UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 FROM THH LIBRARY ()! 
 
 BENJAMIN PARKE AVERY. 
 
 GIFT OF MRS. AVERY, 
 
 August, 1806. 
 
 Access ions A/it > . (p , / In f U Ch i s s M > . 
 

WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 A COMPANION TO 
 
 STRAY LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 M, SCHELE DE VERE. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY. 
 
ENTERED AccoRDma TO ACT OP CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1869, 
 BY G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 
 
 IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OP THE DISTRICT COURT OP THE UNITED STATES POR 
 THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OP NEW YORK. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY 
 
 DENNIS BRO'S & THORNE, 
 AUBURN, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. FABLES AND FACTS 7 
 
 II. ODD FISH 88 
 
 III. PEARLS 75 
 
 IV. CORALS 103 
 
 V. THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR 125 
 
 VI. A PINCH OP SALT 145 
 
 VII. MINE OYSTER 176 
 
 VIII. LIGHT AT SEA 213 
 
 IX. LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES 248 
 
 X. A GRAIN OF SAND 287 
 
 XI. MERCURY 302 
 
 XII. THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. . . .328 
 
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 [U'liyBRSIIYJ 
 
 ^^ttrj$^ 
 
 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 i. 
 .FABLES AND FACTS. 
 
 "Whence and what art thou, execrable shape." MELTOW. 
 
 mHE great sea has its mountains and its deep val- 
 leys, with forests of weird, waving plants on the 
 former, and, far down in the dark dells, masses of dismal 
 debris, wrecks of vessels, and decaying bodies of men. 
 There lies, half-covered with a crust of lime and hideous 
 green slime, an ancient gun shining in sickly green ; here, 
 half-hidden, a quaint box filled with gold that was picked 
 up amid the snows of the Peruvian Andes, and scattered 
 over all a motley crowd of oddly-shaped shells. The 
 empty skull of an old sea-captain has sunk down close 
 to the broken armor of a huge turtle, and a deadly har- 
 poon rusts and rots by the side of the enormous tooth of 
 a walrus. Still farther down, " in the lower deep of the 
 
8 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 lowest," lie countless bales of Indian silks, in which 
 large schools of fish dwell peacefully now ; and over all, 
 the silent currents of the ocean move incessantly to and 
 fro, while millions of jelly fish throng every wave to feed 
 the giant whales, and immense hosts of herring dash 
 frightened through the waters to escape the voracious 
 shark. Not only mountains and valleys, however, break 
 the apparent monotony of the vast deep, but all that the 
 surface of the earth can present of picturesque beauty 
 or horrible hideousness is repeated below. In one place 
 the waters foam and the waves break without rest or re- 
 pose against oddly-shaped cliffs, which do not rise suffi- 
 ciently high to be seen above ; in another, they wash 
 slowly and sadly against a wide desert of white sand. 
 Where lofty mountains rise from the depth to a height 
 not inferior to that of the tallest of Alpine summits, and 
 vast forests of sea-tang clothe them in brilliant green, the 
 sea circles mournfully all around in ceaseless windings, 
 while farther on, where the valley sinks into the very 
 bowels of the earth, and eternal darkness covers all with 
 its mysterious mantle, the waters themselves are hushed 
 and apparently motionless, as if awe-struck by the un- 
 broken silence and the unfathomable night below. 
 
 The earth, it has been said, is one vast graveyard, and 
 man can nowhere put down his foot without stepping on 
 the remains of a brother. This is not less true with re- 
 gard to the ocean. It is an ever-hungry grave, in which 
 millions and millions of once living beings lie buried, 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 9 
 
 and new hosts are added from year to year. It is the 
 stage on which murder and maddest conflict are going 
 on without ceasing. Immeasurable hatred dwells in those 
 cold, unfeeling waters and yet for a good purpose, 
 since it is only through this unceasing destruction and 
 change that life can be maintained in the crowded world 
 that dwells in the " waters below the earth." The sea 
 has its lions, its tigers, and, wolves, as well as the earth 
 above, its crocodiles and gigantic snakes, which daily 
 sally forth to seek their prey and murder whole races ; 
 it has its medusae and polypi, which spread their nets 
 unceasingly for smaller fry ; while whales, and their kin- 
 dred, swallow millions of minute beings at a single gulp, 
 swordfish and sea-bears hunt the giants of the lower 
 world, and wretched parasites wait their opportunity to 
 enter the fatty coats of huge monsters. Every thing is 
 hunting, chasing, and murdering, but there is heard no 
 merry " Tally Ho ! " no war-cry encourages the weary com- 
 batants; no groan of pain, no shout of victory ever 
 breaks the dread silence. The battles are fought in dumb 
 passion, and no sound accompanies the fierce conflict but 
 the splash of foaming waters and the last spasmodic 
 effort of the wounded victim. 
 
 Can we wonder, then, that from time immemorial the 
 sea has been peopled by the learned and the ignorant alike 
 with marvels of every kind ? It is the good fortune of 
 travellers, and especially of those who " go down to the 
 great deep," to be either determined that all they have 
 
10 WONDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Been must needs be unique, unheard of, and marvellous, 
 or disposed to follow the nil admirari doctrine, and to 
 insist that they have never met with any thing which was 
 not perfectly familiar to them already from previous 
 knowledge, or at least very easily accounted for by their 
 superior mind. Vanity induces the former to magnify, 
 self-love teaches the other to diminish all they have seen, 
 and thus littleness of mind unfits both for correct obser- 
 vation and candid reports. The ancients, with their very 
 limited knowledge of the sea and its life, very naturally 
 transferred the features of the world above to that be- 
 low the waters, and their lively imagination peopled the 
 ocean with all the animals that were familiar to their 
 eyes. There were sea-horses and sea-lions, poisonous sea- 
 hares and ravenous sea-wolves, sea-swine, and even sea- 
 locusts. There was the Chilon, with a man's head, living 
 frugally on nothing but his own viscous humors; and 
 there was the Balena, not so very like to a whale, and 
 most cruel to its mate. There were those real wonders 
 of the sea, the Dolphins, who swam about with their ba- 
 bies at the breast, and their eyes in their blade-bones, 
 who dug graves for their deceased parents and friends, 
 followed them in funeral procession, and buried them in 
 submarine graveyards out of the way of the fishes. 
 There was that strange fish, the Dies, with two wings 
 and two legs, which in the perfect state lived only for a 
 day. There was the Phoca, another oceanic brute, who 
 was perpetually fighting with his wife until he killed her. 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 11 
 
 Always remaining in the same spot, where he had mur- 
 dered one wife, he disposed of her body and took another, 
 thus playing Henry VIII. to a series of wives, until he 
 either died himself or found a mate who was a match for 
 him. 
 
 But these were only the teachings of that despised 
 science, Natural History. Of far greater interest to the 
 nation, and of deeper concern for their future welfare, 
 were the legends of the god-like shepherds, a Proteus, a 
 Nereus, and a Glaucus, who tended the aquatic flocks of 
 Neptune, and were endowed with marvellous powers. 
 We have all seen those classic bas-reliefs, in which the 
 great Poseidon is accompanied by monsters, half-horses, 
 half-fishes, while others wear partly the semblance of 
 men, and blow trumpets made of huge shells with such 
 terrible force, and such fearful sound, that their notes 
 calmed the stormy sea ! These hippocampi, sometimes 
 provided with cloven feet and long tails, and then again 
 covered all over with scales, and of the color of the sea, 
 were favorite forms with some of the greatest sculptors 
 of antiquity, like Myron and Scopas ; and yet it is held 
 doubtful whether they were altogether the offspring of 
 poetic or artistic inspiration. Naturalists, as well as ar- 
 tists, have been led to think that extraordinary creatures 
 of somewhat similar shape may have really peopled the 
 seas in ancient times, and that they, like the giants of 
 old, which are now reduced to the moderate proportions 
 of our day, may have dwindled down into the diminutive 
 
12 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 hippocampi which abound in Southern waters. . These 
 little sea-horses, as they are familiarly called, have the 
 perfect form of a horse's head, with prominent round 
 eyes, and a steep, straight brow, while the gills float in 
 exact imitation of a mane from the proudly-arched neck. 
 They could not have copied the walrus, as that strange, 
 monstrous animal, of which we shall presently have to 
 say more, lives only in polar regions, to which the ancients 
 did not have access. When the Tritons, on the other 
 hand, were represented in human shape, they belonged, 
 of course, simply to the realm of fables. And yet strong 
 and frequent evidence is given by ancient authors of 
 the real existence of beings whom they resembled. De- 
 mostratus, for instance, relates that such a Triton was still 
 to be seen, imperfectly embalmed, in a temple of Bac- 
 chus at Tanagria. 
 
 It seems that there had been enmity for generations 
 between these strange children of the sea, and the good 
 people of Tanagria. One of the Tritons had been in the 
 habit of coming forth every night from the waters to 
 steal the cattle on shore, and all efforts to catch him on 
 the part of the dwellers there had long been in vain. 
 At last they placed a vessel, filled with strong wine, on 
 the brow of a steep hill. When the Triton came, accord- 
 ing to his custom, he noticed the vas.e, and was curious 
 to ascertain its contents. He tasted, he liked it, and 
 drank till he fell fast asleep on the edge of the precipice. 
 During his disturbed slumbers, he rolled over and fell 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 13 
 
 from the great height upon the rocks below, where the 
 Tanagrians lay in wait, and wreaked their vengeance on 
 the formidable robber. 
 
 Pausanias saw a smaller Triton at Rome, and from 
 that time the annals of all countries of the world abound 
 with strange legends of uncouth, horrible beings, born 
 and bred in the sea, who entered into ill-fated relations 
 with men, and almost invariably contrived their ruin. 
 The White Lady of Scotland, the Nix or Undine of beau- 
 tiful German lore, the Merminne of the Netherlands, and 
 the Nech our Old Nick of the dismal North, are all 
 children of the marine monsters of antiquity. Among 
 the latter, some were great favorites with poet and priest, 
 and their memory survives to our day. Thus the Ocean 
 itself was represented as the son of the Heavens and the 
 Earth, and the first of that gigantic race of Titans who 
 stormed the abode of the gods, but the only one who did 
 not join in the revolt of Saturn. How the briny deep 
 was made to differ from the vast lakes *with sweet water, 
 their religion did not tell ; but the distinction was made 
 at an early date, for Hesiod already tells us that " nine^ 
 tenths of the waters of the ocean, passing under the 
 earth across dark night, fall in silvery showers upon the 
 bed of the waves, around the earth, and on the back of 
 the seas. One-tenth only, to the great injury of the 
 gods, escaping from a lofty rock, forms the waters of the 
 Styx, and by it the Immortals are fond of swearing." 
 
 Among the vast offspring of the ocean, again, the 
 
14: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Nereids stand foremost by their number and by their 
 beauty. They were all fair young maidens, nearly 
 naked, and are often seen in the frescoes of Pompeii, and 
 elsewhere, in most graceful positions, reclining on the 
 back of sea-horses, or giving drink to thirsty monsters of 
 the deep. It was only when the taste of artists became 
 corrupt, and the fancy of men ran riot amid Eastern fic- 
 tions, that they were represented as ending in fishtails, 
 and as having hair of the color of the sea. Another sea- 
 god, marrying the Muse of Lyric Poetry, was presented 
 by her with three daughters, the Sirens, whom he called 
 Blanche, Harmony, and Virgin Eye ; but, unfortunately, 
 he lost them soon after, when the infuriated Ceres pun- 
 ished them for having allowed the carrying off of her 
 daughter Proserpina, and changed them into monsters, 
 half women, half birds. The unfortunate maidens fled 
 in despair, and hid themselves in the Islands which dot 
 the waters between Sicily and Italy. But even there the 
 curse pursued them still, for the decree had gone forth, 
 that they were to die if ever man should pass them with- 
 out stopping. Behold, now, the poor metamorphosed 
 beauties straining their sweet voices, and blending them 
 with the softest notes of their instruments, in order to 
 attract hapless seamen, and to draw them into ruin. 
 Surely, the ancients felt that sea and land alike are wel- 
 come stages for the fatal skill of the coquette! Only 
 once the sad sirens were foiled in their attempts to win 
 and to ruin the children of men. It was when the 'elite 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 15 
 
 of Grecian heroes sallied forth on their great expedition 
 in search of the Golden Fleece in reality, a company of 
 daring adventurers, who went to take possession of the 
 gold mines in the Ural Mountains and passed close to 
 the islands on which the wretched sisters were living. 
 They came down to the steep sides of the precipices, 
 they displayed their unequalled cha-rms, and sang their 
 sweetest to cast their spell over all their senses. But 
 Orpheus, who had joined the merry company with his 
 lyre, raised his own sweet voice, and soon they were 
 forced by its wondrous power to listen in their turn, and 
 to let the Argo pass unharmed. Perhaps the godlike 
 nature of the great singer was pleaded in their behalf, 
 for they survived the future ; and it was only when cun- 
 ning Ulysses used the coarse trick of filling the ears 
 of his companions with wax, and thus rendered them 
 insensible to their enchantments, that they paid the pen- 
 alty, and were changed into rocks. Even then one of 
 them survived ; for the compassionate waters refused to 
 bury her; they sent her back to the surface, and she 
 became fair Naples, the city of magic beauty, where so 
 many have died from over-enjoyment, obeying literally 
 the ancient saying : Vedi Napoli e poi muori! 
 
 Pliny seems still to have been in doubt as to the real 
 existence of these marine monsters ; at least, he defends 
 himself against the suspicion of believing in them with 
 an earnestness which goes far to prove the lingering 
 doubt. " I do not believe in sirens," he says in his book 
 
16 WONDERS or THE DEEP. 
 
 on birds, " although Dino, father of Clearchus, a famous 
 author, affirms that they exist in India and tempt men by 
 their song, in order to tear them in pieces when they are 
 asleep." In another place, again, he believes them to 
 have been real fish, which recalled, in a vague manner, the 
 features of human beings, and states that several such had 
 been taken on the coast of Gaul. 
 
 The assertion is, strangely enough, supported by later 
 evidence ; for other portions of the earth, and later ages, 
 have all faithfully repeated the legend, and pointed to 
 actual beings in the sea as proof of their truth. Have 
 not even the Arabs who either ignore the sea altogether, 
 or hate it as cursed by their great prophet their weird 
 beings, half men and half ostriches, who live on desolate 
 islands, and devour the bodies of shipwrecked mariners 
 brought to their rocks by the friendly waves? Near 
 Rosetta and Alexandria, in Egypt, the waters are peopled 
 with still stranger creatures, poetically called the Fathers 
 of the Fair, who come only on shore for peaceful purposes, 
 walk quietly about to enjoy the sweet air of heaven and 
 the perfumes of flowers, and then return reluctantly to 
 their dark homes in the great deep. A hundred of them 
 were once captured, but they uttered such very sad sighs 
 and unbearable groanings, that the hunters released them, 
 and saw them plunge with delight into the cool waters. 
 The Old Man of the Sea is familiar to all our readers 
 through the Arabian Nights ; but it is less generally 
 known that he occasionally appeared near Damascus, and 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 17 
 
 then promised a good harvest to the Syrians ; the people 
 were so grateful to him for his benevolence, that they 
 caught him once and married him, fishtail and all, to a 
 fair daughter of the land. The monster was well content, 
 but not so the farmers, for his happy influence had left him. 
 as soon as he had found his master in his wife. Other 
 Arabic authors tell us even the religion of one of those 
 marine beings ; he is called by them the Old Jew, and 
 appears on the night preceding the Sabbath, with his 
 white hair and shaggy coat, on the surface of the Medi- 
 terranean, and remains there, swimming about, plunging, 
 and jumping high, and following the vessels as they pass 
 near his home, till the Sabbath is over, and he sinks once 
 more down under the waters. 
 
