was a moment of intense sus-
pense.
" On the 16th, another rush drove irresistibly on
the larboard quarter and stern, and forcing the ship
ahead, raised her on the ice. A chaotic ruin fol-
lowed..:... The ship was careened fully four streaks,
and sprang a leak as before. Scarcely were ten
minutes left us for the expression of our astonish-
ment that anything of human build could outlive
such assaults, when another equally violent rush
succeeded ; and in its way toward the starboard
quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high,
crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, re-
sembling the entire side of a house, which, after
hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the
ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow,
in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship
seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis,
rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the
night and dimness of the moon.
" The poor ship cracked and trembled violently,
and no one could say that the next minute would
not be her last and, indeed, his own too, for
with her our means of safety would probably
perish."
It is unnecessary to give additional instances of
this kind, in order to show the terrible power of
field-ice. Indeed, it requires little in the way of
POWER OF FIELD-ICE.
149
illustration to prove that masses of solid matter,
many thousands of tons in weight, can, when in
motion, utterly destroy the most powerful engines
of human construction.
We shall now turn our attention to another, and
a very prominent form, in which arctic ice presents
itself namely, that of icebergs.
CHAPTEE X.
rCEBERGS THEIR APPEARANCE AND FORMS THEIR CAUSE
GLACIERS THEIR NATURE AND ORIGIN ANECDOTE OF SCORESBY
RISK AMONG ICEBERGS M*CLURE 5 S EXPERIENCE.
jjHEKE are not only ice-fields, ice-floes, &c.,
in the polar seas, but there are ice-moun-
tains, or bergs.
It was long a matter of uncertainty as to where
and how those immense mountains, that are met
with occasionally at sea, were formed. We are now
in a position to tell definitely where they originate,
and how they are produced. They are not masses
of frozen sea water. Their birth-place is in the
valleys of the far north, and they are formed by
the accumulation of the snows and ice of ages.
This is a somewhat general way of stating the
matter; but our subsequent explanations will, we
trust, make our meaning abundantly clear.
Icebergs are found floating in great numbers in
the arctic seas. They drift southward each spring
with the general body of polar ice, and frequently
travel pretty far south in the Atlantic before the
ICEBERGS THEIR FORMS.
151
heat of the water and atmosphere united accom-
plishes their dissolution. They sometimes travel as
far south as Florida with the southerly current that
flows along that coast ; but the warm waters of the
Gulf Stream, together with its northerly flow, form
an impassable barrier between these ice-mountains
and Europe.
Icebergs assume every variety of form, and almost
every size. They sometimes resemble castles,
152
ICEBEKGS THEIR SIZE :
sometimes churches with glittering spires, and
sometimes the peaked and jagged mountains of
Norway. They are also frequently seen in the
form of immense misshapen and top-heavy masses.
OVEllHANGING BERGS.
In size they vary from one hundred to seven or
eight hundred feet in height. One iceberg, seen
by Ross in Baffin's Bay, was above two miles in
length, nearly the same in width, and fifty feet
THEIR FORMATION. 153
liigli. But in stating this, we have not given the
reader any idea of its vast proportions ; for it is
well known that all icebergs, or masses of ice, have
a much greater proportion of their bulk under than
above water in other words, they sink very deep.
The relative proportion that sinks depends on the
nature of the ice. Of some kinds, there is usually
ten times as much below as there is above water ; of
other kinds, there may be eight or five parts below.
In all cases there is much more below than above ;
so that a mountain of a hundred feet high if
afloat may be safely calculated to be a mass of ice
not far short of a thousand feet thick.
As these bergs float southward with the currents,
they melt very rapidly. The heat of the sun and
the action of the waves gradually round off the
sharp angles and topple down the spires that char-
acterized them in the land of their birth. The
process of dissolution, too, is carried on internally ;
for rain and melted water on the surface percolates
through the mass, rendering it porous. As the
waves cut away the base, the centre of gravity is
thrown out, and the whole berg turns over with a
terrible crash. Sometimes loud reports like cannon-
shots are heard, and the huge mountain splits
asunder; while, not unfrequently, the whole berg
Mis into a heap of chaotic ruins, and floats away
in a mass of smaller pieces which disappear gradually
in their parent sea.
The formation of icebergs has, as we have
154 GLACIERS THEIR AGE :
said, puzzled mankind for many years. Their
existence has long been known : for, even before
men dared to venture their lives in the polar
regions, navigators, in crossing the Atlantic Ocean,
frequently met with these marble-like mountains ;
and, what is worse, sometimes ran at full speed
against them, and were sunk with all on board.
Bergs _ are frequently enveloped in dense fogs,
caused by the cold atmosphere by which they are
surrounded condensing the moisture of the warmer
atmosphere which they encounter on their voyage
southward; hence they are exceedingly dangerous
to navigation. But now to speak of their
formation.
Many of the great valleys of the far north are
completely filled up with solid ice. Observe, we do
not say that they are merely covered over with ice ;
they are absolutely filled up with it from top to
bottom. Those ice-masses are known by the name of
glaciers ; and they are found in most of the elevated
regions of the Earth, on the Alps and the moun-
tains of Norway, for instance, but they exist in
greater abundance about the poles than elsewhere.
Glaciers never melt. They have existed for un-
known ages, probably since the world began ; and
they will, in all likelihood, continue to exist until
the world comes to an end, at least until the
present economy of the world terminates. They
began with the first fall of snow, and as falls of
snow during the long winters of the polar regions
THEIR NATURE. 155
are frequent and heavy, the accumulated masses
are many feet deep, especially in places where drifts
are gathered sometimes fifteen, twenty, thirty,
and even forty feet deep. The summer sun could
not melt such drifts entirely. New snow was
added each winter, until the valleys of the far
north were filled up ; and so they remain filled up
to this day.
In order to understand the nature of glaciers
clearly, let us turn back to those remote ages that
rolled over this Earth long before man was created.
Let us in spirit leap back to the time when no
living creature existed, even before the great mas-
todon began to leave his huge foot-prints on the
sands of time.
We have reached one of the large valleys of the
arctic regions. It is solemn, grand, and still. No
merry birds, no prowling creatures, are there to
disturb the universal calm. The Creator has not
yet formed the living creatures and pronounced
them " very good." It is the world's first winter.
As we look upward to the sky, we observe the first
white snow-flakes falling gently to the ground.
They reach it, and, for tLo first time, that valley is
covered with a garment of virgin snow. The
valley is upwards of two miles broad. It rises from
the sea, and goes far back into the mountains,
perhaps to the extent of ten or twelve miles. The
mountains that flank it are five or six thousand
feet high. We have seen such valleys in Norway,
156 GLACIERS THEIR MOTION I
within the arctic circle. Before that first winter
has passed, many and many a fall of snow has
thickened and pressed down that first coat ; and
many a furious storm has caught up the snow from
the mountain-tops and swept it into the valley,
adding to and piling up the mass, and packing it
firmly down.
Spring arrives. The short but warm arctic
summer bursts upon that vale, melting the surface
of the snow ; and the water thus produced sinks
through the mass, converting it into a sort of thick
slush half snow, half water, not liquid, yet not
solid; just solid enough to lie there apparently
without motion; yet just liquid enough to creep by
slow, absolutely imperceptible degrees, down the
valley. The snow in all the mountain gorges is
similarly affected : it creeps (it cannot be said to
flow) out and joins that in the vale. But we
cannot perceive any of the motion of which we are
writing. The mass of snow seems to be as still
and motionless as the rocks on which we stand;
nay, if we choose we may walk on its hard surface
almost without leaving the slightest print of our
foot. But if we throw a drge stone on the surface
of the snow and ma^k the spot, and return again
after many days \ve shall find that the stone has
descended the valley a short distance. We shall also
observe that the snow has now a variety of mark-
ings on its surface ; which might lead us to fancy,
had we not known better, that it had once been a
THEIR EXTENT. 157
river, which, while raging down to the sea with all
its curling rapids and whirling eddies, had been
arrested in an instant by the ice-king and frozen
solid, in fact, it has all the graceful lines and
forms of fluidity, with all the steady, motionless
aspect of solidity. It really moves, this vast body
of snow ; but, like the hour hand of a watch, its
motion cannot be recognised, though we should ob-
serve it with prolonged, unflagging attention. We
have called it a vast body of snow, but this is only
comparatively speaking. It will be vaster yet
before we have done with it. At present it is but
a thick semi-fluid covering, lying at the bottom of
this ancient arctic vale.
The brief summer ends. Much of the winter
snow has been melted and returned to the sea ; but
much, very much more, is still lying deep upon the
ground. The world's second winter comes. The
first frost effectually puts a stop to all the melting
and moving that we have been describing. The
snow-river 110 longer moves it is arrested. The
water no longer percolates through the snow it is
frozen. The mass is no longer semi-fluid it is
solid ice; and the first step in the process of a
glacier's formation is begun.
Thereafter this process is continued from year to
year, each winter adding largely to its bulk, each
summer deducting slightly therefrom. The growing
mass of ice ascends the mountain-sides, swallows
the rocks and shrubs and trees in its progress,
158 THE FIRST ICEBERG.
until its body becomes a thousand feet thick : the
extreme summits of the mountain - peaks alone
tower above the snowy waste, and the mass at the
bottom is now, by the pressure of superincumbent
masses, pure ice, hard and clear as crystal.
When the great glacier grows old it still main-
tains its stealthy downward motion during every
summer. It has reached the shore, and has been
pushed, like a huge white tongue, out into the
sea.
" But what has all this to do with icebergs ? " it
may be inquired. Much, very much. It is common
enough, in commenting on a child, to speak of the
parent. The glacier is the mother of the iceberg.
When, in the world's early morning, the embryo
glacier reached the sea, its thin edges were easily
broken off by the waves ; but as it increased and
still further encroached, these edges became thicker
and thicker, until at last a wall of pure ice, several
hundred feet high, presented its glittering front to
the ocean. It was hard and massive ; the sun of
summer had little effect on its frigid face, and it
seemed to bid defiance to the sea itself. But things
often are not what they seem. Each billow sapped
its foundation ; it soon began to overhang its base.
At length the cohesion of the mass was not sufficient
to sustain its weight. A rending, accompanied by
sounds like heaven's artillery, took place; the
crystal mountain bowed its brow and fell with
thunderous crash upon the water ; then, rocking
RISK AMONG ICEBERGS. 159 ~
slowly under the impulse of its dread plunge, the
first iceberg floated off to sea !
It is right to remark here that this explanation
is, to some extent, disputed at leafct there is a
difference of opinion as to the manner in which the
iceberg leaves its parent glacier. There is no
dispute as to its origin. This difference will be
explained shortly in a quotation from Dr. Kane's
work ; meanwhile, in support of the present theory,
let us listen to the words of one who saw with his
own eyes something similar to what has been
described. Dr. Scoresby, than whom a better man
never explored the arctic seas, says :
" In July 1818, I was particularly fortunate in
witnessing one of the grandest effects which these
polar glaciers ever present. A strong north-
westerly swell, having for some hours been beating
on the shore, had loosened a number of fragments
attached to the iceberg, and various heaps of broken
ice denoted recent shoots of the seaward edge. As
we advanced towards it, with a view of proceeding
close to its base, I observed a few little pieces fall
from the top; and while my eye was fixed upon
the place, an immense column, probably fifty feet
square, and one hundred and fifty feet high, began
to leave the parent ice at the top, and, leaning
majestically forward, with an accelerated velocity
fell, with an awful crash, into the sea.
" The water into which it plunged was converted
into an appearance of vapour or smoke, like that
160 REMARKS OF DR. KANE I
from a furious cannonading. The noise was equal
to that of thunder, which it nearly resembled. The
column which fell was nearly square, and in mag-
nitude resembled a church. It broke into thou-
sands of pieces. This circumstance was a happy
caution, for we might inadvertently have gone to
the very base of the icy cliff, from whence masses
of considerable magnitude were continually break-
ing."
Now, this incident suggests the probability, that,
had the face of the glacier projected into deep
water, the mass which broke off might have fallen
into the sea without being broken to pieces, and
might have floated away as a berg. We confess,
however, to be partial to the view expressed by
some writers, that the great glaciers continue year
by year to thrust their thick tongues out to sea,
until the projecting masses reach water sufficiently
deep to float them, when they are quietly cracked
off from their parent and carried away without any
fall or plunge. The following remarks by Dr. Kane
will make this more clear. Writing of the iceberg,
he says :
" So far from falling into the sea, broken by its
weight from the parent glacier, it rises from the
sea. The process is at once gradual and compara-
tively quiet. The idea of icebergs being discharged,
so universal among systematic writers, and so
recently admitted by myself, seems to me at
variance with the regulated and progressive action
ON THE ORIGIN OF ICEBERGS. 161
of nature. Developed by such a process, the
thousands of bergs which throng these seas should
keep the air and water in perpetual commotion
one fearful succession of explosive detonations and
propagated waves. But it is only the lesser
masses falling into deep waters which could justify
the popular opinion. The enormous masses of the
Great Glacier [of Greenland] are propelled step by
step, and year by year, until, reaching water
capable of supporting them, they are floated off, to
be lost in the temperatures of other regions
" The height of the ice- wall at the nearest point
was about three hundred feet, measured from the
water's edge ; and the unbroken right line of its
diminishing perspective showed that this might be
regarded as its constant measurement. It seemed,
in fact, a great icy table-land, abutting with a clean
precipice against the sea. This is, indeed, char-
acteristic of all those arctic glaciers which issue
from central reservoirs, or mers de glace, upon the
fiords or bays, and is strikingly in contrast with
the dependent or hanging glacier of the ravines."
Elsewhere the same writer speaks of this glacier
as a line of cliff, rising in a solid glassy wall to a
height of three hundred feet above the water-level,
and with an unfathomable depth below it ; and its
curved face, sixty miles in length, from Cape
Agassiz to Cape Forbes, vanished into unknown
space at not more than a single day's rail-road
travel from the pole. The interior with which it
(451) 1 1
1G2 BENEFITS OF ICEBERGS.
communicated, and from which it issued, was an
unsurveyed mer de glace, or sea of ice, of appa-
rently boundless dimensions ; and from one part of
this great cliff he saw long lines of huge bergs float-
ing slowly away.
Here, we think, is ice enough and of sufficient
dimensions to account for the largest bergs that
were ever beheld.
It will be at once seen, then, that icebergs,
though found floating in the sea, are not necessarily
of the sea. They are composed entirely of fresh
water, and arctic ships can at any time procure a
plentiful supply of good soft drinkable water from
the pools that are formed in the hollows of the
bergs.
The risk of approaching icebergs in the arctic
regions is not so great as when they are found
floating further south ; because when in their native
regions they are comparatively tough, whereas on
their southern journeys they become more or less
disintegrated in fact, the blow of an axe is some-
times sufficient to cause a rent, which in its turn
will induce other rents and fallings asunder, so that
the whole mass runs the risk of being entirely
broken up. Hence the danger of ships, in certain
circumstances, venturing to anchor to them. Never-
theless this is a common practice sometimes a
necessity among discovery ships and whalers. It
is a convenient practice too ; for many a vessel has
been saved from absolute destruction by getting
M'CLURE'S EXPERIENCE.
163
under the lee of a good sound iceberg, where she
has lain as safely, for the time being, as if in a
harbour.
PROTECTED BY AN ICEBERG.
When Captain M'Clure was endeavouring to
make the north-west passage in 1851, he was saved,
from what appeared to be at least very probable
164 A FRIEND IN NEED.
destruction, by a small iceberg. On the 17th of
September he writes :
" There were several heavy floes in the vicinity.
One, full six miles in length, passed at the rate of
two knots, crushing everything that impeded its
progress, and grazed our starboard-bow. For-
tunately there was but young ice upon the opposite
side, which yielded to the pressure ; had it other-
wise occurred, the vessel must inevitably have been
cut asunder. In the afternoon we secured to a
moderately-sized iceberg, drawing eight fathoms,
which appeared to offer a fair refuge, and from
which we never afterwards parted."
To this lump of ice the ship clung with the
tenacity of a bosom friend, and followed it, literally,
through thick and thin ! There is something
almost ludicrous, as well as striking, in M'Clure's
account of-their connection with this bit of ice. It
conveyed them to their furthest north-east position,
and back round the Princess Royal Islands passed
the largest within five hundred yards returned
along the coast of Prince Albert's Land and finally
froze in at lat. 70 50' north, long. 117 55' west,
on the 30th September; during which circumnavi-
gation they received many severe " nips," and were
frequently driven close to the shore, from which
their dear friend the iceberg, small though he was,
kept them off.
Icebergs assume almost every conceivable form,
and are seen of every size sometimes, also, in great
THE WORLD'S REFRIGERATORS.
165
numbers. Scoresby mentions one occasion on
which he was surrounded by bergs to the number
of several hundreds.
Now, all this ice that we have been speaking of,
besides being, in a secondary way, a passive agent
in the affairs of man (chiefly in barring his progress
northward), is one of the most potent agents in the
economy of nature. It is the means by which the
world is kept cool enough for man and beast to
dwell in. The polar regions north and south
are, as it were, the world's refrigerators; temper-
ing the heated air of the south, and, in connection
with the torrid zone, spreading throughout the
Earth those beneficial influences which gladden the
sphere of man's temporal existence.
CHAPTER XI.
ICE AN AGENT IN TRANSPORTING BOULDERS HOW THIS COMES ABOUT
DR. KANE'S OBSERVATIONS LONG NIGHT IN WINTER AND LONG
DAY IN SUMMER EXTREME DARKNESS INFLUENCE ON DOGS
INTENSE COLD EFFECT ON THE SEA.
IHERE are many things in this world which,
up to within a few years back, have been
to men a source of surprise and mystery.
Some of these problems have been solved by recent
travellers, and not a few of them are referable to
polar oceans and ice.
In many parts of our coasts we find very striking
and enormously large boulder-stones lying on the
beach, perfectly isolated, and their edges rounded
away like pebbles, as if they had been rolled on
some antediluvian beach strewn with Titanic stones.
These boulders are frequently found upon the loose
sands of the sea-shore, far removed from any rocks
or mountains from which they might be supposed to
have been broken; and, more than that, totally dif-
ferent in their nature from the geological formations
of the districts in which they are found. " Whence
OF THE ORIGIN OF BOULDERS. 1G7
came these 1 " has been the question of the inquisitive
of all ages, " and how came they there 1 "
There may, for aught we know to the contrary,
be more than one answer to these questions; but
there is at least one which is quite satisfactory as to
how and whence at least some of them have come.
Ice was the means of conveying these boulders to
their present positions.
It has been said that once upon a time a large
part of this country was under the dominion of ice,
even as the polar regions and some of the moun-
tains and valleys of Norway are at the present
day; that the boulders we see in elevated places
were conveyed thither by glacier action ; and that
when the glacial period passed away, they were left
there on the hill-sides sometimes almost on the
mountain-tops. But this is not the question we are
considering just now. We are now inquiring into
the origin of those huge boulders that are found
upon our coasts and on the coasts of other lands
boulders which could not have rolled down from the
hills, for there are no hills at all near many of them;
and those hills that are near some of them are of
different geological formation.
This question will be answered at once, and one
of the phenomena of arctic ice and oceanic agency
will be exhibited, by reference to the recent dis-
coveries of the celebrated arctic voyager, Dr. Kane
of the American Navy.
While wintering far beyond the head of Baffin's
168 BOULDERS:
Bay, and beyond the most northerly point, in that
direction, that had at that time been reached by any
previous traveller, Dr. Kane made many interest-
ing observations and discoveries. He seems to have
penetrated deep into the heart of Nature's northern
secrets. Among other things, he ascertained the
manner in which boulders are transported from
their northern home.
The slow, creeping movement of glaciers, to which
we have already referred, is one means whereby
large boulders are formed. At the lower edge of
one of the glaciers of Norway we saw boulders,
thirty or forty feet in diameter, which had been
rolled and forced, probably for ages, down the valley
by the glacier, and thrust out on the sea-beach, where
they lay with their angles and corners rubbed off,
and their surfaces rounded and smoothed as com-
pletely as those of the pebbles by which they were
surrounded.
Had these boulders been formed in the arctic
regions, they might have been thrust out upon the
thick solid crust of the frozen sea, which in time
would have been broken off and floated away; thus
rafting the boulders to other shores. The formation
of boulders, and their positions, are facts that we have
seen. Their being carried out to sea by ice-rafts is
a fact that Dr. Kane has seen and recorded. On
the wild rocky shores where his ship was set fast,
there was a belt of ice lining the margin of the sea,
which he termed the " ice-belt," or the " ice-foot."
ItOW
16 ( J
This belt never melted completely, and was usually
fast to the shore. In fact it was that portion of the
sea-ice which was left behind each spring when the
general body of ice was broken up and swept away.
Referring to this, he writes :
" The spot at which we landed I have called Cape
James Kent. It was a lofty headland, and the
land-ice which hugged its base was covered with
rocks from the cliffs above. As I looked over this
ice-belt, losing itself in the far distance, and covered
with its millions of tons of rubbish, greenstones,
limestones, chlorite, slates, rounded and angular,
massive and ground to powder, its importance as a
geological agent, in the transportation of drift, struck
me with great force.
" Its whole substance was studded with these
varied contributions from the shore ; and further to
the south, upon the now frozen waters of Marshall
Bay, I could recognise raft after raft from the last
170 MATTER FOR REFLECTION.
year's ice-belt which had been caught by the winter,
each one laden with its heavy freight of foreign
material.
" The water torrents and thaws of summer unite
with the tides in disengaging the ice-belt from the
coast ; but it is not uncommon for large bergs to
drive against it and carry away the growths of many
years. JE have found masses that had been detached
in this way, floating many miles out at sea long,
symmetrical tables, two hundred feet long by eighty
broad, covered with large angular rocks and boulders,
and seemingly impregnated throughout with detrited
matter. These rafts in Marshall Bay were so
numerous, that could they have melted as I saw
them, the bottom of the sea would have presented a
more curious study for the geologist than the boulder-
covered lines of our middle latitudes. One boulder
in particular had had its origin in a valley where
rounded fragments of water-washed greenstone had
been poured out by the torrents and frozen into the
coast-ice of the belt. The attrition of subsequent
matter had truncated the great egg-shaped rock,
and worn its sides into a striated face, whose
scratches still indicated the line of water-flow."