 These strange beings, reported to have been found or 
 heard of with at least as much accuracy and as fre- 
 quently as the Sea Serpent of our days, were evidently 
 the ancestors of the mermen and mermaids, the ill-starred, 
 God-forsaken dwellers in the kingdom of waters, the 
 
 " Merman bold, 
 
 Sitting alone, 
 
 Sitting alone 
 
 Under the sea, 
 With a crown of gold, 
 
 On a throne ; 
 And the mermaid fair, 
 
 Singing alone, 
 Combing her hair, 
 
 Under the sea, 
 In a golden curl 
 With a comb of pearl, 
 On a throne." 
 
 For a time Christian authors loved to revive the fables 
 
18 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 of pagan antiquity, or unconsciously repeated the weird 
 fancies of older nations. Soon, however, certain features 
 appear in their accounts, which show that they were 
 either reports of real discoveries of marine monsters, 
 dressed up, perhaps, in somewhat fanciful colors, or at 
 least new inventions in harmony with the spirit of the 
 age. The mermen soon cease to be mere monstrosities ; 
 they appear in a form resembling human beings, often 
 scarcely to be distinguished from the people near whom 
 they live, whence follows more frequent intercourse and 
 a closer intimacy between the two races. One merman, 
 found on the outermost point of Mauritania and brought 
 to Spain, is reported as still having been in part a fish ; 
 but Theodore of Gaza already describes the mermaid, of 
 which he saw several cast ashore on the coast of Greece, 
 as fair and graceful ; one of them he assisted in reaching 
 the water, and immediately she plunged into the waves 
 and was seen no more. Other authors, of such high re- 
 pute that even the great Scaliger may be mentioned 
 among them, tell of such wondrous beings, which they 
 saw themselves or heard of through trustworthy friends. 
 These accounts were, of course, valued only in propor- 
 tion to the wonder they excited, and added nothing to 
 our actual knowledge of the dwellers in the waters. 
 They led, on the contrary, to new errors, and much 
 amusement might be derived from the precepts given to 
 unlucky sailors who should fall in with such sirens. 
 They were advised to cast bottles into the sea, with 
 
FABLES A^D FACTS. 19 
 
 which the monsters would play long enough to give 
 them time to escape ; to stop their ears carefully with 
 wax and oakum, and to invoke aid from on high against 
 their enchantments. The great Cabot, so intimately 
 connected with the history of our continent, furnished 
 the officers of the first vessel that ever attempted the 
 voyage to the fantastic Cathay of those days, with a set 
 of curious instructions. He recommended that prayers 
 should be held twice every day, and all inventions of the 
 Evil One, like dice, cards, and backgammon, should be 
 strictly prohibited. By the side of such excellent sugges- 
 tions are some of more doubtful morality. Thus he enjoins 
 upon the officers to attract the natives of foreign lands, 
 to bring them on board ship, and there to make them 
 drunk with beer and wine till they had revealed all the 
 secrets of their hearts. The rules contain at the end a 
 recommendation "to take good care against certain 
 creatures which, with the heads of men and the tails of 
 fishes, swim about in the fiords and bays armed with 
 bow and arrows, and feed upon human flesh." 
 
 The dark North, with its misty, murky atmosphere, 
 which is reflected in the sombre legends of dismal super- 
 stitions, has its mermen above all others. They are 
 mostly seen when fearful tempests threaten destruction, - 
 or sudden storms bring shipwreck to vessel and sailors 
 alike. It is but here and there that they are painted in 
 softer colors. In one of the legends, a famous giant of 
 the seas, called Rosmer, carries off a Danish maiden of 
 
20 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 great beauty ; she has to live with him in a great moun- 
 tain, to which he comes every now and then from his 
 home in the waters. Her brother, who had sallied forth 
 to find her and to rescue her, lands at the desert rock, 
 and is at first in great danger of being slain and devour- 
 ed by the terrible monster. He succeeds, however, in 
 pacifying the merman, and serves him faithfully for many 
 years. At last he obtains leave to return home, and re- 
 ceives, as reward for his services, a large box filled with 
 gold and precious stones. The giant even condescends 
 to carry the box himself on board the ship, unconscious 
 that the cunning maiden has first taken out all the trea- 
 sures, and then concealed herself in the box, from which 
 she comes forth as soon as the ship has reached the high 
 seas. 
 
 It may readily be imagined that mariners who set out 
 on long voyages to distant, unknown lands, with their 
 minds filled with such images and marvellous stories, 
 were ready to see sirens and other wonders of the deep 
 to their hearts' content. Christopher Columbus even, 
 when sailing along the coast of St. Domingo, met with 
 three sirens, who were dancing on the water. They had, 
 however, no sweet songs with which to allure him, and 
 their silence, combined with their lack of beauty, made 
 him think that they probably " regretted their absence 
 from Greece." There can be little doubt that his sirens 
 were Manatees, huge monsters so called because they 
 carry their young with their flappers, or finlike hands, 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 21 
 
 and give them suck on the breast relations of the great 
 Dugong of India, the only animal yet known that grazes 
 at the bottom of the ocean. It has the strange power of 
 suspending itself steadily in the water, and its jaws are 
 bent in such a curious manner that the mouth is nearly 
 vertical, by which means it is enabled to feed upon the 
 sea-weeds down in the deep, very much as a cow does 
 upon the herbage in the bright sunlight above. The 
 Manatees serve to frighten the children of African slaves 
 even now, when they suddenly rise like " spirits from 
 the vasty deep," their large, gentle eyes looking anxious- 
 ly around, and their young clasped tenderly to their 
 bosom a favorite position of theirs, which has earned 
 them, with Spanish colonists, the name of Fish- Women. 
 The poor Brazilian natives, who still cherish the tradi- 
 tions of their forefathers, fondly believe in the existence 
 of an immense lake in the interior which contains an 
 enormous treasure, guarded and watched over by a siren 
 whom they call the Mai das Aguas. They also believe 
 still in the accounts given by early discoverers of strange 
 beings met in their waters. Did not even brave John 
 Smith, the valiant hero and daring navigator, when he 
 came near our own continent, see a woman swimming 
 gracefully near the vessel ? Her eyes were large, beauti- 
 ful, and full of expression, although rather round, the 
 nose and ears well made, and the hair long and soft, but 
 of sea-green color. His heart was near giving way to all 
 these charms, when the strange being suddenly turned 
 
22 WONDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 over, and showed to her disconcerted admirer a forked 
 fish-tail ! 
 
 Among South American Indians, it seems, tails of mer- 
 men are a favorite subject, though here and there these 
 marine monsters are dreaded with instinctive abhor- 
 rence. Moravian missionaries have sent home strange 
 reports of these superstitions, and yet found themselves 
 unable, in their desire to honor the truth and to avoid 
 misstatements, to deny positively all ground for these 
 traditions. For not only the natives, but the ministers 
 and agents of the pious Brethren themselves, firmly 
 believed that they had met with men and women who 
 lived in the water. They furnished statements, ap- 
 parently made in full earnest and godly sincerity, that 
 they had actually seen brownish beings with human faces 
 and long hair rise suddenly from the water, and that the 
 urgent intercession of the Indians alone had kept them 
 from killing the supernatural beings. The natives looked 
 upon them with superstitious awe, and insisted upon it 
 that to kill one of them would be simply to bring dire 
 calamities upon their settlements and the whole race. 
 It must be presumed that we meet here with stray mem- 
 bers of those aquatic tribes of Indians who live actually 
 more in the water than on land. Martius, and other 
 travellers, down to our day, tell us that the Indians who 
 dwell near the upper branches of the Paraguay, the 
 Maranhao, and other large rivers, remain for hours and 
 hours in the water, and are such expert swimmers that 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 23 
 
 they defy the most powerful current, and dive like water- 
 fowl. A small bundle of leaf-stalks taken from the Bu- 
 riti palm-tree is all they use ordinarily for their support ; 
 at other times they seize an oar, hold it between their 
 feet, and use it as a rudder to steer with, and thus swim, 
 holding their weapons in their muscular arms ; or they 
 leap with incredible agility upon a tree floating along on 
 the swollen stream, sit down on it astride, and thus cross 
 in a few minutes the most rapid current. No cayman or 
 aquatic animal is safe from them, and they fight and 
 defeat the huge capy vara, and the largest serpent, with 
 great courage. They fear literally nothing except the 
 Minho9as, a fabulous creature which is said to live in the 
 rivers and still waters of Equatorial Brazil, and which 
 naturalists believe to be either a giant eel endowed with 
 powerful teeth, or perhaps a large variety of the famous 
 gymnotus with its galvanic battery. These Canoeiros, 
 as the Water-Indians are called, are true Ishmaelites; 
 they are at war with all the other tribes', and are there- 
 fore hunted down like wild beasts ; they have no home 
 and no country of their own, and hence they may very 
 well have given rise to the fabulous reports of mermen 
 still rife among the credulous Indians of that continent. 
 
 In Germany, where folk lore abounds and superstition 
 still has its strong hold on the minds of the masses, 
 gruesome stories are told in the long winter nights of 
 the Nixen, who dwell in the waters near the coast, in 
 crystal-clear rivers, under the dark shadow of ancient 
 
24: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 trees, and in bright, bubbling wells, in half-hidden glens. 
 They are the sirens of the sunny South, and even here 
 the ancient curse seems to follow the ill-fated race. For 
 here, also, they are condemned to expiate some great and 
 grievous sin committed by their forefathers, and to suffer 
 long and miserably. As the whole creation groaneth, 
 however, these sorrowful beings also yearn to be re- 
 leased, and of this longing many a touching tale is told 
 in German legends. Thus one of them tells us, that 
 the children of a Protestant minister were once playing 
 on the banks of a river, when they saw a Nix rise from 
 the waters, who, thinking himself unobserved, began to 
 sing and to play on a strange, but ineffably sweet instru- 
 ment. With the cruelty common to children, they at 
 once rushed upon him and reproached him for his merri- 
 ment, adding that as he was nothing but a condemned sin- 
 ner, he had much better weep over his eternal wretched- 
 ness. The poor water-sprite, taken by surprise and dis- 
 tressed beyond measure, broke into tears ; and the youth- 
 ful tyrants, delighted with their success, went home to 
 tell their father what had happened. But they were 
 badly received here, and told that they had acted very 
 wrongly and must return at once and comfort the poor 
 being whom they had so grievously afflicted. They ran 
 back, and as soon as they saw the Nix they cried out to 
 him not to weep any longer, since their father had said 
 that the Lord had died even for him, and he also might 
 hope to be forgiven hereafter. Thereupon the poor Nix 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 25 
 
 dried his tears, recovered his cheerfulness, and played 
 with them all day long. 
 
 Holland, with its wondrous bulwarks and its lifelong 
 conflict with the sea, abounds naturally in stories of every 
 kind, in which mermen and mermaids play a prominent 
 part. Sometimes they meet the intrepid sailor out on 
 the high sea and sing of his joyous return, or warn him 
 of his approaching end ; at other times they come on 
 shore, make themselves useful in a thousand ways, and 
 vanish only when they are ill-treated or laughed at. 
 There is hardly a town on the seacoast which has not its 
 own legend of this kind ; but generally the men are less 
 interesting than the maidens, since the latter are prophets 
 and play a prominent part in the sad history of that coun- 
 try. Such was the mermaid that once frequented the 
 waters near Zevenbergen, a fortified town with massive 
 walls and lofty towers, in which dwelt thousands of opu- 
 lent citizens with their wives and children. But the peo- 
 ple were as wicked as they were rich,' and professed to 
 believe neither in heaven nor hell. One fine day the 
 siren appeared in company with a sister mermaid, and 
 with solemn, tearful voice both began to sing : 
 
 " Zevenbergen must perish, 
 And the tower of Lobbekens alone shall remain." 
 
 In spite of this warning the inhabitants continued their 
 riotous living and sinful profanity. In a dark November 
 night of the same year a fearful tempest arose ; the wind 
 blew from the northwest, and with such terrific force that 
 
26 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 the dykes gave way under the overwhelming pressure of 
 the waters, and the Saint Elisabeth, as the inundation 
 was called, overwhelmed not less than seventy-two towns 
 and villages. Among these was the unfortunate town of 
 Zevenbergen, and so thorough was its destruction in the 
 deep waters, that when the morning broke, and people 
 came from a distance in boats, they saw far beneath them 
 the ruins of houses, and nothing standing but the one 
 lofty tower of Lobbekens. Thus the prophecy of the 
 mermaid had become true. Fortunately, man has tri- 
 umphed over the evil prophet and the element alike. By 
 an immense outlay of capital and the incessant labor of 
 long years, the whole vast region has been once more 
 laid dry, and from the midst of polders, or dyked mead- 
 ows of surpassing fertility, there rises now a new town 
 of Zevenbergen, richer and wiser than the doomed village 
 of former days. 
 
 Holland is also the land which has originated the very 
 peculiar faith in legends of sea-knights and sea-bishops, 
 some of whom were captured from time to time and ex- 
 hibited in the large cities. They were found afterwards 
 in all the northern seas, and the works of those ages, down 
 to the latter part of the sixteenth century, contain gener- 
 ally one or two so-called faithful likenesses of these very 
 curious monsters of the deep. In 1 305 already a sea-knight 
 was caught out in the open sea to the north of Dockum, 
 and carried from town to town ; his fair appearance, and 
 especially the complete suit of armor which he wore, ex- 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 27 
 
 cited universal admiration ; but he died, unfortunately, 
 in the third week, at Dockum. 
 
 A work of great scientific merit, and published as late 
 as 1534, contains an engraving representing a sea-monk, 
 whom the author, Rondelet, heard of in Norway, where 
 it had been taken after a fearful tempest. It has the 
 face of a man, but rough and repulsive, a bald, smooth 
 head, the cowl of a monk hanging over the shoulders, two 
 long fins instead of arms, and a body ending in a huge 
 double-fluked tail. Other monks of the same kind ap- 
 pear in similar works, sometimes wearing a bishop's 
 habit and mitre, and one of them is reported to have been 
 sent in 1433 from the Baltic, where he was captured, to 
 the king of Poland. The poor creature, however, re- 
 fused steadfastly to utter a sound or to take any food ; 
 the king, moved with compassion, ordered him to be 
 carried back to the sea, and the monster no sooner saw 
 his own element than he gave signs of exuberant joy, 
 leaped into the water and was never seen again. It may 
 be added, that the Protestants made great capital out of 
 these marine dignitaries of the church, and hence gave 
 rise to the suspicion that the whole race of sea-monks and 
 sea-bishops was artistically produced as a quaint revenge 
 which the Reformation took on the persecuting Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 The explanation is perhaps only an afterthought, but, 
 as the proverb has it, that there is no smoke without fire, 
 so here also, these countless and persistent traditions 
 
28 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 contain their grain of truth, which has been only half 
 hid in a bushel of falsehoods. The fact is, that these 
 fables could never have been invented, much less authen- 
 ticated, even after the imperfect manner of early ages, if 
 there were not certain animals living in the great deep 
 which possess sufficient likeness to the human form to de- 
 ceive careless and superstitious observers. If there are 
 no real tritons and sirens to be met with in our waters, 
 such as we see in ancient sculptures, or the coats of arms 
 of noble families, there are at least seals and walrus, sea- 
 lions and sea-cows, and similar monsters, whose faces 
 and gestures, as seen on the surface of the waters, recall 
 forcibly the features and movements of men. Unscrupu- 
 lous cheats have occasionally taken great pains to 
 manufacture actual sirens, and their remains are to this 
 day carefully preserved in many a museum of European 
 cities; like the well-known sirens of Leyden and the 
 Hague. Nor is our own time exempt from these attempts 
 to profit by the credulity of men. At the beginning of 
 this century, a crafty fisherman on the coast of India 
 skilfully joined the body of an ape to the lower part of 
 a large fish, and dressed up the whole affair so cleverly 
 that even experienced men were taken in, and bestowed 
 much time and long research upon the extraordinary 
 being. As the inventor attributed, moreover, healing 
 powers to the touch of the siren, he was soon overrun, 
 and could, after a short time, retire upon a competency. 
 An European charlatan purchased the marine monster at 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 29 
 
 a high price, and exhibited it in England and on the 
 Continent. He met with great success for a time ; then 
 he and his siren were forgotten, only, however, to revive 
 more brilliantly than ever in the hands of the master of 
 his art, our own great Barnum. Another siren was, a 
 couple of years ago, the marvel of the rural population 
 all over England ; nor was it, in this case, a mere mummy 
 that was shown, but a living mermaid not unattractive 
 in appearance, who discreetly plunged her fish-tail into 
 the waters of a huge basin, and held the classic mirror 
 and comb in her hands. At last public sympathy was 
 aroused by some benevolent Quakers ; an investigation 
 was ordered by the authorities, and it was found that the 
 poor woman had been forced for years to spend her days 
 in the water, with an imitation fish-skin sewed on to her 
 body! 
 