So, then, when we next meet with a huge isolated
boulder on any of our flat beaches, we may gaze at
it with additional interest, when we reflect that, per-
chance, it was carried thither by the ocean, count-
less ages ago, from the arctic regions, on a gigantic
raft of ice; after having been, at a still more remote
CAUSE OF COLD IN ARCTIC REGIONS. 171
period, torn from its cliffs by some mighty glacier
and slowly rolled and rounded, for hundreds of years
perhaps, down the scarred slopes of its native valley.
THE GREAT EGG-SHAPED ROOK.
The primary cause of the intense and prolonged
cold of the arctic regions is the shortness of the
time during which they are under the influence of
the sun's rays. For a few months in summer the
sun shines brightly, but, owing to the position of
the globe, obliquely on the poles. During part of
that period it shines at mid-night as well as at
mid-day. But during the greater part of the year
its beams throw but a feeble light there, and for
several months in winter there is absolutely no day
at all nothing but one long dismal night of dark-
ness, that seems as if the bright orb of day had
vanished from the heavens for ever.
The length of this prolonged day in summer, and
this dreary night in winter, depends, of course, upon
latitude. The length of both increases as we ap-
proach the poles. The long daylight in summer is
exceedingly delightful. We once saw the sun de-
172 SUMMER DAY AND WINTER NIGHT.
scribe an almost unbroken circle in the sky for many
days and nights, and had we been a few degrees
further north we should have seen it describe an
entire circle. As it was, it only disappeared for
twenty minutes. It set about midnight, and in
twenty minutes it rose again so that there was no
night, not even twilight, but a bright, beautiful
blazing day, for several weeks together.
Dr. Kane describes the midnight sun thus : " On
our road we were favoured with a gorgeous spectacle,
which hardly any excitement of peril could have
made us overlook. The midnight sun came out
over the northern crest of the great berg, our late
' fast friend,' kindling variously-coloured fires on
every part of its surface, and making the ice around
us one great resplendency of gem -work blazing
carbuncles and rubies, and molten gold."
Very different indeed is the aspect of the winter
night. Let the same authority speak, for he had
great experience thereof.
On December 15th he writes : " We have lost the
last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see
print, and hardly paper. The fingers cannot be
counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and mid-
night are alike; and, except a vague glimmer on the
sky, that seems to define the hill-outlines to the
south, we have nothing to tell us that this arctic
world of ours has a sun. In one week more we
shall reach the midnight of the year
"The influence of this long intense darkness was
EXTREME DARKNESS. 173
most depressing. Even our dogs, although the
greater number of them were natives of the arctic
circle, were unable to withstand it. Most of them
died from an anomalous form of disease, to which,
I am satisfied, the absence of light contributed as
much as extreme cold." Quoting from his jour-
nal he says : "I am so afflicted with the insomnia
of this eternal night, that I rise at any time between
midnight and noon. I went on deck this morning
at five o'clock. It was absolutely dark; the cold
not permitting a swinging lamp, there was not a
glimmer came to me through the ice-crusted window-
panes of the cabin. While I was feeling my way,
half puzzled as to the best method of steering clear
of whatever might be before me, two of my New-
foundland dogs put their cold noses against my
hand, and instantly commenced the most exuberant
antics of satisfaction. It then occurred to me how
very dreary and forlorn must these poor animals be,
at atmospheres 10 above zero in-doors and 50 be-
low zero without living in darkness, howling at an
accidental light, as if it reminded them of the moon
and with nothing, either of instinct or sensation,
to tell them of the passing hours, or to explain the
long lost daylight. They shall see the lantern more
frequently."
Yet this state of midnight darkness is not alto-
gether unmitigated. There are a few ameliorating
influences at work, the nature of some of which we
will treat of in the next chapter. Among others,
174 INTENSE COLD:
the moon frequently shines therewith great brilliancy
in winter. Dr. Kane says that in October the moon
had reached her greatest northern declination : " She
is a glorious object. Sweeping around the heavens,
at the lowest part of her curve she is still 1 4 above
the horizon. For eight days she has been making
her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. It is
one of .those sparkling nights that bring back the
memory of sleigh-bells and songs and glad cornmim-
ings of hearts in lands that are far away."
Buttdespite all the varied and transient beauties
of the northern skies in winter, the long arctic
night is undoubtedly depressing in the extreme.
In these regions men speak of being able to read
the thermometer on the 7th of November at noon-
day " without a light," as being matter for gratula-
tion. The darkness still before them at that time
would be of about three months' duration, and even
then they would only get back to a species of twilight.
The cold experienced by these navigators of the
northern seas is terribly intense. Their thermometers
have frequently indicated a temperature as low as
75 below zero, or 107 degrees of frost, on Fahren-
heit's scale. The thermometers of arctic explorers
are always filled with spirits of wine, as quicksilver
freezes at about 40 below zero, and is therefore un-
suitable. It would be frozen, indeed, the greater
part of the winter.
Dr. Kane says : " At such temperatures chloric
ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform
ITS INFLUENCE ON THE OCEAN. 175
exhibited a granular pellicle on its surface. Spirits
of naphtha froze at 54 below zero, and oil of sassa-
fras at 49. The oil of winter-green was in a floc-
culent state at 56, and solid at 63.
"The exhalations from the surface of the body
invested the exposed or partially clad parts with a
wreath of vapour. The air had a perceptible pun-
gency upon inspiration, but I could not perceive the
painful sensation which has been spoken of by some
Siberian travellers. When breathed for any length
of time, it imparted a sensation of dryness to the
air-passages. I noticed that, as it were involuntarily,
we all breathed guardedly, with compressed lips."
Now, strange to say, this extremely low tempera-
ture does not affect the ocean to any great depth.
Just below the ice, in cold such as the above, the
sea was found to be 29 above zero. No doubt,
deeper down, the temperature was still warmer.
We have heard it said, that when men chance to
fall into the water in cold regions, in the depth of
winter, it feels at first rather warm and agreeable !
On scrambling out again, however, their condition
is not enviable ; for in a few minutes the keen frost
causes their garments to become as hard as boards.
Much light has been thrown on the fact of the
existence of under and upper currents in the sea,
by the phenomena of the arctic regions, and some
of the questions to which these currents give rise
are so interesting that we shall treat of them in
a new chapter.
CHAPTER XII.
QUESTION OF AN OPEN SEA BOUND THE POLES UPPER AND UNDEB
CURRENTS OF THE OCEAN CAUSE THEREOF HABITS OP THE
WHALE AS BEARING ON THE QUESTION DR. KANE'S DISCOVERY
OF AN OPEN SEA IN THE FAR NORTH NOTES ON THE EXPEDI-
TION A BEAR-HUNT.
IT was long and very naturally supposed
that the impenetrable ice of the arctic
regions extended to, and, as it were,
sealed up the pole. But from time to time philo-
sophic observers of Nature's laws began to hint
their opinion that there is an open ocean around the
pole; and of late years this opinion has all but
been converted into a firm belief.
Maury remarks, that like air like the body
the ocean must have a system of circulation for its
waters. And an attentive study of the currents of
the sea, and a close examination of the laws which
govern the movements of the waters in their
channels of circulation through the ocean, will
lead us irresistibly to the conclusion that always,
in summer and winter, there must be, somewhere
within the arctic circle, a large body of open water.
UPPER AND UNDER CURRENTS OF OCEAN. 177
There is an under-current setting from the At-
lantic, northward through Davis' Straits, into the
Arctic Ocean, and a surface-current setting out.
The fact is proved beyond a doubt by the observa-
tions of arctic explorers, who have seen immense
icebergs drifting rapidly northward against a
strong current. This apparent anomaly could only
be accounted for by the fact that a powerful under-
current carried them northward ; and as at least
seven times more of these bergs must have been
under than above water, we can easily understand
how the under-current, acting on the larger mass
of each berg, had power to carry it against the sur-
face-current.
This under-current is warm, while the upper-
current is cold. Now we know that, according to
Nature's laws, heated water, like heated air, rises
to the surface, and cold water sinks to the bottom.
How, then, comes this warm current to be under-
neath the cold, as soundings have proved it to be ?
It is owing to the fact that the under-current is
much salter, and therefore heavier (despite its
warmth), than the surface-current ; which latter,
being mingled with the drainage and ice-masses of
the arctic regions, is comparatively fresh, and
therefore light as well as cold.
The hot and salt waters of the tropics are carried
north by the Gulf Stream. There are here two
counteracting agents at work. Heat inclines
the Gulf Stream to rise ; saltness inclines it to
(451) 12
178 THEORY OF AN OPEN POLAR SEA.
sink. Dining the first part of its journey, as we
know, its great heat prevails over the other
influence, and it flows as a surface-current. But,
at a certain point in its northward route, it meets
with the cold, brackish, ice-bearing currents that
flow out of the arctic basin. Having lost much of its
heat (though still possessing a great deal more than
the arctic currents), the saltness of the Gulf Stream
prevails ; it dips below the polar waters, and thence-
forth continues its course as an under-current, salt,
and comparatively warm.
To state the matter briefly : The hot water, which
ought to keep on the surface because of its heat, is
sunk by its superabundant salt ; and the cold
water, which ought to sink because of its cold, is
buoyed on the surface because of its want of
salt.
Now arises the question What becomes of the
great quantity of salt that is thus being carried
perpetually into the polar basin *? Manifestly it
must be carried out again by the surface-current,
otherwise the polar basin would of necessity be-
come a basin of salt. The under-current must,
therefore, rise to the surface somewhere near the
pole, with its temperature necessarily only a little,
if at all, below the freezing-point which, be it ob-
served, is a warm temperature for such regions.
Here, then, where the warm waters from the south
rise to the surface, it is supposed this open Arctic
Ocean must exist.
HABITS OF THE WHALE. 179
So much for theory. Now for facts that have been
observed, and that tend, more or less, to corrobo-
rate this proposition of an open polar sea. The
habits of the whale have gone far to prove it. The
log-books of whalers have for many years been
carefully examined and compared by scientific men.
These investigations have led to the discovery
" that the tropical regions of the ocean are to the
e right ' whale as a sea of fire, through which he
cannot pass, and into which he never enters." It
has also been ascertained that the same kind of
whale which is found off the shores of Greenland,
in Baffin's Bay, &c., is found in the North Pacific,
and about Behring's Straits; and that the "right"
whale of the southern hemisphere is a different
animal from that of the northern. How, then,
came the Greenland whales to pass from the Green-
land seas to the Pacific ? Not by the Capes Horn
or Good Hope ; the " sea of fire " precluded that.
Clearly there was ground here for concluding that
they did so through the (supposed) open sea lying
beyond, or rather within, the frozen ocean.
It is true the objection might be made, that
the same kind of whale which exists in the North
Pacific exists also in the North Atlantic, although
they never cross over to see each other. But an-
other discovery has met this objection.
It is the custom among whalers to have their
harpoons marked with date and name of ship, and
Dr. Scoresby, in his work on arctic voyages men-
180 NOTES OF KANE'S EXPEDITION.
tions several instances of whales having been taken
near Behring's Straits, with harpoons in them
bearing the stamp of ships that were known to
cruise in the Greenland seas ; and the dates on the
harpoons were so recent as to preclude the supposi-
tion that the said whales had, after being struck,
made a voyage round the capes above mentioned,
even were such a voyage possible to them. All
this does not, indeed, absolutely prove the existence of
an open arctic sea, but it does, we think, prove the
existence of at least an occasionally open sea there,
for it is well known that whales cannot travel such
immense distances under ice.
But the most conclusive evidence that we have
in regard to this subject is the fact, that one oi
the members of Dr. Kane's expedition, while in
search of Sir John Franklin, did actually, on foot,
reach what we have every reason to believe was
this open sea ; but not being able to get their
ship into it, the party had 110 means of ex-
ploring it, or extending their investigations. The
account of this discovery is so interesting, and
withal so romantic, that we extract a few para-
graphs relating to it from Kane's work.
After spending the dreary winter in the ice-
locked and unexplored channels beyond the head
of Baffin's Bay, Kane found his little ship still
hopelessly beset in the month of June ; he therefore
resolved to send out a sledge-party under Morton,
one of his best men, to explore the channel to the
A REGION OF ICEBERGS. 181
north of their position. After twelve days' travel-
ling they came to the base of the " Great Glacier,"
where Morton left his party, and, in company with
an Esquimaux named Hans, set out with a dog-
sledge to prosecute the journey of exploration.
They walked on the sea-ice in a line parallel with
the glacier, and proceeded twenty-eight miles that
day, although the snow was knee-deep and soft.
At the place where they encamped a crack enabled
them to measure the ice. It was seven feet five
inches thick ! And this in June. We may men-
tion here, in passing, that Dr. Kane never got his
vessel out of that frozen strait, which seems to be
bound by perpetual ice. He and his party escaped
with their lives ; but the vessel that bore them
thither is probably still embedded in that ice.
Next day Morton and Hans came to a region of
icebergs, which had arrested a previous sledging-
party of the same expedition. " These [icebergs]
were generally very high, evidently newly separated
from the glacier. Their surfaces were fresh and
glassy, and not like those generally met with in
Baffin's Bay, less worn, and bluer, and looking in
all respects like the face of the Great Glacier.
Many were rectangular, some of them regular
squares, a quarter of a mile each way ; others more
than a mile long."
To pass amidst these bergs was a matter of
labour, difficulty, and danger. Sometimes the sides
of them came so close together, that the men could
182 IN DANGER.
scarcely squeeze between them, and they were
obliged to search for other passages ; in doing
which, the variation of their compass confused
them. At other times, " a tolerably wide passage
would appear between two bergs, which they
would gladly follow ; then a narrower one ; then
no opening in front, but one to the side. Follow-
ing that a little distance, a blank ice-cliff would
close the way altogether, and they were forced to
retrace their steps and begin again."
Thus they puzzled their way through, " like a
blind man in the streets of a strange city ;" but
more difficulties awaited them beyond. After ad-
vancing many miles they were arrested by broad
rents in the ice, and were obliged to diverge fre-
quently far out of their course, or to bridge the
chasms over by cutting down the ice hummocks
and filling them up with loose ice, until the dogs
were able to haul the provision-sledge over.
Advancing thus for several days, and encamping
on the snow at night, they at last came to a spot
where the ice was dangerous. " It was weak
and rotten, and the dogs began to tremble." Pro-
ceeding at a brisk rate, they had got upon unsafe
ice before they were aware of it. Their course
was at the time nearly up the middle of the chan-
nel ; but as soon as possible they turned, and by
a backward circuit reached the shore. The dogs,
as their fashion is, at first lay down and refused to
proceed, trembling violently. The only way to
OPEN WATER SIGHTED. 183
induce the terrified, obstinate brutes to get on, was
for Hans to go to a white-looking spot, where the
ice was thicker, the soft stuff looking dark ; then
calling the dogs coaxingly by name, they would
crawl to him on their bellies. So they retreated
from place to place, until they reached the firm
ice they had quitted. A half mile brought them to
comparatively safe ice, a mile more to good ice again.
In the midst of this danger they had, during the
liftings of the fog, sighted open water. Soon after
they saw it plainly. So many long and dreary
months had these men passed since they were
gladdened by the sight of open water, that they
could scarcely believe their eyes ; and Morton de-
clared, that but for the birds which were seen fly-
ing about it in great numbers, he would not have
believed it.
They made for the land-ice as fast as possible,
and quickly gained it ; but the sea-ice had cracked
off and sunk so much, that the land-ice pre-
sented a wall along the whole coast of about eight
or nine feet high. It was quite perpendicular, in
some places overhanging, so that it was a matter of
the greatest difficulty they managed to throw up
the provisions, clamber up themselves, and haul
the dogs and sledge up afterwards. This accom-
plished, however, they were safe, and could advance
with confidence. But this mass of land-ice be-
came narrower as they proceeded, till at last it
dwindled to a mere narrow ledge, clinging to the
184: DEEP AND CLEAR.
high, perpendicular cliffs, and looking as if at any
moment it might crumble off, and fall with them in-
to the open water between it and the floating sea-ice.
MORTON CLIMBING ON TO THE LAND-ICK.
The sea here was very deep and clear. They
could see the bottom quite plainly, although a stone
they cast in, the size of a man's head, took twenty-
eight seconds to reach it.
Being now afraid of the ice-ledge, they attempted
A LIVELY SCENE. 185
to find a path along the face of the cliff; but failing
in this, Morton determined to leave part of the
provisions in " cache" and proceed with a lighter
load. The cape round which they were travelling,
and on the other side of which lay the open water,
was extremely bold, and the ice-ledge at the end
of it was barely three feet wide; so they were
obliged to unloose the dogs, and drive them forward
alone, then tilted the sledge on one runner, and
thus pushed it past the worst place.
Here the ice on the sea was partly broken up,
and a strong tide was running from the southward.
The night before it had been running from the
north. As they advanced, the channel became still
more open, and after passing the cape they saw noth-
ing but open water, with innumerable wild sea-
birds of every description flying overhead, or
disporting in the pools. Let it be observed here,
however, that this was the open water of a strait
or channel, not the great Arctic Sea, about the
probable existence of which we have been writing.
Upon the ice-masses near them numerous seals
were seen basking.
One thing that struck them much here was, that
although strong north winds, amounting to a gale
at times, had been blowing for several days, no ice
had been brought down from the north into the
channel, along the shore of which they travelled.
Thick, damp fogs prevailed, preventing them from
seeing far in advance at any time.
186 A BEAR-HUNT.
At last they came to a place where the broken
ice of the shore rendered passage for the sledge im-
possible. They therefore tied the dogs, intending to
push forward a short way alone. But they had
not been sufficiently careful to secure them ; for the
poor animals, supposing themselves deserted, no
doubt, succeeded in breaking their lines, and re-
joined the two men in about an hour after. This,
as it turned out, was rather a fortunate circum-
stance.
Preparatory to quitting their sledge, the men
had loaded themselves with eight pounds of pern mi-
can and two of biscuit, besides the artificial
horizon, sextant, and compass, a rifle, and a boat-
hook. They had not been an hour gone when, as
above stated, four of the dogs overtook them. An
hour afterwards they came upon a polar bear with
her cub.
The fight that followed, although somewhat
foreign to our subject, is so graphically described
by Dr. Kane, that we think it quite unnecessary
to apologize for inserting it here.
" The bear instantly took to flight; but the little
one being unable to keep pace with her, she turned
back, and, putting her head under its, haunches,
threw it some distance. The cub safe for the
moment, she would then wheel round and face the
dogs, so as to give it a chance to run away ; but it
always stopped, just as it alighted, till she came
up and threw it ahead again ; it seemed to expect
A BEAR-HUNT. 187
her aid, and would not go on without it. Some-
times the mother would run a few yards ahead, as
if to coax the young one up to her, and when the
dogs came up she would turn and drive them back ;
then, as they dodged her blows, she would rejoin
the cub and push on, sometimes putting her head
under it, sometimes catching it in her mouth by
the nape of the neck.
" For a time she managed her retreat with great
celerity, leaving the two men far in the rear.
They had engaged her on the land-ice ; but she led
the dogs in-shore, up a small stony valley which
opened into the interior. After she had gone a
mile and a half, her pace slackened, and, the little
one being jaded, she soon came to a halt.
" The men were then only half a mile behind, and
running at full speed. They soon came up to
where the dogs were holding her at bay. The
fight was now a desperate one. The mother
never went more than two yards ahead, constantly
looking at the cub. When the dogs came near
her, she would sit upon her haunches, and take
the little one between her hind-legs, fighting'
the dogs with her paws, and roaring so that she
could have been heard a mile off. Never was an
animal more distressed. She would stretch her
neck and snap at the nearest dog with her shining
teeth, whirling her paws like the arms of a wind-
mill. If she missed her aim, not daring to pursue
one dog lest the others should harm the cub, she
188 A BEAR-HUNT.
would give a great roar of baffled rage, and go on
pawing and snapping, and facing the ring, grinning
at them with her mouth stretched wide.
" When the men came up the little one was
perhaps rested, for it was able to turn round with
its dam, no matter how quick she moved, so as to
keep always in front of her belly. The five dogs
were all the time frisking about her actively, tor-
menting her like so many gad-flies. Indeed they
made it difficult to take an aim at her without
killing them. But Hans, lying on his elbow, took
a quiet aim, and shot her through the head. She
dropped and rolled over dead, without moving a
muscle.
" The dogs sprang towards her at once ; but the
cub jumped upon her body and reared up, for the
first time growling hoarsely. They seemed quite
afraid of the little creature, she fought so actively,
and made so much noise ; and, while tearing
mouthfuls of hair from the dead mother, they
would spring aside the minute the cub turned to-
wards them. The men drove the dogs off for a
time, but were obliged to shoot the cub at last, as
she would not quit the body.
" Hans fired into her head. It did not reach
the brain, though it knocked her down ; but she
was still able to climb on her mother's body, and
try to defend it, her mouth bleeding like a gutter-
spout. They were obliged to despatch her with
stones."
MORTON DISCOVERS THE OPEN SEA.
A GRAND SIGHT. 191
After skinning the old one they gashed its body,
and the dogs fed upon it ravenously. The little
one they cached for themselves against their re-
turn.
This little fight quite knocked up Hans the
Esquimaux, Morton therefore advanced alone, in the
hope of being able to get beyond a huge cape that
lay before him. On reaching it, the grand sight
of an apparently boundless ocean of open water met
his eye. Only " four or five small pieces " of ice
were seen on the glancing waves of this hitherto
unknown sea. " Viewed from the cliffs," writes
Dr. Kane, " and taking thirty-six miles as the
mean radius open to reliable survey, this sea had
a justly-estimated extent of more than 4000 square
miles."