 There is, however, quite enough that is truly marvel- 
 lous in some of the greater denizens of the deep, to en- 
 gage our interest, and to find in them the originals of the 
 fabled beings of whom we have spoken, without resort- 
 ing to such gross and cruel deception. Pliny already 
 speaks of a sea-elephant, so called at first, no doubt, 
 mainly on account of his two enormous teeth, and of the 
 peculiar shape of his head, which resembles somewhat 
 the trunk of an elephant. A variety of these monsters 
 seems to have been known to the Norwegian Olaus 
 Magnus, who gives a most extraordinary description of 
 the manner in which they were captured. " Sometimes," 
 
30 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 he says, " they fell asleep on the rocky coast, and then 
 the fishermen went quickly to work, raising the fat 
 along their tails, and attaching to it strong ropes, which 
 they fastened to rocks and trees on the shore. Then 
 they waked up the huge animal by throwing stones at it 
 with a sling, and compelled it to return into the water, 
 leaving its skin behind ! " At present, the sea-elephant 
 is found only in the Antarctic Ocean. On the confines of 
 that world of ice, as far as the eye can reach, there ap- 
 pears nothing in sight but vast masses of ice, thrown in 
 apparent disorder upon the immense plain, with here 
 and there a colossal block rising on high and mimicking 
 the shape of a great palace, with its walls and ramparts, 
 towers and turrets, battlements and colonnades. Before 
 these, smaller blocks dance in weird, wearisome motion 
 up and down on the dusky waters, and gray mists hang 
 from their sides, and break with their tatters and frag- 
 ments the dreary prospect. At rare times the sun breaks 
 through the dense fog, and then the whole world of ice 
 begins to glitter and glare in the bright rays, and en- 
 chanted scenes dazzle the eye. Here is a snow land- 
 scape, with hamlets and trees ; the larger blocks of ice 
 resembling snow-covered houses, and the torn and tarn- 
 ished masses appearing not unlike trees bending under 
 the weight of hoarfrost, or bushes feathered with light 
 crystals. The whole enchanted city, with its narrow 
 canals, is buried in absolute stillness ; gulls fly silently 
 across the clear air, penguins rise and dive again in utter 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 31 
 
 quiet, and even the sea-elephants lie voiceless, like colos 
 sal watchdogs, on the steps of the palaces. Only the 
 low, mournful blowing of a whale, who sends up his airy 
 fountain of foam, breaks occasionally upon the fearful si- 
 lence of this magnificent city of ice. 
 
 In these inhospitable regions dwells the elephant oi 
 the seas, a monster not unfrequently thirty feet long, and 
 measuring over sixteen feet in circumference ! His pow- 
 erful teeth are formidable enough in appearance, and 
 above them he raises, when he is roused to anger, his 
 inflated trunk, which ordinarily hangs loosely over the 
 upper lip. His whole body is covered with stiff, shining 
 hair, and underneath his fur coat he has a layer of fat at 
 least a foot thick, which protects him effectually against 
 the terrible cold of the polar regions. The two awkward 
 feet, mere stumps encased in fin-like coverings, are of 
 little avail to the giant when he moves on firm land ; 
 after a few yards he begins to groan and to rest, while 
 the whole huge body shakes as if it were one vast mass 
 of jelly-like fat. Here he falls an easy victim to the sail- 
 ors, who come in search of his ivory and his oil ; they 
 walk fearlessly through the thick crowds, and knock 
 them over by a single blow on the nose. The giant 
 opens his enormous mouth and shows his formidable 
 teeth, but, as he cannot move, he is virtually helpless. 
 Very different are, however, his motions in his own ele- 
 ment ; as soon as he is under water, he swims with 
 amazing rapidity, turns and twists like an eel, and is thus 
 
32 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 enabled to catch not only swift fish and sepias, but even 
 the web-footed penguins. He must find it difficult, at 
 times, to provide his enormous body with sufficient food, 
 for he swallows masses of tangled sea-tang, and large 
 stones have been found in his stomach, to the number of 
 twelve. When he wishes to sleep, he floats on the sur- 
 face, and is rocked and cradled by the waves of the 
 ocean. 
 
 What has, in all probability, led to their being taken 
 for human beings by credulous and superstitious mariners 
 of early ages, is the beauty of their eye, and the deep 
 feeling they manifest at critical times. They not only 
 never attack men, but, unlike the sympathetic seals, they 
 also abandon their wounded companions, and purposely 
 turn aside so as not to witness their sufferings and their 
 agony. When they are mortally wounded, they drag 
 themselves painfully inland, and hide behind a large rock 
 to die in peace and unseen by others. If they are pre- 
 vented from thus retiring, they shed tears, as they also 
 weep bitterly when they are ill-treated by cruel sailors. 
 
 Very different in temper is the walrus, another of the 
 great monsters of the deep, who, although by nature as 
 gentle and peaceful as the sea-elephant, has become bit- 
 ter and fierce by his constant warfare with man. It is 
 the true type of the polar North : as all nature here is 
 buried in sad, deathlike silence for several months, so 
 the walrus also sleeps for the same time, deprived of all 
 power and energy, while the fierce tempests and terrible 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 33 
 
 ice-drifts of those regions are represented by their wild 
 passions. They fight with indomitable courage for the 
 fairest among the females, and many a bold knight 
 among them leaves his life in the lists of the grim tour- 
 nament. They defend their family and their race with 
 intense rage, and know the strength that lies in union. 
 Far up in the coldest ice regions of the Arctic seas they 
 assemble in crowds of two thousand, and when -their 
 guards have been posted, they begin their sports in the 
 half-frozen waters. They splash and splatter as they 
 leap frantically or plunge their huge bodies into the 
 foaming waves, and the noise they thus make, together 
 with the trumpeting of their wide-open nostrils, and the 
 mournful howl of their repulsive voice, fill the air with a 
 stunning, confusing roar. Their appearance is in keep- 
 ing with the whole scene : black heads, with red, staring 
 eyes of great size, a broad-lipped, swollen mouth, and 
 enormous beard, each hair of the thickness of a straw, 
 adorned with snow-white teeth more than two feet long, 
 and colossal, shapeless bodies, half horse and half whale, 
 but weighing at times not less than three thousand 
 pounds surely nothing more was needed to strike terror 
 into the hearts of ignorant seamen, and to lead to fan- 
 cies wild and weird of man-resembling monsters of the 
 deep. 
 
 Far greater, however, is the resemblance which certain 
 varieties of seals bear to the human form. Their head, 
 
 perfectly round and bald, their large bright eyes full of 
 2* 
 
34: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 intelligence and tender feelings, their full beard on both 
 sides of the face, and their broad shoulders, give to the 
 upper part of their body a startling likeness, such as, in 
 the foggy atmosphere of the northern seas, and with a 
 predisposition to see what people expect to see, may very 
 well have led to a sincere conviction that they were hu- 
 man beings. To this must be added their merry, playful 
 disposition, and the peculiar manner in which they hold 
 themselves almost perfectly upright when gambolling in 
 the water. Naturally harmless, and even timid, they 
 have a habit of following the small boats that go on shore, 
 and of observing attentively all that is done ; and if the 
 crew remains longer at one and the same place, they be- 
 come familiar, and fond of their company. They learn 
 to know the people living on the shore near their play- 
 ground, so that, in Corsica, flocks of them follow the fish- 
 ing-boats, and modestly content themselves with the fish 
 rejected after the nets have been hauled in. There can 
 be little doubt that this intimacy has given rise to an 
 account, given by Pliny, of a scene daily enacted near 
 the town of Mines, in southern France ; and as here truth 
 and fiction meet in striking relation to each other, we 
 insert the words of the great naturalist : 
 
 " At a certain period of the year a prodigious number 
 of mullets make their way to the sea through the narrow 
 mouth of a swamp called Latera. These fish choose the 
 moment of the incoming tide, which prevents the stretch- 
 ing out of nets and the taking them in vast quantities. 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 35 
 
 By a similar instinct they turn at once toward the open 
 sea, and hasten to escape from the only place in which 
 they are liable to be caught. The inhabitants, who know 
 the period of this migration, and enjoy the pleasure of 
 the sport, assemble on the shore. Spectators and fisher- 
 men all cry aloud : i Simo ! Simo ! ' Immediately the 
 dolphins know that they are needed. The north wind 
 carries the sound of the voice to them. But whatever 
 time it may be, these faithful allies never fail to appear 
 at once. One might imagine it was an army, which 
 instantly takes up its position in the opening where the 
 action is to take place. They close the outlet to the 
 mullets, who take fright, and throw themselves into shal- 
 low water. Then the fishermen surround them with 
 their nets. But the mullets, with wonderful agility, leap 
 over them. Now the dolphins fall upon them, and, con- 
 tent for the moment with having killed them, wait to 
 devour- them when the victory is assured. The action 
 goes on, and, pressing the enemy closer and closer, the 
 dolphins allow themselves to be imprisoned with the mul- 
 lets, and, in order not to frighten them into desperate 
 acts, they glide stealthily between the boats, the nets, 
 and the swimming fishermen, so as to leave no passage 
 open. When all are taken, they devour those they have 
 killed. But knowing that they have labored hard enough 
 to deserve more than a single day's wages, they reappear 
 on the morrow, and not only receive as many fish as they 
 desire, but are fed with bread soaked in wine ! " 
 
36 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 The talents of the seal are manifold : from the agility 
 which he displays in catching fish for his master, to the 
 capacity he has shown in learning actually to speak. 
 More than one seal has been taught to utter distinctly 
 the word Papa, and several animals of the kind are re- 
 ported to have gone even beyond, and to have pro- 
 nounced several words at a time. Nor must their love 
 of music be forgotten, which is so great that they will 
 rise from the water and remain nearly standing upright 
 as long as the instrument is played, to which they listen 
 with unmistakable pleasure. It is not so very long since 
 one of this remarkable race came every day for six weeks 
 from the waters of the Mediterranean, to take her rest 
 under the divan of a custom-house officer in Smyrna. 
 The latter had tamed her, and placed a few rough planks 
 at the distance of about three feet from the water's edge 
 under his couch, and on these boards the seal loved to 
 rest for several hours, giving vent to her delight, oddly 
 enough, in a profusion of sighs like those of a suffering 
 man. She ate readily the rice and the bread which were 
 offered her, though she seemed to have some trouble in 
 softening the former sufficiently to swallow it with ease. 
 After an absence of several days, the affectionate crea- 
 ture reappeared with a young one under the arm, but a 
 month later she plunged one day, frightened, into the 
 water, and was never seen again. 
 
 Nearly about the same time, another seal appeared 
 suddenly in the very midst of the port of Constantinople, 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 37 
 
 undisturbed by the number of caiques dashing to and 
 fro, and the noise of a thousand vessels with their crews 
 and their passengers. One day the boat of the French 
 legation was crossing over to Pera, loaded with wine for 
 the ambassador. A drunken sailor was sitting astride 
 on the cask, and singing boisterously, when all of a sud- 
 den the seal raised himself out of the water, seized the 
 sailor with his left arm, and threw himself with his prey 
 back into the waves. He reappeared at some distance, 
 still holding the man under his fin, as if wishing to dis- 
 play his agility, and then sank once more, leaving the 
 frightened, sobered sailor, to make his way back to the 
 boat. Surely nothing more than one such occurrence 
 was needed to give rise to the many romances of former 
 ages ; if the same, even, had happened in earlier days, 
 the seal would have been a beautiful Nereid, who, hav- 
 ing conceived a passion for the hapless sailor, had risen 
 to take him down to her palace under the waves. 
 
n. 
 
 ODD FISH. 
 
 " And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another." 
 DANIKL vii. 3. 
 
 TN the whole range of fabulous monsters, there is not one 
 that has met with greater incredulity, and yet main- 
 tained its hold on the wonder of man with more constant 
 tenacity, than the kraken. From time immemorial it 
 has appeared again and again on the pages of travellers, 
 and from the oldest philosopher to the days of Lacepede 
 and Buckstone, these faint traces of its true character and 
 gigantic proportions have been carefully examined, and, 
 when stripped of the usual exaggerations, been found to 
 agree with the actual dimensions of a genuine and for- 
 midable monster. 
 
 Aristotle, whose history has so often been the laugh- 
 ing-stock of the half-informed, and whom the sceptics of 
 all ages have been delighted to use as a type of unrelia- 
 ble naturalists, has of late recovered, step by step, the 
 veneration which he enjoyed in the Middle Ages. It 
 
ODD FISH. 39 
 
 would be an interesting task to gather the great facts 
 constantly represented, in scientific works even, as new 
 discoveries, of which a correct sketch is already contained 
 in the works of the ancient savant. Thus he seems to have 
 known, better than any naturalist down to our own day, 
 the nature of the polypus, who in all probability has filled 
 the imagination of men for so many centuries, under the 
 name of the kraken. 
 
 Trebius tells us a story, on the other hand, in which 
 undoubted facts are already half-hidden under a mass of 
 exaggerations, of which Aristotle never became guilty, 
 however common they were in the writings of the an- 
 cients. A polypus, he says, came every night from the 
 great deep on shore at Carteja, in order to feed upon 
 salt meat. These robberies incensed the people, who 
 in vain tried to discover the intruder, although they 
 surrounded their drying-places with high palisades. The 
 polypus took advantage of a large tree which stood 
 near them, and by means of an overhanging branch that 
 could support his weight, he slipped in night after night. 
 At last, however, his hour came; the dogs discovered 
 him one morning, as he tried to make his way back 
 to the sea, and soon _hosts of men surrounded the mon- 
 ster, at a distance only, for the novelty of the sight, 
 the hideousness of the monster all covered with brine, his 
 enormous size, and the horrible odor which he diffused 
 on all sides, nearly petrified the poor fishermen. In the 
 meantime, he was fighting the dogs bravely, now striking 
 
4:0 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 them to the ground with his two larger arms, and now 
 beating them painfully with his whip-like tentacles. At 
 last the men gained courage, and with their tridents they 
 overcame and despatched the monster. We must add, 
 for the honor of Pliny, who quotes the account of Trebi- 
 us, that he looks upon it as a prodigy, and in his quiet, 
 quaint way, gives the reader to understand his reluctance 
 to vouch for the statement. 
 
 The head arid the arms of the giant were, however, 
 brought to Lucullus and carefully measured. The former 
 was of the size of a cask, capable of holding fifteen am- 
 phorae, with a beak in proportion ; the arms were thirty 
 feet long, and so large that a man could hardly span 
 them; what remained of the flesh, weighed still over 
 seven hundred pounds. Whether Lucullus had it dress- 
 ed for his tables, is not stated ; we know, however, that 
 the Romans were as fond of the flesh of these hideous 
 creatures, as the fishermen of the coasts of Normandy 
 are in our day ; it is firm, but savory, and assumes, when 
 cooked, a white and pink color which looks most appe- 
 tizing. 
 
 Fulgosus has a similar story, with such slight variations 
 only, that it appears essentially the same account. As- 
 lian, however, furnishes new evidence ; for he states, upon 
 good authority, that a huge monster of the kind, as 
 large as the biggest of whales, was killed with axes by 
 Spanish merchants, whose magazines it was in the habit 
 of robbing. Pliny adds the crowning-piece of wonder : 
 
ODD FISH. 4:1 
 
 A polypus, he says, exists in the great ocean, called Arbas, 
 whose feet are of such enormous size that they prevent 
 it from coming into the Mediterranean, as the Straits of 
 Gibraltar are too shallow for such a giant ! 
 
 Very different are the accounts which take up the 
 thread where antiquity left it suddenly, at the time when 
 Rome fell, heathen gods were dethroned, and the dark- 
 ness of the Dark Ages fell like a pall upon all mankind. 
 The Scandinavian seamen, bold like no other sailors on 
 earth, regular vikings, dwellers on the great deep, colored 
 all their relations with the dark and dismal tinges of 
 their grim northern climate. The Greeks and the Romans, 
 even, admired only what was beautiful and graceful in 
 nature, and thus, although they knew the kraken, they 
 loved not to dwell on his monstrous proportions and hid- 
 eous appearance. Their poetry never alludes to them, 
 and their art disdained to stoop to such repulsive forms. 
 Not so the sombre children of northern twilight : they 
 also know the kraken, and describe it with remarkable 
 correctness in their soberer moments ; but they love to 
 dwell upon its repulsive features ; they exaggerate its 
 dimensions and its ugliness ; they change it into a terri- 
 ble being, full of dread power and malign purposes ; and 
 then they believe in their own dreams and enjoy like 
 children the strange delight with which they are filled by 
 'their very fears. They go on increasing its size, till it be- 
 comes, to their excited imagination, the Mountain Fish, and 
 they see it soon everywhere, in their land-locked bays and 
 
4:2 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 out on the stormy sea ; when the thick storm-clouds lower 
 till they touch the crest of the waves, it is the kraken ; 
 and when their anchor suddenly strikes upon an un- 
 known shallow, it is again the kraken. 
 
 The Norwegians, especially, loved to tell wondrous 
 tales ; how their bold seamen landed on a deserted island 
 which showed no trace of life, not a shrub nor a blade of 
 grass, and while they still wandered about, marvelling 
 at the utter desolation, the island began to heave and to 
 move, and behold ! they found themselves on the back 
 of the monster ! Great authorities came to confirm the 
 stories ; saints and bishops lent the weight of their sacred 
 character to the accounts given by laymen and heretics. 
 Erick Falkendorf, a bishop of Nidros, wrote, in 1520, a 
 long letter on the subject to Pope Leo X. He was sail- 
 ing, on a Sunday, in a Norwegian vessel along the dis- 
 tant coast, and bewailed his inability to celebrate holy 
 mass on firm land. As he mourned and prayed, sud- 
 denly an unknown islet arose, not far from the vessel ; 
 the crew land, the sacred vessels are carried on shore, 
 and the holy office is celebrated with due solemnity. 
 After mass they return on board ship, and immediately 
 the island begins to tremble, and gradually to sink back 
 into the sea, from which it had risen. The island had 
 been a kraken ! 
 
 Glaus Wormius, also, who is generally truthful enough, 
 relates having seen, about the year 1643, one of these 
 enormous monsters, and states that they resemble an 
 
ODD FISH. 43 
 
 island far more than an animal. He expresses his belief 
 that there are but few krakens in existence, and cu- 
 riously enough adds, that while they are themselves im- 
 mortal, the Medusae are nothing more than the eggs and 
 the spawn of these monsters. 
 
 Other writers, of the same century, confirm his state- 
 ment, and believe in the immortality of the kraken a 
 faith which was not even shaken when, in 1680, the car- 
 cass of one of these monsters was for the first time dis- 
 covered in the Gulf of Newangen, in the parish of Asta- 
 bough. His arms had become entangled in the countless 
 cliffs and rocks which characterize the dangerous coast 
 of that neighborhood, and the animal had died there, un- 
 able to extricate itself. When putrefaction commenced 
 in the enormous mass, the odor became so offensive for 
 miles and miles, that serious fears of a pestilence were 
 entertained. Fortunately, the waves came to the aid of 
 the frightened people, tearing off piece after piece, and 
 carrying it into the ocean ; and when tlie last remnant 
 had been washed away, an official report of the whole 
 event was drawn up by a clerical dignitary, and is still 
 to be found in the government archives at Drontheim. 
 
 A similar case occurred on the Newfoundland banks, 
 where polypi abound in such numbers that the fisher- 
 men of all nations, who congregate there in the season, 
 use, every summer, nearly two millions as bait, with 
 which to catch codfish. Towards the end of the last cen- 
 tury, a monstrous specimen of this class died on these 
 
44 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 banks, beyond Pine Light, and here, also, the mass of pu- 
 trifying matter was so enormous, and the odor so intoler- 
 able for a great distance, that the grave apprehension of 
 an epidemic drove the fishermen from the neighborhood, 
 till the currents had carried off every trace of the terri- 
 ble animal. 
 
 Of all the authors, however, who have given us more 
 or less detailed accounts of their experience with the soe- 
 trolden, or sea-scourge, as the Swedes call it, Pontoppidan 
 is by far the most precise in his statements. 
 
 The northern people, he tells us, assert, and without 
 the slightest contradiction in all their accounts, that when 
 they go out into the open sea, during the great heat of 
 the summer, they find the water suddenly less deep, and 
 upon sounding, the lead frequently marks only thirty 
 fathoms. The fishermen know then that a kraken floats 
 between the lead and the bottom of the sea, and they 
 immediately get ready their lines, for they knoAV that 
 where the monster is, fish always abound. If, on the 
 other hand, the depth diminishes, if this accidental bot- 
 tom moves and rises, then it is time for them to make 
 their escape ; for the kraken is waking up and about to 
 rise, in order to breathe and to stretch out its huge arms 
 towards the sun. 
 
 The fishermen hasten away with all their might, and 
 when they can at last rest on their oars at a safe distance, 
 they then see the enormous creature, whose back covers 
 a mile and a half of sea. The fish, taken by surprise by 
 
I 
 
 ODD FISH. 
 
 
 his sudden rising, leap frantically about in the small 
 pools formed in the rugged irregularities of his back, and 
 then a number of points or shining horns appear, gradu- 
 ally rising till they look like masts with their yards J 
 these are the arms of the kraken, which are so powerful 
 that they can seize the ropes of a large ship and sink it 
 in a few moments. After having remained a short time 
 above water, the kraken sinks down again, and this is 
 scarcely less dangerous to vessels near by, as he dis- 
 places, in sinking, such an enormous volume of water, 
 that whirlpools and currents are formed, scarcely inferior 
 to those of the dread maelstrom. 
 
 Such is the account found in the Natural History of 
 the learned bishop, who, no doubt, wrote what he con- 
 scientiously believed to be true, although he cannot 
 quite disguise his own scepticism in regard to some of 
 the facts mentioned. It is very diiferent with Augustus, 
 of Bergen, a man of critical mind, who, not having seen 
 a kraken himself, collected all the Scandinavian accounts 
 of which he heard, and, after examining them carefully, 
 came to the conclusion that there does exist a gigantic 
 polypus though far from boasting of the dimensions 
 usually attributed to the monster that it is provided 
 with arms, that it emits a strong odor, that it shows at 
 times long ventacles, and only appears in summer time, 
 and during calm weather. It is remarkable how fully 
 the conclusions of this learned naturalist have been con- 
 firmed by modern discoveries. 
 
46 WONDERS or THE DEEP. 
 
 The great Linne, a Swede in heart as in race, seems to 
 have been troubled with strange doubt concerning this 
 pet monster of his countrymen ; for, after having sol- 
 emnly introduced the kraken into his Swedish fauna, and 
 after speaking of it even more fully in his great work, 
 " The System of Nature," he suddenly drops him in the 
 seventh edition, and never more says a word of the gi- 
 gantic polypus. This did not have much effect, however, 
 on the sailors of his and of other lands, as they were not 
 much given to reading Latin works ; and in Sweden, as 
 well as in France, the faith in the kraken remained as 
 general and as firm as before. Countless votive offer- 
 ings adorn, to this day, the little chapels that rise high 
 above the iron-bound coast, with their tiny turrets and 
 tinkling bells ; but none more weighty in precious met- 
 als, none more thankfully offered to the Lord of the Sea, 
 than those which speak of the delivery from the dread 
 kraken. One of these in the church of " Our Lady of 
 the Watch at Marseille " is accompanied by a touching 
 recital of a fearful combat with the monster on the coast 
 of South Carolina, and another, hung up in the chapel of 
 St. Thomas, at St. Malo, testifies to the escape of a slave- 
 ship from the arms of a gigantic polypus, at the very 
 moment when it was leaving the port of Angola. 
 
 In 1783, a whaler assured Dr. Swediaur that he had 
 found in the mouth of a whale a tentacle of twenty-seven 
 feet in length. The report was inserted in a scientific 
 journal of the day, and there read by Deny Montfort, who 
 
ODD FISH. 47 
 
 at once determined to obtain more ample information on 
 the subject. It so happened that, just then, the French 
 Government had sent for a number of American whalers, 
 in order to consult with them as to the best means by 
 which the French fisheries could be revived. These men 
 were staying at Dunkirk ; and here Montfort questioned 
 them, and upon inquiry it appeared that two of them 
 had found feelers, or horns, of such monstrous animals. 
 Ben Jon son saw one in the mouth of a whale, from which 
 it hung to the length of thirty-five feet ; and Reynolds 
 another, floating on the surface of the sea, forty-five feet 
 long, and of reddish slate color. But of all the reports 
 which he heard, the following was the most minute and 
 yet also the most extraordinary : 
 
 Captain John Magnus Dens, a Danish sailor of high 
 character and established uprightness, deposed that, after 
 having made several voyages to China in the service of 
 the Gottenburg Company, he had once found himself 
 becalmed in the fifteenth degree S. L., at some distance 
 from the coast of Africa, abreast of St. Helena and Cape 
 Nigra. Taking advantage of his forced inactivity, he 
 had determined to have his ship cleaned and scrubbed 
 thoroughly, and, for that purpose, a few planks were sus- 
 pended on the side of the vessel, on which the sailors 
 could stand while scraping and caulking the ship. They 
 were busy with their work, when suddenly an anchertroll 
 so the Danes call the animal rose from the sea, threw 
 one of its arms around two of the men, tore them with 
 
4:8 WONDERS or THE DEEP. 
 
 a jerk from the scaffolding, and sank out of sight in a 
 moment. Another feeler appeared, however, and tried to 
 grasp a sailor who was in the act of ascending the mast ; 
 fortunately, the man could hold on to the rigging, and 
 as the long feeler became entangled in the ropes, he was 
 enabled to escape, though not without uttering most 
 fearful cries. These brought the whole crew to his as- 
 sistance; they quickly snatched up harpoons, cutlasses, 
 and whatever they could lay hands on, and threw them 
 at the body of the animal, while others set to work cut- 
 ting the gigantic feeler to pieces, and carrying the poor 
 man to his berth, who had swooned from intense fright. 
 The monster, with five harpoons thrust deep into its 
 quivering flesh, and holding the two men still in its huge 
 arms, endeavored to sink ; but the crew, encouraged by 
 their captain, did their utmost to hold on to the lines to 
 which the harpoons were fastened. Their strength was, 
 however, not sufficient to struggle with the marine giant, 
 and all they could do was to make fast the lines to the 
 ship, and to wait till the forces of the enemy should be 
 exhausted. Four of the ropes snapped, one after the other, 
 like mere threads, and then the harpoon of the fifth tore 
 out of the body of the monster with such violence that 
 the ship was shaken from end to end ; thus the animal 
 escaped, with its two victims. The whole crew remained 
 overcome with amazement ; they had heard of these 
 monsters ; but never believed in their existence ; and 
 here, before their eyes, two of their comrades had been 
 
ODD FISH. 49 
 
 torn from their side, and the third, overcome with fright, 
 died the same night in delirium. The feeler which had 
 been separated from the body, remained on board as an 
 evidence that the whole had not been a frightful dream ; 
 it measured at the base as many inches as their mizzen- 
 mast, was still twenty-five feet long, and at the pointed 
 end provided with a number of suckers, each as large as 
 a spoon. Its full size must have been far greater, how- 
 ever, as only part of it had been cut off, the animal never 
 even raising its head above the surface. The captain, 
 who had witnessed the whole scene and himself thrown 
 one of the harpoons, ever afterwards considered this 
 encounter the most remarkable event of his checkered 
 Life, and calmly asserted the existence of the kraken. 
 
 All these ancient accounts, the Norwegian legends, the 
 reports of sailors of many nations, and the minute de- 
 scriptions of Sicilian divers, who spoke of polypi as large 
 as themselves, and with feelers at least ten feet long, 
 could not fail to make an impression upon men of science, 
 and the most discreet among them came to the conclusion 
 that there must be some truth amid all those fables. 
 
 It was, however, reserved to our century to strip the 
 facts of all exaggeration, and to establish the existence of 
 such monsters beyond all controversy. A kind of mol- 
 lusk, called cephalopodes; were found in various seas, 
 whose peculiar formation and strange appearance suffi- 
 ciently explained the marvels told of the kraken. An 
 
 elongated sack in the form of an egg, or a cylinder, from 
 3 
 
50 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 which protrudes at one end a thick, round head, with a 
 pair of enormous flat eyes ; on this head, at the summit, a 
 kind of hard brown beak, after the manner of a parrot's 
 bill, and around the beak a crown of eight or ten power- 
 ful, long arms this is the polypus, which passed of old 
 for a kraken. 
 
 On the inner side, each one of these gigantic arms or 
 feelers is covered with a double row of suckers, which 
 resemble a small cup with a movable bottom. By means 
 of these cups, which the animal can exhaust of the air 
 they contain, it can affix itself to any surface ; and as it 
 possesses several hundred of them, its power is naturally 
 enormous. Nevertheless, they use these feelers only for 
 the purpose of seizing their prey and handing it up to the 
 beak, which then goes to work and tears it to pieces. 
 Nor is their manner of swimming less curious. Their 
 gills require a large quantity of water to furnish them 
 with a few globules of air ; to provide this supply, they 
 are covered with an elastic mantle, which the animal con- 
 tracts when it is full, so as to drive the water it contains 
 through a tube placed between the eyes. Every time 
 that the mantle is thus contracted and the water expelled, 
 the latter forms a kind of jet, which, striking upon the 
 inert matter around, gives to the animal an impetus in 
 the opposite direction. At each pulsation, therefore, it 
 advances, and thus it travels quite rapidly through the 
 water. 
 