Here, then, in all probability, is the great Arctic
Ocean that has been supposed to exist in a per-
petually fluid state round the pole, encircled by a
ring of ice that has hitherto presented an impene-
trable barrier to all the adventurers of ancient and
modern times. There were several facts connected
with this discovery that go far to prove that this
ocean is perpetually open.
Further south, where Dr. Kane's brig lay in ice
that seemed never to melt, there were few signs of
.animal life only a seal or two now and then ;
but here, on the margin of this far northern sea, were
rc yriads of water-fowl of various kinds.
u The "Brent goose," writes the Doctor, " had not
192 A PICTURE OF LIFE.
been seen before since entering Smith's Strait. It
is well known to the polar traveller as a migratory
bird of the American continent. Like the others
of the same family, it feeds upon vegetable matter,
generally on marine plants, with their adherent
molluscan life. It is rarely or never seen in the
interior ; and from its habits may be regarded as
singularly indicative of open water. The flocks of
this bird, easily distinguished by their wedge-shaped
line of flight, now crossed the water obliquely, and
disappeared over the land to the north-east.
"The rocks on shore were crowded with sea-
swallows, birds whose habits require open water;
and they were already breeding The gulls were
represented by no less than four species. The
kitti wakes reminding Morton of 'old times in
Baffin's Bay ' were again stealing fish from the
water (probably the small whiting), and their
grim cousins, the burgomasters, enjoying the dinner
thus provided at so little cost to themselves. It
was a picture of life all round.
" Here, for the first time, Morton noticed the
arctic petrel, a fact which shows the accuracy of
his observation, though he had not been aware of
its importance. This bird had not been met with
since we left the north water of the English
whalers, more than two hundred miles south of
the position on which he stood. Its food is
essentially marine ; and it is seldom seen in
numbers, except in the highways of open water-
NOVEL MUSIC. 193
frequented by the whale and the larger representa-
tives of ocean life. They were in numbers flitting
and hovering over the crests of the waves, like
their relatives of kinder climates, the Cape of
Good Hope pigeons, Mother Carey's chickens, and
the petrels everywhere else.
" It must have been an imposing sight, as Morton
stood at this termination of his journey, looking
out upon the great waste of waters before him.
Not a speck of ice could be seen. There, from a
height of 480 feet, which commanded a horizon of
almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with
the novel music of dashing waves ; and a surf,
breaking in among the rocks at his feet, stayed
his further progress."
Strong presumptive evidence, all this, that there
is an ocean of open water round the pole, and a
milder climate there than exists nearer to the arctic
circle. Had the short barrier of ice that inter-
vened between the brig and that mysterious sea
been removed, as, perchance, it is sometimes re-
moved by a hot summer, Dr. Kane might have
been the first to reach the North Pole. This, how-
ever, is reserved for some other navigator. The
gallant Kane now lies in an early grave ; but some
of his enterprising comrades have returned to those
regions, bent on solving this problem ; and it is
possible that, even while we now write, their ad-
venturous keel may be ploughing the waters of the
hitherto untraversed and mysterious polar sea.
(451) 13
CHAPTER XIII.
MISCELLANEOUS PHENOMENA OF THE POLAR SEAS AND REGIONS
THE AURORA BOREALIS ICE-BLINK OPTICAL ILLUSIONS
ANECDOTE OF SCORESBY HALOS CORONA MOCK SUNS
REFRACTION FROSTS.
j| WING to the intensity of the cold in the
arctic regions, there are, as we may readily
believe, many singular appearances con-
nected with the ocean and the atmosphere, which
are worthy of special notice.
Chief, perhaps, among the phenomena of those
regions is the Aurora Borealis.
Ever mindful of the welfare of the creatures
whom he has formed, the Almighty has appointed
a light to mitigate the darkness of the polar regions
when the sun, in its appointed course, withdraws
for a season.
What the aurora borealis is no one knows,
although many have hazarded opinions regarding it.
What it is like is known even to ourselves, though
the faint indications of it which sometimes beam in
our own heavens are not to be compared to the
THE AURORA BOREALIS.
195
brilliancy of the spectacle that is occasionally pre-
sented in the northern skies.
The most ordinary aspect of the aurora is that of
a band of pale-green light extending irregularly
over part of the sky, and marked by wavy motions,
as well as by varying brightness. Sometimes one
AURORA BOREALIS.
part of this band becomes more bright than another
part. Sometimes the whole seems to move gently,
like the undulations of a flag in a light breeze ; at
other times more vigorous action takes place, and
pointed tongues of light shoot vividly up into the
196 THE AURORA BOREALIS.
zenith. This sometimes takes place so frequently,
and the tongues are so long and numerous, that the
aurora has been popularly termed the " northern
streamers."
Although pale-green is the most frequent colour,
the aurora borealis has often been observed with
blue and red hues ; and the sky has been seen suf-
fused with an intense crimson colour by it.
Captains Parry and Lyon saw these northern
lights in full splendour during their residence in the
arctic regions. They tell us that " the aurora had
a tendency to form an irregular arch, which, in calm
weather, was very often distinct, though its upper
boundary was seldom well defined ; but whenever
the air was agitated, showers of rays spread in every
direction with the rapidity of lightning, but always
appearing to move to and from a fixed point, some-
what like a ribbon held in the hand and shaken
with an undulatory motion. ~No rule, however,
could be traced in the movement of those lighter
parcels called the ' merry dancers/ which flew
about perpetually towards every quarter ; becoming
in stormy weather more rapid in their motions, and
sharing all the wildness of the blast. They gave
an indescribable air of magic to the whole scene,
and made it not wonderful that, by the untaught
Indian, they should be viewed as ' the spirits of his
fathers roaming through the land of souls.'"
We are told by some that the aurora borealis is
accompanied by a loud hissing and crackling sound ;
SINGULAR ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENON. 197
and Captain Lyon says that the sudden glare and
rapid bursts of those wondrous showers of fire make
it difficult to believe that their movements are wholly
without sound. Yet such would seem to be the
case, for the same authority tells us that he stood
on the ice for hours listening intently and could
hear nothing. He was thoroughly convinced that no
sound proceeds from the aurora, and most intelligent
voyagers support him in this opinion.
That the aurora dims the lustre of the stars
seen through it, is a fact which was ascertained
clearly by the same gentleman ; and that it moves
in a region beyond the clouds is also evident from
the fact that when the latter covered the sky the
aurora disappeared.
But some of the most singular appearances of the
sea and sky in the polar regions are presented in
summer. During that season the perpetual presence
of the sun and the large tracts of ice floating about
on the sea exert their opposing influences so as to
produce the most astonishing results.
One part of the sea being covered with ice, pro-
duces a cold atmosphere; another part being free
from ice, produces a warmer atmosphere. Refrac-
tion is the result of viewing objects through those
different media, and very curious appearances follow.
When Scoresby was in Greenland a singular atmos-
pheric phenomenon occurred, whereby he became
aware of the approach of his father's ship some time
before it rose above the horizon. He had reached
198 THE ICE-BLINK.
Greenland before his father, who followed him in
the Fame. The following is his account of the
circumstance :
" On my return to the ship, about eleven o'clock,
the night was beautifully fine and the air quite
mild. The atmosphere, 'in consequence of the
warmth, being in a highly refractive state, a great
many .curious appearances were presented by the
land and icebergs. The most extraordinary effect
of this state of the atmosphere, however, was the
distinct inverted image of a ship in the clear sky,
over the middle of the large bay or inlet, the ship
itself being entirely beyond the horizon. Appear-
ances of this kind I have before noticed, but the
peculiarities of this were the perfection of the
image, and the great distance of the vessel that it
represented. It was so extremely well defined, that,
when examined with a telescope, I could distinguish
every sail, the general 'rig of the ship/ and its
peculiar character ; insomuch that I confidently
pronounced it to be my father's ship the Fame,
which it afterwards proved to be, though, on com-
paring notes with my father, I found that our rela-
tive positions at the time gave our distance from one
another very nearly thirty miles, being about seven-
teen miles beyond the horizon, and some leagues
beyond the line of direct vision."
Scoresby was, perhaps, one of the most persever-
ing and intelligent observers of nature that ever
went to the polar seas. His various accounts of
THE CORON^E. 199
what he saw are most interesting. We cannot do
better than quote his remarks upon ice-blink, that
curious appearance of white light on the horizon,
whereby voyagers are led to infer the presence of ice :
"This appearance of the ice-blink" says he,
"occurred on the 13th of June 1820, in latitude
76 north. The sky aloft was covered with dense,
uniform, hazy cloud, which indeed occupied the whole
of the heavens, excepting a portion near the horizon,
where it seemed to be repelled. The upper white
blink referred to ice about six miles distant, being
beyond the horizon ; the narrow yellowish portions
referred to floes and compact ice; the lowest yellow
blink, which in brightness and colour resembled the
moon, was the reflection of a field at the distance
of thirty miles, to which, directed by the blink, we
made way in the Baffin, through the channels of
water represented in the sky by bluish-gray streaks.
The field we found to be a sheet of ice 150 miles in
circumference !"
Another very singular appearance observed occa-
sionally in foggy weather is a series of bright circles,
or coronse, Surrounding the heads or persons of
individuals in certain positions. We have, while
standing at the mast-head of a vessel in Hudson's
Straits, observed our own shadow thrown on the
sea with a bright halo round it. The day was
bright and hazy at the time. Referring to a par-
ticular case of this kind, Scoresby says :
"During the month of July 1820, the weather
200 CAUSE OF THE CORONA.
being often foggy, with a bright sun sometimes
shining at the height of the day, some extraordinary
coronse were observed from the mast-head. These
occurred opposite to the sun, the centre of all the
circles being in a line drawn from the sun through
the eye of the observer. On one occasion four
coloured luminous circles were observed. The ex-
terior one might be twenty degrees in diameter. It
exhibited all the colours of the spectrum. The next,
a little within it, was of a whitish-gray colour ; the
third was only four or five degrees in diameter, and
though it exhibited the colours of the spectrum,
these colours were not very brilliant. The fourth
was extremely beautiful and brilliant. The interior
colour was yellow, then orange, red, violet, &c.
The colours of the whole three coronse were, I think,
in the same order, but of this I am not very certain.
Indeed, on reflection, I suspect that the second circle
must have been in the reverse order of the first ;
the first and the fourth being the same. The third
was not coloured. In the midst of these beautiful
coronse I observed my own shadow, the head sur-
rounded by a glory. All the coronse were evidently
produced by the fog ; my shadow was impressed 011
the surface of the sea."
The cause of these phenomena is " the reflection
of the sun's rays, decomposed by different refractions
in minute globules of water, of which the mist,
wherein the coronse occur, in a great measure appears
to consist."
MOCK SUNS.
201
Mock suns, or pwrlwlia,, are common appearances
in northern skies. Sometimes two of these mock
suns are seen, one on each side of their great
original, glowing so brightly that either of them, if
we could suppose it to have shone in the sky alone,
would have made a very respectable sun indeed !
MOCK SUNS.