 The cephalopodes on European and American coasts 
 
ODD FISH. 51 
 
 are generally only of small size,, although in the Mediter- 
 ranean and the Adriatic seas some have been found of 
 larger dimensions, and others still greater are kept in 
 museums. In the open sea, however, vessels have en- 
 countered genuine giants of the kind, and these are, no 
 dtfubt, the true representatives of the kraken. Rang 
 met one of the size of a ton, and of reddish color, while 
 Pennant saw in the Indian Seas an eight-armed cuttle- 
 fish, with arms of fifty-four feet in length and a body of 
 twelve feet in breadth ; thus making it extend, from point 
 to point, one hundred and twenty feet. A naturalist of 
 Copenhagen, who has made the study of these animals 
 his specialty Steenstrup had occasion to examine one 
 of these monsters in 1855, on the coast of Gothland, 
 where it had been caught by fishermen. It required sev- 
 eral carts to carry the body off; and the hind part of 
 the mouth, which he saved from destruction, still had 
 the size of an infant's head. The museum at Utrecht 
 contains a specimen of a colossal cephalopode ; and our 
 own Mr. Barnum was, of course, not without at least 
 one of the feelers of such a giant, as thick as a man's 
 body, and over ten feet long. Wm. Buckland, the 
 great naturalist's son, and an excellent observer himself, 
 took pains to examine the varieties known to the British 
 coast, and allowed one small specimen to grasp his hand 
 and arm. He describes the feeling to be such as if a 
 hundred tiny air pumps had been applied at once, and 
 little red marks were left on the skin where the suckers 
 
52 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 had been at work. " The sensation," he says, " of being 
 held fast by a (literally) cold-blooded, soulless, pitiless 
 and voracious sea-monster, almost makes one's blood 
 run cold. I can now easily understand why they are 
 called man-suckers ; only the natives of the Chinese and 
 Indian seas have such a horror of them ; for in thtffee 
 climates they are seen large and formidable enough to 
 be dangerous to any human being who may be so un- 
 fortunate as to be clutched by them." Victor Hugo's 
 description of his monster in the " Travailleurs de la 
 Mer," is, of course, far more graphic and poetical, though 
 hardly less to the point. On the logs of many a vessel, 
 encounters with colossal mollusks of this kind have since 
 been entered, and although the largest ever accurately 
 measured by a French man-of-war's men was only 
 twelve feet long in body, with feelers of fifty feet length, 
 enough has been seen and recorded in our days to justify 
 the conviction that the wonders of the deep are not yet 
 all known, and that animals like the kraken may be still 
 in existence. 
 
 The twin brother of the kraken, both in its marvellous 
 size and in the incredulity which all descriptions have 
 excited, is the famous sea-serpent. Its history is as old 
 as the oldest record ; no age and no seafaring nation has 
 been without some account concerning its appearance, 
 and yet to this day serious doubts are entertained as to 
 its existence. It is clearly referred to in the Old Testa- 
 ment, where the prophet Isaiah sings : 
 
ODD FISH. 53 
 
 In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword 
 
 Shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, 
 
 Even leviathan, that crooked serpent, 
 
 And he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. 
 
 Again, when Job plead his uprightness, and the Lord 
 answered unto Job out of the whirlwind, he mentions 
 behemoth and leviathan, and says concerning that mon- 
 ster : 
 
 Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook ? 
 
 Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down ? 
 
 Canst thou put a hook into his nose or bore his jaw through with a thorn ? 
 
 * * * * # # 
 
 Shall thy companions make a banquet of him ? 
 
 Shall they part him among the merchants ? 
 
 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons ? or his head with fish spears ? 
 
 * * # * * * 
 
 Who can open the doors of his face ? His teeth are terrible round about. 
 
 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. 
 
 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. 
 
 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the 
 
 morning. 
 
 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. 
 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke as out of a seething pot. 
 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid : 
 
 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor 
 the habergeon. 
 
 He maketh the deep to "boil like a pot : he maketh the sea like a pot of oint- 
 ment. 
 
 He maketh a path to shine after him ; one would think the deep to be hoary. 
 
 Upon the earth there is not his like. 
 
 It is well known that the monster, so graphically de- 
 scribed by the voice that spoke to Job in the whirlwind, 
 has been sometimes believed to be the elephant, and then 
 again the crocodile. But in the Psalms, Leviathan is 
 distinctly mentioned as living in the great and wide sea, 
 and God is said to have formed him to play therein. 
 
54 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 The Jews, therefore, evidently looked upon him as a sea- 
 serpent of colossal size and most formidable appearance, 
 identical with the instrument of the Lord, of which He 
 says : " And though they be hid from my sight in the 
 bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent 
 and he shall bite them." 
 
 These imposing descriptions are, moreover, by no 
 means limited to the excited imagination of Hebrew wri- 
 ters ; other nations also record in their annals the exist- 
 ence of such a gigantic wonder of the deep. Palladius, 
 for instance, speaks of a serpent of the Ganges, which he 
 calls grandly an odontotyrannus, who could swallow an 
 elephant without straining. Solin has heard of him fre- 
 quently, and knows that he lives in India and Ethiopia, 
 crosses the Indian Ocean by swimming, and travels from 
 island to island ; while Pliny quotes Solam, who found 
 these colossal serpents in the Ganges ; " They were 
 blue," he says, " and so large that they could easily seize 
 and drag under water an elephant." 
 
 It is, however, in the Middle Ages, that we find the 
 fullest accounts of the monster. Pontoppidan, one of the 
 most learned Scandinavians, who was long bishop of Ber- 
 gen, in Norway, and died as chancellor of Denmark, in 
 Copenhagen, in 1764, states, in his interesting contribu- 
 tions to Natural History, that in his country every body 
 believed firmly in the great sea-serpent, and if he or any 
 of his guests ventured to speak doubtingly of the huge 
 monster, all smiled, as if he had been uncertain whether 
 
ODD FISH. 55 
 
 eels or herrings really existed. The good people of those 
 northern regions were so familiar with these wonderful 
 creatures, that they spoke of two distinct kinds of sea- 
 serpents, one living in the sea only, the other amphibious, 
 which preferred the land generally, but retired periodi- 
 cally to the great deep. Nicolaus Gramius, minister of 
 the gospel at London, tells us, that during a destructive 
 inundation, an immense serpent was seen to make its 
 way towards the ocean, overthrowing every thing in its 
 path, animals, trees, and houses, and uttering fearful roar- 
 ings. The fishermen of Odal were so frightened by the 
 terrible sight, that they did not dare go out in their 
 boats for several days. . 
 
 The famous Archbishop of Upsala, Olaus Magnus, 
 who bears testimony to the kraken, also speaks more 
 than once of the amphibious serpent. He states that 
 they leave the shelter of the cliffs near Bergen at night ; 
 they have a mane, their bodies are covered with scales, 
 and their eyes send forth a bright lighf ; out at sea they 
 rear themselves against the ship they encounter, and seize 
 whatever they can obtain on deck. An animal of this 
 kind, he continues, was actually seen in 1522, near the 
 island of Moos, which measured over fifty feet in length, 
 and was continually turning round. Several works on 
 Natural History, down to the celebrated compilation of 
 H. Ruysch, published in 1718, contained pictures of 
 these Norwegian serpents. Paul Egede, finally, a most 
 trustworthy man, and well known by his connection 
 
56 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 with Greenland missions, which he helped his father to 
 establish and fostered as bishop, not only bears wit- 
 ness to the frequent appearance of such sea-serpents on 
 the Scandinavian coasts, but describes minutely one 
 which he met himself on his second voyage to Green- 
 land. 
 
 If we believe, therefore, the testimony of the Hebrews 
 and of the Northern nations, there exists a serpent, liv- 
 ing in the sea, of gigantic proportions, swimming by 
 vertical movements, in which it is aided by fins which 
 hang down from behind its neck, as was the case in 
 fossil reptiles like the plesiosaurus, and covered with a 
 thick skin, which was frequently found cast off on desert 
 islands. On the back it has a shaggy mane, its eyes are 
 large and brilliant, and the head is shaped somewhat like 
 that of a horse. It is only seen in midsummer and 
 during fine weather, for the want of stability in its long 
 flexible body disables it from resisting the effect of high 
 winds. 
 
 Like all rare animals of gigantic proportions, the sea- 
 serpent naturally excited terror in the few persons who 
 ever encountered it ; and this led, as a matter of course, 
 to marvellous stories about its size and ferocity. Sailors 
 loved to tell how the great monster would throw itself 
 bodily over their vessel to make it sink, and then to feed 
 at leisure on the bodies of drowned seamen. Others 
 told frightful tales of beloved comrades, who were sud- 
 denly snatched from their side by such animals, which 
 
ODD FISH. 57 
 
 appeared unexpectedly at the ship's side, raised their 
 colossal head and neck, and instantly disappeared again 
 with their victims. Fortunately, a very simple means 
 of defence is at hand, according to the belief of Norwe- 
 gian sailors ; these monsters have, it seems, a most deli- 
 cate sense of smell, and cannot endure the odor of musk ; 
 nothing is needed, therefore, but to scatter some musk 
 on deck, and the terrible animal no sooner smells it from 
 afar, than it makes off and dives to the very bottom of 
 the sea. 
 
 It was, however, by no means in remote times only, 
 that the sea-serpent has been seen by travellers and sail- 
 ors. Reports, on the contrary, abound in our day also 
 of such encounters, and scarcely a season passes but the 
 monster has been seen in our own seas, or in more distant 
 parts of the northern ocean. Officers of the navy, minis- 
 ters of the gospel, American whalers and English naviga- 
 tors, all agree, without essential differences in their state- 
 ments, on the existence and general forms of such mon- 
 sters. 
 
 The first reliable account of this great enigma of mod- 
 ern days came from a ship captain, Laurent de Ferry, of 
 Bergen, in the form of a letter, from which we extract 
 the following facts : Towards the end of the month of 
 May, in 1746, he was returning from a voyage to Trund- 
 hin, when the weather being calm and warm, he suddenly 
 heard the eight men, who formed the crew of his boat, 
 
 whisper to each other. He laid aside the book which he 
 3* 
 
58 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 was reading, and then noticed that the man at the helm 
 was keeping off from the land. Upon questioning the 
 latter, he was told that there was a sea-serpent right 
 before them. He ordered the man immediately to turn, 
 and to steer straight upon the strange animal, of which 
 he had heard much during all his life. The sailors at 
 first showed great reluctance to obey, but as the monster 
 was right before them, and moving in the same direction, 
 they became excited, and after a while engaged heartily 
 in the novel stern chase. The captain, fearful that the 
 monster might escape, fired his gun at it, and immediately 
 it plunged, evidently wounded, for the water all around 
 was stained red, and remained so for two or three min- 
 utes. The head, which rose over two feet above the 
 surface, resembled a horse's head : it was gray, with a 
 dark-brown mouth, black eyes, and apparently a long 
 mane floating over the neck. Beyond the head they 
 could see seven or eight coils of the huge serpent, each 
 of enormous size, and at considerable distance from the 
 next. The animal did not reappear ; but the time dur- 
 ing which it was clearly in sight was ample to enable 
 the captain and his crew to examine it closely. 
 
 The only other report which is perfectly clear and pre- 
 cise, has a Rev. Mr. McLean for its author, who wrote 
 from the Hebrides, and very naively exhibited his terror, 
 His statement amounts' to this : He saw the sea-serpent 
 in June, 1808, on the coast of Coll. He was sailing about 
 in a boat, when he noticed, at the distance of half a mile, 
 
ODD FISH, 59 
 
 an object which excited his surprise more and more. At 
 first he took it for a small rock among the breakers ; but 
 knowing the sea very well, and being sure that there was 
 no rock there, he examined it carefully. He then saw 
 that it rose considerably above the surface, and after a 
 slow, undulating movement, he discovered one of the 
 eyes. Alarmed at the extraordinary appearance and the 
 enormous size of the animal, he cautiously coasted along 
 near the land, when he suddenly saw the creature plunge 
 in his direction. He as well as his men were thoroughly 
 frightened, and pulled with all their might to escape. 
 At the very moment at which they reached the shore, 
 and when they had barely had time to climb up to the 
 top of a large rock, they saw the monster glide slowly up 
 to their boat. Finding the water quite shallow there, it 
 raised its horrible head, and turning again and again, 
 seemed to be troubled how to get out of the creek. It 
 was seen for half a mile, slowly making its way out to 
 the open sea. The head was large, of oval shape, and 
 rested on a rather slender neck. The shoulders, as the 
 good pastor calls them, were without gills, and the body 
 tapered off toward the tail, which was never distinctly 
 seen, as it was generally under water. The animal 
 seemed to move by progressive undulations, up and down ; 
 its length they estimated at from seventy to eighty feet ; 
 it moved more slowly when the head was out of water, 
 and yet it raised it frequently for the evident purpose of 
 discerning distant objects. At the same time when Mr. 
 
60 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 McLean saw the serpent, it was also seen in the waters 
 near the Island of Carma. The crews of thirteen fishing- 
 boats were so frightened by its terrible appearance, that 
 they sought refuge in the nearest creek. 
 
 Nor- were they only seen out at sea when mistakes 
 would be natural, and fright or intense curiosity might 
 lead to unconscious exaggeration, but the body itself has 
 been found and examined by competent persons. Thus, 
 to mention but one instance, in 1808, the body of a gi- 
 gantic serpent was washed on shore at Stronsa, one of 
 the Orkneys. A Dr. Barclay was summoned at once, 
 and, in the presence of several justices of the peace and 
 some men of learning, an affidavit was drawn up, which 
 stated that the monster measured over fifty feet in length 
 and nine feet in circumference; that it had a kind of 
 mane running from behind the head nearly to the tail, 
 which was brilliantly phosphorescent at night ; and tha.t 
 its gills, nearly five feet long, were not unlike the plucked 
 wings of a goose. Sir Everard Home, it is true, believed 
 it to be a basking shark of uncommon size. But Glou- 
 cester fishermen repeatedly saw similar animals, and the 
 LinnaBan Society of the United States examined carefully 
 a number of witnesses ; the same has been done in Hol- 
 land and in the Dutch colonies of Java, and everywhere 
 evidence has been obtained, which showed remarkable 
 unanimity, and precluded the idea of such a mistake. 
 
 Does the sea-serpent belong only to the realm of fancy, 
 or is it really one of the great wonders of the deep ? The 
 
ODD FISH. 61 
 
 question has never yet been finally decided. That there 
 must be in existence animals of serpent-like form and of 
 gigantic proportions, seems to be well established by the 
 concurrent testimony of American, English, and Norwe- 
 gian eye-witnesses ; and the mere fact that no specimen 
 exists in the museums, and that no such monster has 
 been encountered of late years, does not by any means 
 disprove the experience of so many ages. On the other 
 hand, great allowance must no doubt be made for the 
 effect of fear which enlarges all objects, the desire to ex- 
 cite wonder which leads men to embellish their accounts, 
 and the natural tendency to add to original accounts, 
 which results often unconsciously in exaggeration, and 
 has in all probability furnished us with such wonderful 
 creatures as the kraken, the roc, and the phoenix. 
 
 Nothing in these descriptions is, besides, actually in- 
 compatible with the laws of nature ; and the study of 
 fossil remains establishes beyond doubt the fact, that in 
 former ages gigantic reptiles have peopled the sea, which 
 were far more surprising in size and shape than the much- 
 doubted sea-serpent. There is no necessity, therefore, 
 to ascribe all such encounters to simple mistakes ; now 
 and then, perhaps, a long string of algae, moving slowly 
 under the impulse received by gentle winds or unknown 
 currents, or masses of phosphorescent infusoria, floating 
 for miles and miles on the calm surface of the sea, may 
 have led superstitious sailors to fancy they saw giant 
 serpents. But it is, on the other hand, by no means im- 
 
62 WONDERS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 probable that the vast deep, of which so little is as yet 
 known to man, may still hold some of the giants of olden 
 days, and that, of the many well-trained, intelligent peo- 
 ple who nowadays " go down to the sea in ships, and do 
 business in great waters," some may yet see these " works 
 of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep." Fortunately, 
 there is no doubt any longer surrounding the true king 
 of the seas the whale and yet, he is of truly monstrous 
 proportions. It is a perplexed chapter, to be sure, in 
 natural history, to say how many species of whales there 
 are ; for Jack Tar comes home with confused accounts 
 of Sulphur Bottoms, Broad Noses, Razor Backs, and Tall 
 Spouts, and a host of other names by which he learns to 
 distinguish unprofitable whales, not worth the toils and 
 perils of capture. But after all, this only shows that the 
 family is very fully known ; and well might this be so, 
 if we remember that already in the ninth century a Nor- 
 wegian Ohthere, whose wonderful adventures were taken 
 down by no less a man than King Alfred himself, speaks 
 of having slain sixty such monsters in two days. This 
 is, of course, impossible ; but we must bear in mind that 
 there is nothing in nature so wonderful that the human 
 mind does not love to add a finishing touch of its own, 
 and make it yet a little more monstrous. Thus, the size of 
 the largest of moving things, by whose side even elephants 
 are but dwarfs, has been exaggerated ; and great author- 
 ities, of recent times even, have gravely described it as 
 two or three hundred feet long. Nor must we forget, 
 
ODD FISH. 63 
 
 that since the Biscayans and Basques first dared attack 
 the whale on the high seas, in 1575, all seafaring nations 
 have joined in the pursuit, and naturally tried to outstrip 
 their rivals in startling accounts of the prey which they 
 hunt on the hungry waves, with toppling icebergs around 
 them. 
 
 In early times the Esquimaux killed the true whale of 
 the North with harpoons, to which large bladders of air 
 were fastened, which prevented the poor animal from 
 sinking and plunging ; and in our own day, good-sized 
 steamers go out on the whale fishery and dispatch them 
 by the aid of galvanic batteries. Their homes, also, have 
 changed with the times ; the Floridians, who were once 
 reported to kill them by driving pegs into their blow- 
 holes, no longer see them on their shores ; while new 
 varieties, formerly neglected on account of their activity 
 and energy in self-defence, are now eagerly sought after 
 in distant seas. In olden times, however, strange stories 
 were current about the peculiarities of whales, and 
 among them the accounts of men swallowed by them 
 hold a prominent place. They arose, no doubt, from the 
 biblical account of Jonah, who, " was three days in the 
 whale's belly ; " but as, unfortunately, the animal is so 
 made that the mouth will easily hold a boat and its crew 
 in its vast space, but the throat is too narrow to allow 
 even a mackerel to pass, the " great fish " must have 
 been either another variety, or, as some think, a vessel 
 called by its name. Nevertheless a great author, Four- 
 
64 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 nier, recites gravely in his Hydrography, the following 
 story : 
 
 During the reign of Philip II., King of Spain, there 
 appeared in the great ocean a whale, very different from 
 all others in this, that he floated partly above the sur- 
 face, and had large wings, by means of which he could 
 move like a vessel. A ship encountered him, arid broke 
 one of these wings by a cannon-shot, whereupon the 
 whale entered, very stiffly, through the Straits of Gib- 
 raltar, and uttering horrible bellowings, went ashore near 
 Valencia, where he "was found dead. The skull was so 
 enormous that seven men could stand in it, while the 
 palate would hold a man on horseback ; two dead men 
 were found in the stomach ; and the jawbone, seventeen 
 feet long, is still to be seen in the Escurial. 
 
 Nor is this the only fable that has been from of old 
 connected with these true giants of the sea ; their size 
 especially has given rise to amusing exaggerations ; and 
 the love of the marvellous, which tempts us all, has 
 caused the most extraordinary stories to be spread far 
 and wide, while the more exact, but less attractive 
 descriptions, have been culpably neglected. 
 
 Thus Pliny already gravely informs us that there were 
 in his times whales found in the Indian Ocean which 
 measured nine hundred feet ; they would, therefore, have 
 easily filled a whole village. Not only romance-writers, 
 but even naturalists of renown, like Gesner, in his work 
 on Fishes (1551), have taken pleasure in representing 
 
ODD FISH. 65 
 
 whales as animals resembling islands ; and in speaking 
 of sailors who had landed unawares on their back, cov- 
 ered, as it was, with a mass of green algse. Saint Am- 
 brosius, and other saints, came near being lost by such 
 an error, if we believe the legends of the Church. The 
 same amusing idea occurs in that delightful book, the 
 " Arabian Nights," which, it is well known, was com- 
 piled from very ancient Arabic legends and manuscripts. 
 " One day," says Sinbad the sailor, " as we were sailing 
 along, a calm befel us near a little island. The captain 
 ordered the sails to be furled, and allowed all who chose 
 to go on land ; I was among those who landed. But 
 whilst we were amusing ourselves, eating and drinking, 
 the island suddenly trembled, and gave us all a violent 
 shock. It was a whale." 
 
 The fable spread rapidly, especially among nations 
 who lived far from the sea and had no means to ver- 
 ify the truth of such accounts by their own experience. 
 They were all the more readily believed, as for genera- 
 tions no other books were accessible to the masses but 
 the Bible and Pliny ; and both of these authorities spoke 
 confidently of these monsters ; the latter- by name, the 
 former, as was then universally believed, under the thin 
 disguise of the leviathan. In the Orient, of course, great- 
 er exaggerations still were added, age after age, such as 
 the utter ignorance of the seas prevailing among Eastern 
 nations, and their high- wrought imagination, loved to in- 
 vent and to hear. An ancient Jewish work, the Bara- 
 
66 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Bathra, already speaks of a vessel which sailed three days 
 over a whale, before it accomplished the distance be- 
 tween head and tail : and Arab authors loved to assert 
 that the earth was actually resting upon a gigantic whale 
 whose occasional tremors were the cause of earthquakes. 
 One day, they add, the Evil One approached the animal, 
 and, laughing at the patience with which it had so long- 
 borne an useless burden, persuaded it to shake its back- 
 bone, and thus to rid itself of the load. The globe was 
 just about to be shaken off, when, fortunately, some one 
 informed Allah of the impending calamity, who hastened 
 to the spot, and, after a long discussion, succeeded in ex- 
 acting a promise that the whale would continue to uphold 
 the earth a few thousand years longer. The Chinese are, 
 as usually, not behind other nations in early and magnifi- 
 cent accounts of their own giants. In an ancient work 
 of authority, called Tsi-hiai, they speak of a whale Pheg, 
 which beats four hundred miles of ocean into foam when- 
 ever it moves. At a very advanced age, this monster 
 of the deep is changed ; it becomes then the famous mon- 
 ster of the air, the bird roc. 
 
 Now, as we have stated before, the natural history of 
 the whale is perfectly well known, and we will, therefore, 
 here mention only one feature connected with the giant 
 which is not as familiar to all. This is the fact that the 
 flesh of the whale is excellent food, and was formerly es- 
 teemed most highly. It was for a long time a royal dish 
 in England, and, in 1243, Henry III. summoned the sher- 
 
ODD FISH. 67 
 
 iffs of London to furnish him, for his table, with a hundred 
 whales ! In the thirteenth century it reappears in the 
 housekeeping-book of the Countess of Leicester, and for 
 several generations afterwards all the whales cajught in 
 the Thames belonged by right to the Lord Mayor of 
 London, who had them served up in state at great mu- 
 nicipal dinners. Marteus, in his northern voyages, ate 
 whale flesh frequently ; but he considered it coarse and 
 tough, inferior to beef; the tail only furnished, when well 
 cooked, really palatable dishes. The Normans used to 
 be, in former times, the caterers of the English ; they pos- 
 sessed the secret of several recipes by which to cook the 
 rare delicacy, and generally served the pieces of meat 
 with tender green peas. 
 
 The main use to which the whale is put, remains, how- 
 ever, the oil, the sperm, and the whalebone, and these are 
 rich sources of income to many nations. American sperm 
 whaling, especially in the Pacific, has, in a commercial 
 point of view, grown to immense proportions. When New 
 England was yet a colony, gray-headed men would point 
 to the sea, saying, " Those are the fields where our chil- 
 dren will reap their harvests ; " and a fleet of over six 
 hundred sail yearly employed in hunting the sperm whale 
 now realizes the prediction. 
 
 Among the near kindred of the whale is the famous 
 unicorn not the companion of the lion on the British 
 coat-of-arms, but its counterpart among the wonders of 
 the deep. Inferior in size to the right whale, it has the 
 
68 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 advantage of a most formidable weapon, with which 
 Nature has provided it for as yet unknown purposes. 
 This is the monstrous tooth which projects from the up- 
 per jaw of the animal ; it is as large as a man's thigh at 
 the base, turned in a spiral, and sharply pointed at the 
 end ; hollow within, it shows externally the finest and 
 whitest ivory known to the trade. The Narwhal, or 
 nose-whale, was so called because the Dutch, who seem 
 to have had the christening of most quaint things in 
 northern regions, at first took this horn, projecting 
 straight ahead, ten or even fifteen feet, for a grotesque 
 long nose. Some say the animal uses this odd append- 
 age to pierce holes through the ice when he comes up to 
 blow or breathe ; others, that he mows off seaweed with 
 it, on which he grazes. There is no doubt that, at times, 
 he transfixes fish with his gigantic stiletto, so that he 
 may be able to devour them at leisure. 
 
 The legend has it, that a king of Denmark, wishing to 
 make somebody a present of a piece of the horn of the 
 unicorn for such it was long considered ordered one 
 of his high officials to cut off a piece at the thicker end 
 of a fine specimen which he possessed. The officer did 
 so, and, to his astonishment found that what he had 
 looked upon as a solid horn, was hollow, and in the con- 
 cavity he discovered a smaller horn of the same shape 
 and the same substance. The latter was about a foot 
 long, and this resemblance to the teeth of men first led, 
 it is thought, to the idea, that the unicorn might after all 
 
ODD FISH. 69 
 
 be nothing more than a gigantic tooth. In those days, 
 however, the superstitious people attached marvellous 
 powers to the wonderful horn, and a brisk trade was 
 carried on in fine specimens, and even in broken frag- 
 ments. 
 
 The male alone possesses this formidable weapon ; the 
 female having, instead, two small teeth, of little use for 
 purposes of attack or defence. In the male, however, 
 one of these two is disproportionately developed, while 
 the other remains either of diminutive size, or disappears 
 gradually altogether ; very much as is the case with the 
 claws of certain crustacese. At first sight, it would ap- 
 pear as if this giant of the seas, with his terrible sword, 
 would be the terror of the seas, killing and devouring all 
 that came near him. In reality, however, the narwhal is 
 a very harmless animal, and generally his own enem 
 more than that of others. His mouth has no teeth, and 
 immovable lips, and is so small that he can swallow little 
 else but mollusks and little fish ; and Scoresby, who 
 found in the stomach of one of these strange beings a ray 
 of two feet length, came to the conclusion that the fish 
 must have been first transfixed by the tooth, and killed 
 before it was devoured. Otherwise it would have been 
 difficult to understand how an active fish should have al- 
 lowed itself to be caught by an animal unable to seize it 
 with the lips or retain it with the tongue, and in a mouth 
 which had not even teeth to tear it to pieces. 
 
 Their swiftness, when they are alone, is marvellous ; 
 
70 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 and their capture would be almost impossible, if it were 
 not for the curious habit they have of travelling in im- 
 mense troops, and of taking refuge in little bays, from 
 which they cannot easily escape. Small boats approach 
 them, in such cases, with precaution ; the poor animals 
 begin to crowd upon each other, they press their ranks so 
 closely that soon their movements are impeded, and their 
 enormous weapons become interlaced, as each one tries 
 to raise the head high into the air. They can neither es- 
 cape nor defend themselves, and thus fall an easy prey to 
 the lances of the whalemen. 
 
 Scoresby thus once encountered, on his voyage to 
 Greenland, a troop of narwhals, divided into smaller 
 bands of fifteen or twenty. The males were far more 
 numerous than the females. They seemed to be full of 
 sportive gayety, raising their huge weapons high above 
 the water, crossing them with each other, and uttering a 
 sound as if they were gurgling water in their throats, 
 while they seemed to amuse themselves with the play of 
 the rudder in the water. At other times, however, they 
 are known to be in a very different humor, and then they 
 attack and sometimes pierce large whales. It is doubt- 
 ful whether their efforts against vessels arise from ill- 
 humor and pugnacity only, or from an idea that the 
 ships are large whales. Like the bees, the poor nar- 
 whals also generally seal their own doom when they 
 make such attacks ; for the enormous tooth, driven with 
 prodigious force into the timber, remains fast there, and, 
 
FABLES AND FACTS. 71 
 
 t 
 breaking off, causes the death of the ferocious animal. 
 
 At times, when he has driven it in right at the stern, the 
 poor creature itself is fastened to the ship and towed 
 along, until it dies and decomposes, to the great disgust 
 of the sailors, who see their course impeded and their 
 senses insulted without any profit. 
 
 In the Paris Museum there is a complete skeleton of a 
 magnificent narwhal, with a tooth of amazing size. The 
 marine monster here shows its exquisite adaptedness to the 
 element for which the hand of the Creator had fashioned 
 it, and no one, on seeing the slender, flexible form, can 
 doubt its far-famed agility and terrible strength. 
 
 The Greenlanders eat the flesh, and obtain from the 
 fat an oil second only to the best sperm oil. But it is 
 the tooth, after all, which has made the narwhal, at all 
 times, one of the wonders of the deep. Long before the 
 animal itself was known, the tooth was familiar to tra- 
 ders as the horn of the unicorn. The monastery of St. 
 Deny's possessed a pair of these remarkable weapons, 
 famous for their size and the beauty of the ivory ; they 
 are now in the Medical Museum of Paris. A larger one, 
 nearly nine feet long, exists in the treasury of the Danish 
 monarch, at Fredericksborg. 
 
 When they were not kept thus, as most rare curiosi- 
 ties the unicorn itself having, of course, never been 
 seen they were manufactured into weapons of every 
 kind, swords and daggers. But they were also endowed, 
 in popular belief, with a wondrous power of counteract- 
 
 UZUVBRSlf 
 <?. 
 
72 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 ing all poisons ; and their mere presence, it was thought, 
 sufficed to defeat any attempt at poisoning the owner. 
 Down to the days of the French king, Charles IX., a 
 piece of the precious substance was regularly dipped 
 into the cup of the monarch before he drank ; and when 
 the great founder of modern surgery, Ambroise Pare, 
 was requested to raise his voice against the superstition, 
 he replied that the belief was universal ; and if he ven- 
 tured to contradict it, he would be treated like an owl 
 appearing in bright daylight, which the other birds fall 
 upon and kill, and then think no more of the murdered 
 victim. Nevertheless, he subsequently wrote openly 
 against the custom, and with so much skill and power, 
 that after that time no one dared avow his secret faith 
 in the virtue of the unicorn's horn as an antidote. 
 
 Wormius, whom we have mentioned before, was the 
 first to establish the true character of the strange curi- 
 osity. " Finding myself," he writes, " a few years ago, 
 at the house of Mr. Fris, Grand Chancellor of Denmark, 
 I complained of the want of curiosity in our Greenland 
 merchants, that they should never have inquired after 
 the animal from whom these horns were obtained, or 
 brought home a part of their skin at least. They are 
 more curious than you think, replied the Chancellor, and 
 let me see a skull of immense size, to which a portion 
 of a so-called horn was attached. I was delighted to 
 see so rare and so precious a thing. I saw at a glance 
 that the skull resembled that of a whale, and had, like 
 
ODD FISH. 73 
 
 . 
 
 the latter, two blowholes on top, which opened into the 
 mouth. I also noticed that what was called a horn, was 
 inserted in the left side of the upper jawbone. Having 
 learned that a similar animal had been captured and car- 
 ried to Iceland, I wrote at once to the Bishop of Holl, 
 who had been my pupil, and requested him to send me a 
 drawing of the same. He did this promptly, adding 
 
 
 
 that the Icelanders called it narwhal, which means, a 
 whale that feeds on corpses, since whal means a whale, 
 and nar a corpse." 
 