Even four of these " sun-dogs" as they are some-
times called have been seen surrounding the sun ;
one on each side of it, one directly above, and one
immediately below, with a ring of light connecting
them together, a streak of light passing horizontally
and another passing perpendicularly between them,
thus forming a luminous cross, in the centre of
202 REFRACTION.
which was the sun itself. This magnificent spec-
tacle is sometimes enhanced by a second circle of
light enclosing the whole, and the edges of several
outer circles springing in faint light therefrom until
gradually lost, leaving the imagination to call up
the idea of an endless series of glories extending
over the whole sky.
Refraction frequently causes grotesque as well as
wonderful and beautiful appearances. Ships are
sometimes seen with their hulls flattened and their
masts and sails drawn out to monstrous dimensions ;
or the hulls are heightened so as to appear like
heavy castle walls, while the masts and sails are
rendered ludicrously squat and disproportioned ;
and not only so, but ships are often seen with their
images inverted over their own masts, so that to the
observer it appears as if one ship were balancing
another upside down mast-head to mast-head. Land
and icebergs assume the same curious appearances
peaks touching peaks, one set pointing upwards, the
other set pointing down, while the broad bases are
elevated in the air. At other times the whole mass
of land and ice on the horizon is more or less
broken up and scattered about as if in confusion,
yet with a certain amount of regularity in the
midst of it all, arising from the fact of every object
being presented in duplicate, sometimes triplicate,
and occasionally, though seldom, four-fold.
When sharp sudden frosts occur in those regions,
the splendour of the scenery is still further eii-
EFFECTS OF FROST. 203
hanced by the formation of innumerable minute
crystals which sparkle literally with as much lus-
trous beauty as the diamond. On one occasion
Scoresby's ship was decorated with uncommon mag-
nificence, and in a peculiarly interesting manner.
" In the course of the night," he writes, " the
rigging of the ship was most splendidly decorated
with a fringe of delicate crystals. The general
form of these was that of a feather having half of
the vane removed. Near the surface of the ropes
was first a small direct line of very white particles,
constituting the stem or shaft of the feather ; and
from each of these fibres, in another plane, proceeded
a short delicate range of spiculse or rays, discover-
able only by the help of a microscope, with which
the elegant texture and systematic construction of
the feather were completed. Many of these crystals,
possessing a perfect arrangement of the different
parts corresponding with the shaft, vane, and rachis
of a feather, were upwards of an inch in length, and
three-fourths of an inch in breadth. Some consisted
of a single flake or feather, but many of them gave
rise to other feathers, which sprang from the surface
of the vane at the usual angle. There seemed to
be no limit to the magnitude of these feathers, so
long as the producing cause continued to operate,
until their weight became so great, or the action of
the wind so forcible, that they were broken off, and
fell in flakes to the deck of the ship."
It is impossible for the mind to conceive the effect
204 GORGEOUS SPECTACLES.
of such a^ galaxy of curious, and bright, and emi-
nently beautiful combinations as are sometimes dis-
played in the arctic regions. None of the fabulous
conceptions of man, even though profoundly elabo-
rated and brightly gilded with the coruscations of
the most sparkling genius and fancy, ever produced
so gorgeous a spectacle as may be witnessed there
every summer day. Four or five suns in the blue
sky, with lines and circles of light shooting from or
circling round them ! Ice in all its quaint, majestic,
and shining forms, rendered still more quaint and
grand by the influence of refraction ; and, by the
same power, ships sailing in the sky, sometimes, as
if Nature's laws were abrogated, with their keels
upwards, and their masts pointing to the sea ! Walls
of pure ice hundreds of feet high, many miles in
extent, clear as crystal, and sending back the rays
of heaven's luminaries in broad blazing beams ; while
the icebergs' pinnacles -reflect them in sparkling
points ! White luminous fogs, like curtains of gauze,
too thin to dim the general brightness, yet dense
enough to invest the whole scene with a silver robe
of mystery, and to refract the light and compel it to
shine in great circles of prismatic colours ! And
everything from the nature of the materials of
which the gay scenery is composed either white
or blue, varying in all gradations from the fairest
snow to the deepest azure, save where the rain-
bow's delicate hues are allowed to intermingle
enough of pink, yellow, purple, orange, and green
TWO SIDES TO EVERY PICTURE. 205
to relieve the eye and enable it more fully to
appreciate the virgin drapery of the scene. All
this, seen in detail seen frequently in rapid succes-
sion sometimes seen almost all at one moment,
all this is absolutely beyond conception, and utterly
beyond adequate description. Yet all this is seen
at times in those realms of ice and snow, which are,
as we have already said, too much represented as
the " gloomy, forbidding, inhospitable polar regions."
There are two sides to every picture. We take
leave of this particular branch of our subject with
the remark, that if the shady side of the far north is
dreadfully dark and dreary, its bright side is intensely
brilliant and beautiful.
CHAPTER XIV.
ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA MEDUSA FOOD OF THE WHALE PHOS-
PHORIC LIGHT CAUSE THEREOF LUMINOSITY OF THE OCEAN.
EFERE1STCE has elsewhere been made in
this volume to the immense amount of
animal life that exists in the ocean, not
only in the form of fish of all sizes, but in that of
animalcules, which, although scarcely visible to the
naked eye, are, in some cases, so innumerable as to
give a distinct colouring to the water.
The Medusae , or, more familiarly, sea blubbers,
are seen in the waters that lave our own shores.
They are of various sizes, from that of a large plate
to a pin-head. They are almost colourless, like
clear jelly, and when carelessly observed, seem to
be dead objects drifting with the tide; but a closer
observation shows that they are possessed of life,
though not of a particularly active kind, and that
they swim by alternate contractions and expansions
of their bodies. These creatures constitute a large
part of the whale's food. Some of them are flat,
some semi-globular, others are bell -shaped, while
ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA. 207
some have got little heads and small fins. Of these
last it is said that each little creature has no fewer
than three hundred and sixty thousand minute
suckers on its head with which it seizes its prey.
When we think of the exceeding sinallness of the
creatures thus preyed upon, and consider the fact
that each little thing must obtain food by making
war upon some creatures still smaller than itself, we
are led almost in spite of ourselves into that mysteri-
ously metaphysical question infinitesimal divisi-
bility ; which may be translated thus the endless
division and subdivision of atoms. This subject has
puzzled the heads of the profoundest philosophers
of all ages ; we will not, therefore, puzzle our readers
with it any further.
Scoresby tells us that the colour of the Greenland
Sea varies from ultramarine blue to olive-green, from
the purest transparency to striking opacity; and that
these colours are permanent, and do not depend on
the state of the weather, but on the quality of the
water. He observed that whales were found in
much greater numbers in the green than in the blue
water ; and he found, on examining the former with
the microscope, that its opacity and its colour were
due to countless multitudes of those animalcules on
which the whale feeds.
We need scarcely remark that it is utterly beyond
the power of man to form anything approaching to
a correct conception of the amount of life that is thus
shown to exist in the ocean. Although it has pleased
208 ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA.
the Creator to limit our powers, yet it lias also pleased
him to leave the limit of those powers undefined.
We may not, indeed, ever hope in this life to attain
to perfect knowledge, nevertheless, by " searching "
we may " find out wisdom ; " and certain it is, that,
although there undoubtedly must be a point of
knowledge on any given subject which man cannot
reach, there is in man a power incessantly to ex-
tend his knowledge and increase his powers of
conception, by each successive effort that he makes
in his course from the cradle to the grave.
Even although we were told the exact number of
the little creatures that inhabit the sea, we could
not, by any simple effort of the mind, however
powerful, form a conception of what that number
implied. We might shut ourselves up like the
hermits of old, abstract our thoughts from all
other things, and ponder the subject for weeks or
months together, and at the termination of our effort
we should be as wise as we were at its commence-
ment, but no wiser. But by searching round the
subject, and comparing lesser things with greater,
although we should still fail to arrive at a full com-
prehension of the truth, we may advance our powers
of conception very considerably beyond the point
attained by our first effort ; and which point, as we
have said, could not be surmounted by a hair's breadth
by the mere exertion of simple or abstract thought.
Dr. Scoresby's remarks on the subject of animal
life in the ocean, are so graphic and curious that we
MEDUSJ3 : THETR APPEARANCE. 209
extract the passages verbatim from the admirable
memoir of that gentleman, written by his nephew.
He says :
" I procured a quantity of snow from a piece of
ice that had been washed by the sea, and was greatly
discoloured by the decomposition of some peculiar
substance upon it. A little of this snow dissolved
in a wine-glass appeared perfectly nebulous the
water being found to contain a great number of
semi-transparent spherical substances, with others
resembling small portions of fine hair. On examin-
ing these substances with a compound microscope,
I was enabled to make the following observa-
tions :
" The semi-transparent globules appeared to con-
sist of an animal of the medusa kind. It was from
one-twentieth to one-thirtieth of an inch in diameter.
Its surface was marked with twelve distinct patches,
or nebulae, of dots of a brownish colour. These dots
were disposed in pairs, four pairs or sixteen pairs
alternately, composing one of the nebula. The body
of the medusa was transparent. When the water
containing these animals was heated, it emitted a
very strong odour, in some respects resembling the
smell of oysters when thrown on hot coals, but much
more offensive.
" The fibrous or hair-like substances were more
easily examined, being of a darker colour. They
varied in length from a point to one-tenth of an
inch ; and when highly magnified, were found
210 MEDUSA : THEIR NUMBER.
beautifully moiiiliforai. Whether they were living
animals, and possessed of locomotion, I could not
ascertain. They possessed the property of decom-
posing light, and in some cases showed all the
colours of the spectrum very distinctly.
" I afterwards examined the different qualities of
sea water, and found these substances very abundant
in that of an olive-green colour ; and also occurring,
but in lesser quantity, in the bluish-green water.
The number of medusae in the olive-green water was
found to be immense. They were about one-fourth
of an inch asunder. In this proportion, a cubic inch
of water must contain 64; a cubic foot 110,592 ; ;%
cubic fathom 23,887,872 ; -and a cubic mile about
23,888,000,000,000,000."
Of course we have, in the last two numbers,
reached the utterly incomprehensible ; but Dr.
Scoresby goes into comparisons which help us a
little, at least to ascertain how hopelessly beyond
our conceptions such numbers are.
"From soundings made in the situation where
these animals were found, it is probable the sea is
upwards of a mile in depth ; but whether these sub-
stances occupy the whole depth is uncertain. Pro-
vided, however, the depth to which they extend be
but two hundred and fifty fathoms, the above im-
mense number of one species may occur in the space
of two miles square. It may give a better concep-
tion of the amount of medusae in this extent, if we
calculate the length of time that would be requisite,
MEDUSAE: THEIR MOTIONS. 211
a certain number of persons, for counting this
number. Allowing that one person could count a
million in seven days, which is barely possible, it
would have required that eighty thousand persons
should have started at the creation of the world to
complete the enumeration at the present time !
" What a stupendous idea this gives of the im-
mensity of creation, and of the bounty of Divine
Providence in furnishing such a profusion of life
in a region so remote from the habitations of men !
" The larger portion of these medusa?, consisting
of transparent substances of a lemon-yellow colour,
and globular form, appeared to possess very little power
of motion. Some of them were seen advancing by a
slight waving motion, at the rate of a hundred and
eightieth of an inch in a second \ and others, spin-
ning round with considerable celerity, gave great in-
terest and liveliness to the examination. But the
progressive motion of the most active, however dis-
tinct and rapid it might appear under a high magni-
fying power, was, in reality, extremely slow ; for it
did not exceed an inch in three minutes. At this
rate they would require one hundred and fifty-one
days to travel a nautical mile.
" The vastness of their numbers, and their exceed-
ing minuteness, are circumstances, discovered in the
examination of these animalcules, of uncommon in-
terest. In a drop of water examined by a power of
28.224 (magnified superficies) there were fifty in
number, on an average, in each square of the mi-
212 MEDUSA: MINUTE AND PHOSPHORESCENT.
crometer glass, of an eight hundred and fortieth of
an inch ; and as the drop occupied a circle on a plate
of glass containing 529 of these squares, there must
have been, in this single drop of water, taken out of
the yellowish-green sea, in a place by no means the
most discoloured, about 26,450 animalcules. Hence,
reckoning sixty drops to a dram, there would be a
number in a gallon of water exceeding, by one half,
the amount of the population of the whole globe !
It gives a powerful conception of the minuteness
and wonders of creation, when we think of m^e
than twenty-six thousand animals living, obtain-
ing subsistence, and moving perfectly at their ease,
without annoyance to one another, in a single drop
of water A whale requires a sea, an ocean, to
sport in. About one hundred and fifty millions of
these animalcules would have abundant room in a
tumbler of water ! "
But besides furnishing food to the whale, and, no
doubt, to many other of the inhabitants of the deep,
those medusae are the cause of the phosphorescent
light that sometimes glows on the ocean with re-
splendent brilliancy. We see this light oftentimes
on our own coasts. It is usually of a pale bluish-
white colour, more or less intense, apparently, ac-
cording to the condition of the creatures by which
it is emitted. It can only be seen at night. We
have seen it on the west coast of Scotland, so bright
that the steamer in which we sailed left behind her
what appeared to be a broad highway of liquid fire.
LUMINOSITY OF THE SEA. 213
At times it requires vigorous motion, such as
takes place when an oar is dipped, a stone thrown,
or paddle-wheels dashed into the water; but at
other times, the mere motion of the ocean swell,
even in calm weather, is sufficient to stir up the
lambent light and cause the crest of every undula-
tion to glitter as if tipped with burnished silver. In
such circumstances we have seen the ends of the
oars of a boat silvered with it when lifted out of the
wave, and the drops which fell from them before be-
ing redipped resembled the most beautiful diamonds.
Mr. P. H. Gosse, in his interesting work, "The
Ocean," gives the following account of this lumi-
nosity of the sea, as witnessed by himself on one
occasion :
"In a voyage to the Grulf of Mexico, I saw the
water in those seas more splendidly luminous than
I had ever observed before. It was indeed a mag-
nificent sight, to stand on the fore-part of the vessel
and watch her breasting the waves. The mass of
water rolled from her bows as white as milk, stud-
ded with those innumerable sparkles of blue light.
The nebulosity instantly separated into small masses,
curdled like clouds of marbles, leaving the water be-
tween of its own clear blackness ; the clouds soon
subsided, but the sparks remained. Sometimes one
of these points, of greater size and brilliancy than
the rest, would suddenly burst into a small cloud of
superior whiteness to the mass, and be then lost in
it. The curdling of the milky appearance into clouds
214
LUMINOSITY OF THE SEA.
and masses, and its quick subsidence, were what I
had never before observed elsewhere."
PHOSPHORESCENT SEA.
Many scientific travellers have carefully examined
this subject, and we believe that all agree in refer-
ring this beautiful appearance to the medusae. One
gentleman drew a bucketful of water from the sea
LUMINOSITY OF THE SEA.
215
while it was in this condition, and found, on ex-
amining it in a dark place, that the little creatures
" could be distinctly seen emitting a bright speck of
light. Sometimes this was like a sudden flash, at
others appearing like an oblong or round luminous
point, which continued bright for a short time, like
a lamp lit beneath the water, and moving through
it, still possessing its definite shape, and then sud-
denly disappearing. When the bucket was sharply
struck on the outside, there would appear at once a
great number of these luminous bodies, which re-
tained their brilliant appearance for a few seconds,
and then all was dark again. They evidently ap-
peared to have it under their own will, giving out
their light frequently, at various depths in the water,
without any agitation being given to the bucket. At
times might be seen minute but pretty bright specks
of light, darting across a piece of water and then
vanishing; the motion of the light being exactly
that of the cyclops through the water. Upon re-
moving a tumblerful from the bucket, and taking it
to the light, a number of cyclops were accordingly
found swimming and darting about in it."
We have given the above quotation at full length,
because it proves, in an interesting manner, the fact
that phosphorescence, or luminosity, of the sea is
actually produced by multitudes of living creatures.
We cannot pass from it, however, without express-
ing our difference of opinion in regard to the power
of the medusae to emit their light " at will."
216 LUMINOSITY OF THE SEA.
It seems much more probable that the light is the
result of passion and action. When a man's feel-
ings are strongly roused, whether pleasurably or
otherwise, he usually starts into action under a sud-
den impulse which sends the blood violently through
his veins, causing his face to become flushed and red.
This reddening is not the result of will. It is the
unavoidable result of passionate impulse, and could
not possibly be produced by an effort of the will.
It is well known that electric fluid permeates the
bodies of all animals, more or less ; and it is quite
conceivable that under the influence of nervous im-
pulse one creature should become luminous, while
another only becomes red. Man leaps and sings for
joy ; and the result is, that the actions cause his
countenance to glow with colour. The marine ani-
malcule, experiencing a sudden influx of delight,
darts hither and thither under the strong impulse
of its exuberant glee ; and the result is, that its
little body gleams with light. Vigorous action is
the direct cause of the emission of light in the one
case, just as vigorous action is the direct cause of
the suffusion of the countenance in the other. But
in both cases the primary cause is passion at least
so it seems to us.
No doubt fear as well as joy may create vigorous
action, and produce the same result; but as we
know that, as a general rule, there is much more of
joy than of fear dwelling at all times in the hearts
of God's creatures, we can well believe that the
LUMINOSITY OF THE SEA. 217
amount of luminosity produced in the sea by the
latter passion is immeasurably smaller than that
produced by the former. We are thus, therefore,
set free to indulge in the pleasing reflection that
when we behold that magnificent gleaming of the
sea, which almost resembles liquid silver reflecting
the stars of heaven, we are witnessing the frolic-
some and joyous gambols of those myriads of little
beings to whom the beneficent Creator has assigned
the ocean as their dwelling-place.
The theory which we have ventured to propound
in regard to vigorous impulse (whether of joy or
fear) being the cause of eliciting luminosity, is sup-
ported in some degree by the remark in our last
quotation, that when the bucket was sharply struck,
there appeared at once a number of luminous bodies,
which shone for a few seconds, and then disappeared.
Undoubtedly the poor little things got a fright
when their residence was sharply assailed in such
an unusual manner ; their energies were roused,
and their light emitted. Then, as they gradually
calmed down, their light disappeared.
We are further told that when a drop of sulphuric
acid was put into a tumbler of water, " several
bright flashes were seen." This, we venture to think,
was somewhat similar to the putting of a few drops
of brandy and water into the human stomach ; the
usual result of which is, as we all know, to produce
several bright flashes of wit^ if not of light, or of
something at least meant to be remarkably luminous !
218 LUMINOSITY OF THE SEA.
But this luminosity is not entirely confined to
the minute creatures of the sea. Some fish have
the power of emitting light. Some species of the
shark emit a greenish light ; and the sun-fish is
said, when seen down in the sea on a dark night,
to glow like a white-hot cannon-ball. Fish when
dead and putrid frequently glow in the dark with
a truly magnificent light, as can be proved by every
one who will take the trouble to procure several
kinds of fish, and keep them, for the purpose of
proving the fact, in a dark closet.
Of all the minute inhabitants of the deep, that
which is to our mind the most curious, both as
to its nature and its stupendous works, is the
coral insect. This creature is much too important
to be dragged in at the tail of a chapter. We will,
therefore, commence its history in a new one.
CHAPTER XV.
CORAL INSECTS AND CORAL ISLANDS POLYNESIA OPERATIONS OF
THE CORAL INSECT GROWTH OF CORAL REEFS.
JjANY of the large and beautiful islands that
stud the Pacific Ocean, like emeralds in a
field of blue, are artificial; that is to
say, they were made by artists they were actually
built by artisans !
These artisans are the coral insects ; and as they
not only affect the face of the sea by raising large
islands above it, but also, in consequence of their
labours, assist in causing the circulation of the
ocean, we think they are justly entitled to very
special attention.
The great archipelago called Polynesia covers
an area of the Pacific nearly 5000 miles in length,
and not far short of 2000 in breadth. Some of the
islands of this group are of volcanic origin, and
some are crystal; but by far the greater number
are of coral formation the work of those curious
little insects, which are so small that they inhabit
a dwelling sometimes little larger than a pin-point.
220 CORAL ISLANDS.
The manner in which these islands are made is,
to some extent, a matter of uncertainty. The most
generally received opinion is, that the insects fasten
round the summit of a submarine mountain, and
build upwards until they reach the surface of the
sea, where they die, and their labours cease. As,
however, the sea is sometimes unfathomable close
to those islands, it has been supposed that the sub-
marine islands on which the corallines began to
build have gradually subsided, and that, as they
did so, the insects always built a little more, so as
to keep the top of their structures on a level with
the sea. Above the sea they cannot build. To be
washed by the waves is essential to their existence.
We do not think this a very satisfactory theory,
because it supposes a prolonged subsiding of these
islands, and then an unaccountably sudden stop-
page. For although the corallines might continue
to build during the whole time of subsidence, it
were utterly impossible that the coral island, with
its luxuriant herbage, could be formed until that
subsidence should have ceased. The manner in
which the islands are formed makes this obvious.
"When the coral reef, as it is called, reaches the
surface, it advances no further. Soon the action of
the waves breaks off the branches of the upper por-
tions of coral, which are tossed upon the reef, and
pulverized into fine sand. This goes on increasing
until the island rises a little above the waves.
When this happens, birds alight there ; sea-drift
CORAL ISLANDS I THEIR FORMATION. 223
is carried thither; seeds are blown to it by the
wind; and gradually a few green blades arise.
From this little beginning it is easy to conceive
the process by which at last a nourishing island
springs up. At the same time, it is not easy to
see how such islands could ever be formed on the
supposition that the submarine rocks on which they
were founded were perpetually subsiding.
But be that as it may, we have no difficulty in
understanding the fact that the coral insect does
build those islands. It possesses the power of
secreting the lime held in solution by sea water,
and depositing the same on the rocks below the
waves. The coral rock is the edifice of the coralline.
The insect itself is a soft and
very minute worm, which,
when washed by the waves,
thrusts its head out of its tiny
little door, and spreading I
abroad its numerous feelers,
so that it resembles a beauti-
ful little star, moves these
about as if enjoying itself
though, doubtless, it is actu- CORAL INSECT -
ally engaged in the process of manufacturing its
little atom of coral rock.