 It was, however, a fact, that the Greenland Company 
 purposely defeated all efforts to obtain an animal of this 
 kind; as the fictitious value of a horn of the unicorn 
 was far more profitable to their treasury than the tooth 
 of a narwhal. In 1636, two of their vessels had bought 
 some fine horns from the natives in Davis' Straits, where 
 they had been compelled to winter. Some time after- 
 ward one of their agents went to Russia, and offered to 
 sell the Czar Alexis, the father of Peter* the Great, two 
 of these precious curiosities, as veritable horns of that 
 unicorn which is mentioned in Holy Writ, and spoken 
 of by Aristotle and Pliny. Alexis admired them very 
 much, and actually offered the enormous sum of six 
 thousand dollars for the finest ; but before concluding 
 the bargain, he proposed to consult his physician. This 
 man was learned and experienced enough to examine 
 them properly, and he soon discovered from their struc- 
 ture that they were teeth, and not horns. The Czar 
 
74 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 dismissed the agent, who returned crestfallen to Copen- 
 hagen, and received for his consolation the sneering 
 question, why he had not first offered two or three hun- 
 dred ducats to the physician, who would then have seen 
 as many horns of the unicorn as he could have wished ? 
 
m. 
 PEAELS. 
 
 ** The chief place among all precious things belongs to the pearl." PUNY. 
 
 A DUSKY fisherman in the far-off seas of India once 
 *"* found a pearl in an oyster. He had heard of such 
 costly gems, and sold it to an Arab for a gold coin which 
 maintained him for a whole year in luxury and idleness. 
 The Arab exchanged it for powder and shot furnished 
 him by a Russian merchant on board a trading vessel, 
 who even yet did not recognize the dirty, dust-covered 
 little ball as a precious jewel. He brought it home as a 
 present for his children on the banks of the Neva, where 
 a brother merchant saw it and bought it for a trifle. 
 The pearl had at last found one who could appreciate its 
 priceless value. The great man for it was a merchant 
 of the first class, the owner of a great fortune rejoiced 
 at the silent fraud by which he had obtained the one 
 pearl of great price, without selling all and buying it 
 fairly, and cherished it as the pride of his heart. Visitors 
 
76 WONDERS OF THE DEEP 
 
 came from all parts of the world to see the wonder. He 
 received them, in his merchant's costume, in a palace 
 plain without but resplendent inside, with all that human 
 art can do to embellish a dwelling, and led them silently 
 through room after room, filled with rare collections and 
 dazzling by the splendor of their ornaments. At last he 
 opened with his own key the carved folding-doors of an 
 inner room, which surprised the visitor by its apparent 
 simplicity. The floor, to be sure, was inlaid with mala- 
 chite and costly marble, the ceiling carved in rare woods, 
 and the walls hung with silk tapestry ; but there was no 
 furniture, no gilding, nothing but a round table of dark 
 Egyptian marble in the centre. Under it stood a strong 
 box of apparently wonderful ingenuity, for even the cau- 
 tious owner had to go through various readings of alpha- 
 bets, and to unlock one door after another, before he 
 reached an inner cavity, in which a plain square box of 
 Russia leather was standing alone. With an air akin to 
 reverence, the happy merchant would take the box and 
 press it for a moment to his bosom, then, devoutly cross- 
 ing himself and murmuring an invocation to some saint, 
 he would draw a tiny gold key, which he wore next to his 
 person, from his bosom, unlock the casket, and hold up 
 to the light that fell from a large grated window above, 
 his precious pet. 
 
 It was a glorious sight for the lover of such things. 
 A pearl as large as a small egg, of unsurpassed beauty 
 and marvellous lustre. The sphere was perfect, the play 
 
PEARLS. 77 
 
 of colors, as he would let it reluctantly roll from his 
 hands over his long white fingers down on the dark 
 table, was only equalled by the flaming opal, and yet 
 there was a soft, subdued light about the lifeless thing 
 which endowed it with an almost irresistible charm. It 
 was not only the pleasure its perfect form and matchless 
 beauty gave to the eye, nor the overwhelming thought of 
 the fact that the little ball was worth any thing an em- 
 peror or a millionaire might choose to give for it there 
 was a magic in its playful ever-changing sheen as it 
 rolled to and fro a contagion in the rapt fervor with 
 which the grim old merchant watched its every flash 
 and flare, which left few hearts cold as they saw the 
 marvel of St. Petersburg. For such it was, and the 
 Emperor himself, who loved pearls dearly, had in vain 
 offered rank and titles and honors for the priceless gem. 
 A few years afterwards a conspiracy was discovered, 
 and several great men were arrested. Among the sus- 
 pected was the merchant. Taking his one great treasure 
 with him he fled to Paris. Jewellers and amateurs, 
 Frenchmen and foreigners, flocked around him, for the 
 fame of his jewel had long since reached France. He 
 refused to show it for a time. At last he appointed a 
 day when his great rival, in pearls, the famous Dutch 
 banker, the Duke of Brunswick, and other men well 
 known for their love of precious stones and pearls, were 
 to behold the wonder. He drew forth the golden key, 
 he opened the casket, but his face turned deadly pale, 
 
78 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 his eyes started from their sockets, his whole frame be 
 gan to tremble, and his palsied hand let the casket drop. 
 The pearl was discolored ! A sickly blue color had 
 spread over it, and dimmed its matchless lustre. His 
 gem was diseased ; in a short time it would turn into a 
 white powder, and the rich merchant of St. Petersburg, 
 the owner of the finest pearl known to the world, was a 
 pauper ! The pearl had avenged the poor Indian of the 
 East, the Arab, and the poor traveller, and administered 
 silent justice to the wrongful owner. 
 
 There is injustice, grievous wrong and fearful cruelty 
 in the early history of almost all oriental pearls, for, as 
 Barry Cornwell sings so well 
 
 Within the midnight of her hair, 
 
 Half hidden in its deepest deeps, 
 A single peerless, priceless pearl 
 
 (All filmy-eyed) forever sleeps. 
 Without the diamond's sparkling eyes, 
 The ruby's blushes there it lies. 
 Modest as the tender dawn, 
 When her purple veil's withdrawn 
 The flower of gems, a lily cold and pale. 
 Yet, what doth all avail ? 
 All its beauty, all its grace ? 
 All the honors of its place ? 
 He who plucked it from its bed, 
 
 In the far blue Indian Ocean, 
 
 Lieth, without life or motion, 
 In his early dwelling dead I 
 All his children, one by one, 
 When they look up to the sun, 
 Curse the toil by which he drew j 
 The treasure from its bed of blue. 
 
 For sad is the life and fearful are the dangers through 
 which the unfortunate pearl-diver passes before his few 
 
PEARLS. 79 
 
 years are ended, and he enters into eternal rest. How 
 strange is the providence of God, which places the pre- 
 cious diamond in the hand of the poor Brazilian slave, and 
 grants the precious pearl to the half-starved Indian ! Far 
 out, off the coast of Ceylon and on Bahrein Island, in the 
 Persian Gulf, are the great deposits, from whence come 
 to us most of the gems we value so highly. It is a strange 
 sight to see in the season, in the months of February and 
 March, those desert and barren spots suddenly bloom 
 forth in gorgeous colors, as the sands and coral rocks are 
 covered with tents of richly-dyed materials, and a motley 
 crowd assembles on the forsaken spot. There are divers 
 and merchants, fish-sellers and butchers, boat-caulkers 
 and sail-makers, jewellers and idle talkers, men from Asia 
 and Africa, all talking loudly, jostling each other, eager 
 to become rich by some lucky venture. There are priests 
 also, who levy tribute on the superstitious fishermen, im- 
 posing offerings and prescribing holidays, so that the 
 poor fisherman's earnings are half-spent .in advance, and 
 his actual work-days amount to little more than thirty 
 in the season. 
 
 When all is prepared, a Hindoo or Parsee blesses the 
 water to drive away the sharks for a consideration ; 
 magicians and sorcerers sell amulets and utter blessings 
 for a consideration ; and when the boats are ready for 
 a start, there is seen in the chief boat a jolly old cheat, a 
 conjuror and binder of sharks, who waves about his skin- 
 ny hands and jumps and howls, till the poor fishermen 
 
80 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 are as much afraid of his incantations as of the sharks 
 themselves. They must fast rigidly, while he performs 
 his wicked rites, nor will he allow them to start, till he 
 has declared the moment propitious. At last he lifts 
 up his voice in a hideous way, the divers join in the 
 chorus, a kind of toddy is made and liberally distributed 
 among the excited crowd, and the work begins in 
 earnest. 
 
 The boats generally assemble at a late hour of the 
 night, and when all are together, a signal gun is fired, 
 whereupon they set sail for the banks, which are not far 
 from the west side of the Persian Gulf. The purpose is 
 to reach there before daybreak, so that the divers may 
 be able to begin the moment the sun rises above the 
 dark waters. In each boat there are besides the pilot, 
 ten rowers and ten divers. The latter, perfectly naked, 
 but with their skin well rubbed with fragrant oil, work 
 five at a time, leaving the other five to recover and to 
 recruit in the meanwhile. Before they jump in, they 
 compress the nostrils tightly with a small piece of horn, 
 which keeps the water out, stuff their ears with beeswax 
 for the same purpose, fasten a network bag, which is to 
 hold the oysters, by a string to their waist, and aid their 
 own descent by a large stone of red granite, which they 
 catch hold of with their foot. Then they go quickly 
 down to the bottom. Here they dart about as swiftly as 
 they can, picking up with their fingers and with their 
 toes, which they use with wonderful agility, fill their 
 
PEAELS. 81 
 
 bag, and shake the rope that is held above in the boat, 
 in order to be drawn up at once. 
 
 In favorable weather the divers may go down from 
 twelve to fifteen times a day ; if the weather is less pro- 
 pitious, they dive at most five times. They remain on 
 an average not over a minute under water ; to stay there 
 a minute and a half or two minutes is possible only for 
 a few expert divers, and can only be reached by extraor- 
 dinary efforts. A few who have endured four or five 
 minutes are spoken of as we speak of the men of genius 
 that adorn a nation's annals ; and the greatest of divers 
 is a half-fabulous Indian, who remained full six minutes 
 under water. The exertion is extremely violent, and 
 generally when the poor men return to the surface, blood 
 flows from nose, ears, and eye. Hence divers are gen- 
 erally unhealthy, and without exception short-lived. 
 They suffer from heart-diseases and sores, and are easily 
 recognized among the mixed population of those regions, 
 by their bloodshot eyes, staggering limbs, and bent 
 backs. These are part of their wages. Sometimes they 
 die suddenly on reaching the surface, as if struck by a 
 shot, and are seen no more. The stories of some of their 
 number being regularly slain, in order to throw their 
 limbs to the sharks for the sake of saving the lives of 
 the others, or of eyeballs starting out of their sockets, 
 and the tympanum of the ear breaking under the pres- 
 sure of the water, are of course fables ; but the pains, 
 
 perils, and penalties of the poor pearl-divers are, in all 
 4* 
 
82 WONDEKS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 conscience, sad enough to surround the fruit of their 
 labor, the beauteous pearl, with a melancholy interest 
 unknown to other jewels. They have, however, their 
 companions of suffering in higher regions also, for Dry- 
 den's words, " He who would search for pearls must dive 
 below," apply to gems more precious" even than the cost- 
 liest of oriental pearls. 
 
 The coast of Ceylon, however, is by no means the only 
 place where pearls are found and fished. In the Persian 
 Gulf more than thirty thousand men are employed in 
 three thousand boats, and the produce of their industry 
 constitutes the chief source of income of the Imaum of 
 Muscat. The Red Sea also furnishes a large supply, and 
 these three localities were the sources from which the 
 Romans and the Greeks obtained their pearls. Inferior 
 specimens are found in the Pacific and the West India 
 waters, though certain fisheries on the California coast 
 have occasionally produced very valuable pearls. 
 
 It may be assumed, however, that all the mountain- 
 streams of Europe and America furnish a limited number 
 of shellfish, which contain at times valuable pearls. In 
 many small rivers of our mountain regions small pearls 
 have been found, and one of considerable size was a few 
 years ago picked up on the banks of the James River, 
 near Richmond. Certain streams in England have been 
 fished for pearls, in ancient times. Already Pomponius 
 Mela, one of the oldest Latin writers, states that the seas 
 of Britain generated gems and pearls, and Suetonius pre- 
 
PEARLS. 83 
 
 serves the tradition that Julius Caesar was tempted to 
 invade the distant island mainly by the hope thart he 
 would enrich himself with its pearls ! It seems to be a 
 well-established fact, that the great conqueror brought 
 home from there a breastplate studded with pearls, which 
 he dedicated to Venus Genitrix in her temple at Rome, 
 and on which there was an inscription, stating distinctly 
 that these pearls were British, as Caesar wished it to be 
 understood that the offering was formed of spoil obtained 
 in Britain. Pliny mentions these pearls as small and ill- 
 colored, but does not doubt their origin. 
 
 Scotland has to this day its successful pearl-fisheries, 
 especially in the river Tay, where they extend from the 
 town of Perth to Loch Tay, and where the mussels are 
 collected by the peasantry before harvest-time, when 
 they enjoy conparative leisure. The pearls, however, are 
 generally small, or, when they are of larger size, rather 
 deformed. It is constantly affirmed by tradition, on the 
 other hand, that the superb pearl in front of the Scottish 
 crown was obtained in the river Ythan. 
 
 Pennant tells us that English rivers also were noted 
 for having several kinds of mussels, which produced 
 quantities of pearls, and that there are regular fisheries 
 in many, as in the Esk. In North Wales, the river Con- 
 way had, and still has, quite a reputation for its trea- 
 sures. Camden gives an account of some very valuable 
 pearls found in his time, which he calls as large and as 
 Well colored as any we find in England and Ireland, and 
 
84: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 adds, that they have been fished for there ever since the 
 Roman Conquest. Gibson, who translated Camden, says 
 he knew a Mr. Wynn, who had a valuable collection of 
 pearls, found in the Con way, among which was a stool- 
 pearl, of the form and size of a button-mould, and weigh- 
 ing seventeen grains. One of these gems, a Conway 
 pearl, is to this day preserved in the royal crown of Eng- 
 land ; it was presented to Catharine, the Queen of 
 Charles II., by her chamberlain, Sir Richard Wynn, of 
 Giordir. Even in our day these fisheries are not quite 
 neglected, but they represent the very prose of the pur- 
 suit, as the dangers and difficulties which have to be en- 
 countered in the Far East constitute its poetry. As 
 soon as the tide is out, these simple fishermen go in seve- 
 ral boats to the mouth of the river, and there gather 
 into their sacks as many mussels as they can obtain be- 
 fore the tide returns. These are thrown into huge ket- 
 tles over a fire, to be opened, and then they are taken 
 out, one by one, with the hand, and thrown into tubs. 
 One of the men steps barefooted into these, and stamps 
 upon them until they are reduced to a pulp. Next they 
 pour water upon the mass, to separate the fishy sub- 
 stance from the heavier parts, which contain sand, small 
 pebbles, and the pearls that may have been obtained. 
 After numerous washings, the sediment is put out to dry, 
 :md the pearls are carefully laid on large wooden plat- 
 ters, one at a time, with a feather. When a sufficient 
 quantity is gathered, they are taken to an overseer, who 
 
PEAKLS. 85 
 
 pays the fishermen a few shillings an ounce for them. 
 The pearls are generally of a dirty white, and sometimes 
 blue. What makes this fishery singular is the mystery 
 which hangs upon the next step in the proceedings. No 
 one knows what becomes of the pearls. The fishery is a 
 monopoly, and there is but one person who buys them 
 up, and as he keeps his counsel most jealously, this has 
 led to very fanciful surmises. One curious inquirer was 
 gravely told that all the pearls here found were sent 
 abroad to be manufactured into seed-pearls, and another 
 learned that they were exported to India, in order to be 
 dissolved in the sherbet of nabobs. 
 