It is extremely interesting to think of the im-
mense power of union thus exhibited. Singly,
those little creatures could not produce a sufficient
result to attract the attention of any creature save
224 THE CORAL INSECT.
such as chanced to come in direct and close contact
with its little cell. United, they have formed
vast islands, which have become the abode of man,
and which, in the aggregate, form no inconsiderable
portion of the globe.
The consideration of this leads us to perceive
that God has ordained that units cannot, separately,
accomplish much ; and that united effort, in order
to be successful, requires the harmonious action of
units. "A house divided against itself cannot
stand." The innumerable and eminently beautiful
isles of the Pacific had never stood where they now
stand if the curious, and separately insignificant,
little architects that reared them had not wrought
unitedly upon a fixed and systematic plan each
insect working its utmost from the hour of its birth
until that of its death.
There are various kinds of .coral insects, which
form varied species of coral rock. Some kinds of
coral assume the form of rounded masses ; some are
like a branching shrub ; others are in layers, or
thin plates ; and some are shaped like the human
brain, from which they derive their name brain-
stones. These different kinds differ also in colour,
and thus present a beautiful appearance when seen
at the bottom of clear and shallow water.
In regard to the rate at which the corallines build
their cells there is some diversity of opinion some
asserting that the process is imperceptible, while
others state as positively that it is rapid. There
GROWTH OF CORAL.
225
BRANCHING CORAL.
can be no doubt that some localities and positions
are more favourable to the growth of coral than
others. t)r. Allan, while at Madagascar, made
several experiments to test this. He selected seve-
ral masses of coral, each weighing about ten pounds,
and of different species. These he placed three feet
below the surface of the sea, and staked them in
to prevent removal. In a little more than six months
(4510 15
226
GROWTH OF CORAL.
BRAIN-STONE CORAL.
they were found to have risen nearly to the surface,
and to have attached themselves to the solid rock.
There is also a case mentioned of a ship in the
Persian Gulf which, in the course of twenty months,
had her copper encased with living coral to the
thickness of two feet.
On the other hand, it is asserted, and we doubt
not with equal truth, that many reefs do not seem
to increase in size in the course of many years.
When a coral reef has reached the surface, the
formation of an island instantly begins ; but it
necessarily takes a long time ere this island be-
comes habitable by man. Among the first plants
that raise their heads to the sea-breeze is the grace-
THE COCOA-NUT PALM. 227
ful cocoa-nut palm. This tree is exceedingly hardy,
and is found growing on reefs which are so low
that at a distance the trees seem to be standing on
the surface of the water. Indeed many of them
spring out of the pure white sand, and their roots
are washed perpetually by the salt spray. Never-
theless, the fruit of such trees is sweet and good.
Coral islands of the kind we have just described
seldom rise more than a few feet above the level of
the sea ; but most of them are clothed with luxu-
riant vegetation.
We might easily fill a volume on the subject of
the ocean's inhabitants, small and great ; but we
think the few to which we have made reference is
sufficient for the purpose of showing that one set
of creatures accounts for that strange luminosity of
the ocean which is seen at times in all marine parts
of the globe, while another set accounts not only for
the sudden appearance of coral islands in the sea
where no such islands existed in days of old, but
also, partly, for that circulation of the waters of the
ocean which is absolutely necessary to the well-
being of all the creatures on this earth.
There are other animals in the sea, besides me-
dusse, which assist in giving luminosity to its waters ;
and there are other insects, besides corallines, which
extract its lime, destroy its equilibrium, and assist
in causing its perpetual motion ; but the two spe-
cies which we have described are the best types of
the respective classes to which they belong.
CHAPTER XVI.
VOLCANIC ISLANDS OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENTS "ATLANTIS"
INSTANCE OF THE FORMATION OF A VOLCANIC ISLAND CON-
CLUSION.
IN the last chapter we described the manner
in which a certain class of islands in the
South Seas are formed ; in the present
we will make a few observations on another class,
which have sprung up from the bottom of the sea,
as if by magic, under the irresistible influence of
fire.
There are volcanoes in the sea, as well as 011 the
land; and these volcanoes have in former times up-
heaved huge masses of land so as to form large
islands, while in other cases they have caused islands
formerly in existence to subside and disappear.
In the writings of the ancients we find reference
made to an island which, if it ever did exist, now
exists no longer. It was situated opposite the
Straits of Gibraltar, was nearly two hundred miles
in length, and was called " Atlantis " hence the
name of the Atlantic Ocean. Many believe, and
ATLANTIS. 229
with some reason, we think, that this island was not
altogether a myth, although much that is said of
it is undoubtedly fabulous.
Plato tells us that it was a large island in
the Western Ocean, situated before or opposite to
the Straits of Grades ; and that out of this island
there was an easy passage into some others which
, lay near a large continent, exceeding in bigness all
Europe and Asia. So far Plato may have told the
truth, and from this passage it is conjectured that
the existence of the continent of America was known
to the ancients. But he goes on, immediately after,
to draw upon his imagination, and to tell us that
Neptune settled on this island, and that his posterity
dwelt there for a period of nine thousand years in
the midst of fertility and abundance. But, not con-
tent with their ample possessions and prolific soil,
they went over to Africa and Europe, and even
penetrated into Asia, bent on conquest.
Passing from this mixture of probable truth and
undoubted fable, Plato then asserts4hat the island of
Atlantis finally sank and disappeared. This may
or may not be true, but there is more reason for our
crediting the statement than many people would
suppose. Certain it is that no such island exists
at the present time, but it is believed by some that
the Azores, which are volcanic in their formation,
are the summits of the mountain ranges of the
Atlantis of the ancients.
But the best evidence we have of the possible
230 FORMATION OF A VOLCANIC ISLE.
existence of such an island is the fact that in modern
times an island has been seen to rise out of the sea,
and, after a time, to disappear, under the influence
of volcanic action.
This remarkable event is related by Captain Til-
lard, an ofticer of the British Navy, who saw it 011
the 12th of June 1811, when approaching the island
of St. Michael. On this occasion smoke was seen
to rise from the surface of the sea, and, soon after,
showers of cinders to burst forth. We cannot do
better than give the captain's own words, as fol-
lows :
" Imagine an immense body of smoke rising from
the sea, the surface of which was marked by the
silvery rippling of the waves. In a quiescent state
it had the appearance of a circular cloud revolving
on the water, like a horizontal wheel, in various and
irregular involutions, expanding itself gradually on
the lee side ; when, suddenly, a column of the
blackest cinders, ashes, and stones, would shoot up
in the form of a spire, at an angle of from ten to
twenty degrees from a perpendicular line, the angle
of inclination being universally to windward. This
was rapidly succeeded by a second, third, and fourth
shower, each acquiring greater velocity, and over-
topping the other, till they had attained an altitude
as much above the level of our eye as the sea was
below it.
" As the impetus with which the several columns
were severally propelled diminished, and their ascend-
SINGULAR PHENOMENA.
231
SUBMARINE VOLCANO.
ing motion had nearly ceased, they broke into various
branches resembling a group of pines. These again
formed themselves into festoons of white feathery
FORMATION OF A VOLCANIC ISLE.
smoke, in the most fanciful manner imaginable, in-
termixed with the finest particles of falling ashes ;
which at one time assumed the appearance of in-
numerable plumes of black and white ostrich
feathers surmounting each other; at another, that
of the light wavy branches of a weeping willow.
" During these bursts the most vivid flashes of
lightning continually issued from the densest part
of the volcano ; and the cloud of smoke now ascend-
ing to an altitude much above the highest point to
which the ashes were projected, rolled off in large
masses of fleecy clouds, gradually expanding them-
selves before the wind, in a direction nearly hori-
zontal, and drawing Tip to them a quantity of water-
spouts, which formed a most beautiful and striking
addition to the general appearance of the scene."
Such is the description given of this submarine
volcano in action ; and the crater which was thrown
up at the time was about twenty feet above the
level of the sea. As Captain Tillard could not,
however, delay his voyage to make further observa-
tions at that time, the action that subsequently took
place is not known ; but its results were seen shortly
afterwards.
In about three weeks after the date of his passing
the spot, Captain Tillard returned to it and found
an island of about a mile in circumference, with a
height of between two and three hundred feet at its
highest point. There was 110 violent eruption
on, although the craters still emitted smoke.
CONCLUSION. 233
He therefore landed, and, on reaching the largest
crater, found it to be full of boiling water, which over-
flowed 'and found its way to the ocean in a river of
about six yards in width. This island, however,
was not a permanent addition to the world's archi-
pelago. It sank into the ocean again, and disap-
peared in October of the same year in which it rose.
In commencing this little book we set out with
the intention of rambling hither and thither, among
things that relate to the sea, without regard to
order. We have carried out our intention ; and
t
now, at the close of our task, find that the more we
listen to the Ocean's Voice, the more we find its
tale to be interminable, though the reverse of unin-
teresting.
In these rambles we have sought to treat chiefly
of those scientific facts relating to the sea and the
atmospheric ocean, which are not so frequently
made the subject of books for the young, as are the
wild and daring deeds of man upon the surface of
the mighty deep.
It is not sufficient that man should become
acquainted with the doings of his fellows on the
sea. This is but one branch of general know-
ledge, and a very secondary one compared with that
infinitely higher branch which treats of the work-
ings of the Almighty in the ocean; workings
which render it what it is not merely a means of
commercial enterprise for man and a home for fish,
234 CONCLUSION.
but also a great purifier and revivifier of the earth
and sweetener of the atmosphere. God is the great
first cause of all that is and that operates in the
universe. It were an act of presumption to inquire
into what we may term the first acts of the Al-
mighty's power. But there is no presumption on
the contrary there is propriety, as well as the highest
gratification of which the human mind is capable
in penetrating through the paths of knowledge up
to that first series of second causes which circle like
a glory round the fountain-head. We may not put
the question, " How did God create all things out of
nothing'?" but, all things having been created, it
is quite legitimate to inquire how the circles of their
manifold operations are carried on, and in what re-
spect the things that be do affect each other.
No book that has of late years issued from the
press treats more eloquently and interestingly of such
subjects of inquiry than that admirable work of Cap-
tain Maury of the United States Navy, entitled
" The Physical Geography of the Sea." Much of the
substance of what we have written has been culled
from the pages of that fascinating volume. But we
have merely plucked one or two leaves, as it were,
and presented them to our readers in the hope
that they may be tempted by their fragrance to
pluck the flower. The mysteries of the atmospheric
and aqueous oceans are here treated of fully, yet so
agreeably, that one is frequently apt to fancy one is
perusing the pages of romance.
CONCLUSION. 235
In our own little book we have been compelled
to skim lightly, and, in many places, to pass over
subjects of great interest.
As for other subjects connected with the sea, of
which we may not treat, they are innumerable. Of
the sea- weeds that clothe the bottom , of the deep
with the rich profusion and glowing colours of the
gardens of earth of the myriads of animalcules (be-
sides those we have mentioned) that disport in its
waters and fill the abyss with life and lambent fire
of the great whales and other huge creatures that
revel in its depths and lash its waters in their ter-
rible might of these and a host of kindred subjects,
our space forbids our saying more than that the
Voice of Ocean has much to tell us in regard to
them, and in regard to the provident care of their
beneficent Creator.
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