 Ireland also has its miniature fisheries ; the mussels are 
 found set up in the sand of the river-beds, with their open- 
 side turned from the torrent, and contain occasionally 
 fine pearls. In Bavaria the poor shellfish are treated sci- 
 entifically : they are put back into certain localities, fed 
 with a peculiar food, which frivolous critics say is scien- 
 tifically prepared by the great Liebig, and subjected to a 
 careful treatment. The success of this curious project 
 has, however, not yet become public. 
 
 The question how the pearls were originally made, led, 
 in olden times, to many absurd fables, and even the Mid- 
 dle Ages were not free from the wildest theories. Pliny 
 gravely asserts that the oyster feeds upon the heavenly 
 dew, and that this produces pearls. Boethius has the 
 same notion, and speaking of the pearl-mussel in Scottish 
 rivers, he says ; " These mussels, early in the morning, 
 
86 WONDEItS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 when the sky is clear and temperate, open their mouth a 
 little above the water, and most greedily swallow the dew 
 of heaven ; and after the quantity and measure of dew 
 which they swallow, they conceive and breed the pearl." 
 Even Harrison still claims that the pearls are only sought 
 for in the latter part of August, because a little before 
 that time " the sweetness of the dew is most convenient 
 for the kind of fish which doth engender and conceive 
 them." The common belief in the East is, to this day, 
 that these precious gems are 
 
 "rain from the sky, 
 Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea ; " 
 
 and this is about as true an account of their origin as the 
 pretty conceit of Robert Herrick : 
 
 Some asked me where the rabies grew ? 
 
 And nothing did I say, 
 But with my fingers pointed to 
 The lips of Julia. 
 
 Some asked how pearls did grow, and where ? 
 
 Then spoke I to my girl, 
 To part her lips, and showed them there 
 
 The quarelets of pearl. 
 
 Alas for poetry and romance ! The same terrible 
 science of chemistry which has, with its sledge-hammer 
 of matter-of-fact, converted the glorious diamond into 
 vulgar charcoal, has also pronounced the precious pearl 
 to be nothing but a few layers of membrane and common 
 carbonate of lime. And yet, here as everywhere in God's 
 beautiful nature, the poetical element is not wanting, if our 
 eyes are but opened by wisdom from on high, to see the 
 
PEARLS. 87 
 
 daily wonders by which we are surrounded. The pearls, 
 aside from their beauty and their value, are superb illus- 
 trations of that beneficent law of Nature, by which in- 
 juries are converted into blessings, and Death is changed 
 into Life. The mollusks are all made after the same mod- 
 el, and the common naked snail, as well as the mussel, 
 the cockle, and the oyster, the awkward garden-snail 
 crawling slowly on the moist ground, and the graceful 
 nautilus sailing lightly over the blue waves, the elegant 
 and the rough, the rare and the common, all show the 
 same wisdom and marvellous adaptation of form to their 
 purpose in life. The body is invariably of soft consist- 
 ence, and enclosed in an elastic skin. From this skin 
 exudes continually a calcareous matter, which resembles 
 common lime. This protects the animal, and serves to 
 form its shell. Where the waves are rough and rocks 
 abound, there this house also is rough, hard, and stony, 
 fit to weather the tempest, and to roll among rocks : where 
 the waters are smooth and only halcyon days to be 
 looked for, there Nature, which never works in vain, pro- 
 vides only paper sides, and an egg-shell boat, such as the 
 little nautilus navigates during his happy life. This same 
 calcareous matter which the animal gives out without 
 pain and without labor, also fills the little house inside 
 with supernatural beauty. It forms that beautiful sub- 
 stance, so smooth and so highly polished, dyed with all 
 the colors of the rainbow, and resplendent with a glori- 
 ous opalescence, which still charms the eye in spite -of 
 
88 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 its having become so common in all our houses. This is 
 the lining of the shell, the nacre, or in its poetical name, 
 the mother-of-pearl. " The inside of the shell," said old 
 Dampier, the stern sailor with the poet's mind, resem- 
 bling himself the rugged oyster-shell with the beautiful 
 lining within, "the inside of the shell is more glorious 
 than the pearl itself." 
 
 No wonder that with such a beautiful house to live 
 in, the oyster should seem to derive its share of plea- 
 sure which is given by the great Maker to all his creatures 
 on earth, from an effort to render its bed always soft 
 and cosy to lie warm, packed in close and comfortably. 
 No wonder that with such a disposition, the animal 
 should become a sybarite, and fret at a crumpled rose- 
 leaf on its ivory couch. Hence, as soon as a foreign 
 substance intrudes by some means or other, the mussel 
 begins to make desperate efforts to remove the irritation. 
 It has no means to resist the intruder ; it must do as we 
 have to do where our evils are beyond our powers of 
 resistance ; it must submit, and endeavor by the means 
 placed in its power by a beneficent Creator to convert 
 the pain into a pleasure, the grief into a glory. Hence, 
 whatever the cause of irritation may be, the process is 
 invariably the same. 
 
 Sometimes a tiny grain of sand or some similar for- 
 eign substance slips, in a moment of carelessness, through 
 the opening, and gets between the mantle of the animal 
 and the shell, proving soon a great annoyance. At other 
 
PEARLS. 89 
 
 times some enemy of the poor, helpless shell-fish goes 
 deliberately to work to destroy it : he fastens himself 
 to the outside, and perforates the shell until he gets 
 within reach of his prey. In such cases, the animal be- 
 gins immediately to cover the intruding grain with a 
 smooth coat of membrane and a layer of nacre, or to 
 plug the opening in like manner with the same substance^ 
 in order to shut out the intruder, and to balk him in his 
 murderous design. These accumulations grow from year 
 to year, and finally form pearls adhering to the inner 
 surface of the shell. 
 
 These are, however, not the valuable pearls of com- 
 merce, which are always found loose in the interior or 
 imbedded in the soft parts of the animal's substance. 
 This arises from the fact that here the source of irrita- 
 tion has not come from without, but originated in the 
 interior of the shell itself. The cause of this : the ani- 
 mal produces annually a number of eggs, contained each 
 in a tiny capsule of almost microscopic* size. As these 
 eggs germinate and become diminutive animals, they are 
 thrown out by the mother, to become mussels in their 
 turn. Every now and then, however, an egg proves abor- 
 tive, and is not thrown out with the others, but remains 
 behind in the little capsule in which it was originally 
 contained. This capsule, forming part of the animal, 
 and furnished with blood and supplies of every kind by 
 the latter, is gradually covered, like the whole interior 
 of the shell, with nacre, and thus forms the future gem. 
 
90 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 This is the way they are made, these wondrous beauties ! 
 Well may, therefore, Sir Everard Home exclaim : " If 
 I can prove that this, the richest jewel in a monarch's 
 crown, which cannot be imitated by any art of man, 
 either in beauty of form or brilliancy of lustre, is the 
 abortive egg of an oyster enveloped in its own nacre, 
 who will not be struck with wonder and astonishment ? " 
 
 All pearls, therefore, have in the centre some small 
 foreign substance, or a tiny cell, which is surprising by 
 its extreme brightness and polish, although but just of 
 sufficient size to hold the original egg. If a pearl be 
 split and then set in a ring with the divided surface out- 
 wards, as is often done, a magnifying glass will reveal to 
 us this central cell quite conspicuously, in the form of a 
 round hole, very minute it may be, but well defined, and 
 showing beyond any doubt where the ovum has been de- 
 posited. Around this cell an additional coat of nacre is 
 laid evenly and smoothly every year, and thus the beau- 
 tiful round pearl is gradually built up. Occasionally one 
 may be found that is pear-shaped, and these, when per- 
 fect, are considered the most valuable, as they are in great 
 demand for eardrops. This shape arises from the little 
 foot or pedicle to which the egg is attached, being cover- 
 ed with nacre as well as the egg itself. 
 
 The great beauty of pearls consists in their perfection 
 of form, and their peculiar lustre, which man has not yet 
 been able to give to artificial pearls, except in rare in- 
 stances. This lustre arises from two features which 
 
PEAKLS. 91 
 
 characterize these precious jewels of the deep: their 
 transparency and the peculiar structure of their surface. 
 For pearls are transparent, as can easily be ascertained 
 by holding a split pearl to a candle, where, by interpos- 
 ing a colored substance or light, the color will be seen 
 transmitted through the pearl. Now, as the central cell 
 is lined with a highly polished coat of nacre, and the sub- 
 stance of the pearl itself is transparent, the rays of light 
 easily pervade it, and cause that peculiar lustre which 
 characterizes a valuable pearl. 
 
 This lustre, however, is heightened into true and 
 superb opalescence by the delicately grooved surface of 
 the pearl, which, Sir David Brewster says, resembles 
 closely the fine texture of the skin at the top of an 
 infant's finger, or the minute corrugations which are 
 often seen on surfaces covered with varnish or oil-paint. 
 In other words, there are, beneath the immediate polish 
 of the pearl, certain tiny wavelets, and dimples, from 
 which the light is reflected in subdued and undulating 
 splendor. From the flat surface of the lining of the 
 shell, the mother-of-pearl, these rays of light diverge in 
 all directions, and hence shine in rainbow colors ; in the 
 pearl, on the contrary, on account of its spherical form, 
 the varied hues are all blended into a white, uniform 
 light, which gives to this gem its unrivalled beauty and 
 high value as an ornament. 
 
 These lustrous and beautiful spheres are the coveted 
 ornament of all men, and immense prices are paid for 
 
92 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 those of perfect form and largest size. Hence man's 
 cupidity and ingenuity have been at work, from time 
 immemorial, to imitate Nature's handiwork, and to pro- 
 duce artificial pearls. In the harems of the East, and in 
 the ball-rooms of Europe, in Chinese homes, and at 
 American parties, pearls have ere now dazzled the fash- 
 ion, that never lay in an oyster-bed, as bits of California 
 rock-crystal have more than once eclipsed the treasures 
 of Golconda. The result of such labors has rarely been 
 satisfactory ; with the exception of certain French imi- 
 tations, seen at last year's Exposition, no pearls have 
 ever yet been produced that could not readily be distin 
 guished from the genuine product of shell-fish. 
 
 It is not a little curious that the nearest cognate sub- 
 stance is bezoar, a concretion of deep olive-green color, 
 found in the stomach of goats, dogs, cows, and espe- 
 cially camels. The Hindoos generally grind it into yel- 
 low paint, but when harder parts are found, they fall 
 speedily into the hands of jewellers, who polish and 
 thread them, and then sell them as jewels. Thus it is 
 from the secretion of a shell-fish, and from the stomach 
 of lower animals, that man gets the ornaments he most 
 values for her he loves best, and for him he wishes to 
 honor most ! 
 
 Already in the days of the Roman Empire stories were 
 afloat in the great city, of Arab tribes living near the 
 sandy shoals of the Red Sea, who practiced the art of 
 making artificial pearls. They had evidently no inkling 
 
PEARLS. 93 
 
 yet of modern ingenuity, for, if we are to believe the 
 Roman writers of the time, these innocent children of the 
 desert went yet to Nature herself for aid in their enter- 
 prise, and made the oysters themselves their agents in 
 fabricating artificial pearls. Apollonius tells us how 
 they allured the credulous shell-fish from their cosy bed 
 in the warm waters below to the surface, by pouring oil 
 on the waters, to make them smooth and calm, arid seiz- 
 ing them at the moment when they appeared on the sur- 
 face to imbibe the genial air, thrust a sharp instrument 
 through the gaping valves into the soft body of the ani- 
 mal. Then they threw them into a colander connected 
 with a pan or trough, into which the exuding juices 
 slowly trickled in the form of round pearly drops. The 
 story is, of course, fabulous, but tends to show how 
 familiar the idea of making artificial pearls had already 
 become to the mind of the ancients. The Chinese that 
 wonderful people, so wise as children, so ignorant in 
 their old age have likewise for centuries already car- 
 ried on a well-organized system of manufacturing pearls 
 on the same principle of forced mussel-labor. They 
 claim that this invention was made as early as the thir- 
 teenth century, by an individual whose memory they 
 still honor annually by certain ceremonial acts performed 
 in a temple specially dedicated to his name. 
 
 The large manufactories of artificial pearls, which now 
 exist near Canton and at Hutchefu, near Ningpo, employ 
 several thousand laborers in this extraordinary business, 
 
94: WONDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 and produce every year a perfectly enormous quantity 
 of pearls. The process is briefly this : in the months of 
 April and May the full-grown mussels of that year are 
 removed, one by one, from their beds, and have small 
 moulds or forms pushed inside, which are to serve as 
 nuclei for new pearls. A piece of wire or a few metal 
 beads are carefully inserted between the mantle of the 
 animal and the shell, and there these foreign bodies are 
 left embedded in the soft, muscular substance of the liv- 
 ing shell-fish, till they become completely incrusted with 
 a thin coating of nacre. A year generally suffices to 
 cover them with a thin but complete coat of mother-of- 
 pearl ; but at times they are left much longer undis- 
 turbed, in order to obtain a thicker incrustation of 
 greater beauty. 
 
 There is in the British Museum a pearl-mussel which 
 has inside the shell a number of little josses made of bell- 
 metal and completely covered and coated with nacre. 
 
 The beads so procured have a very handsome appear- 
 ance and considerable lustre, but they are almost always 
 mis-shapen, following the rough outline of the artificial 
 kernel, and hence they can be sold only for opaque set- 
 tings, or for embroidery, when the imperfect side is con- 
 cealed. The principal object of these factories is to pro- 
 duce the small idols with which the Chinese adorn their 
 caps. These are produced by little tin moulds of stereo- 
 typed shape, which are inserted into the mollusk, and 
 soon becoming covered with an extremely thin layer of 
 
PEARLS. 95 
 
 nacre, appear entirely formed of the lustrous substance 
 of which pearls are made. The deception is all the 
 greater as the nacre, though infinitely thin, still forms a 
 complete and unbroken coat of exquisite smoothness, 
 which cannot easily be removed by force, and hence is 
 very durable. 
 
 In Europe, it was Linnseus, the great botanist, who 
 first broached the idea of producing genuine pearls by a 
 similar method, and offered, in 1761, to sell the secret to 
 the Swedish Government for a modest sum. The country 
 was, however, too poor to purchase the discovery, which 
 thereupon fell into the hands of a wealthy merchant of 
 Gottenburg. When his heirs a few years later oiFered 
 the secret, carefully sealed up in the original paper, for 
 sale, it had already become known through the publica- 
 tions of the great savant himself, and all the world was 
 aware that the pearl was the result of an injury inflicted 
 on the body or the shell of a mollusk. Linnaeus had, him- 
 self, in his collection, several genuine pearls, the forced 
 production of fresh-water pearl-mussels. 
 
 The Venetians had long before made pearls in their 
 famous glass-factories. They took hollow glass beads 
 and injected them with various tinted varnishes, into the 
 composition of which certain mercurial preparations en- 
 tered largely. This manufacture was soon brought to a 
 high degree of perfection, and led to a remarkable evi- 
 dence of the honesty of the Great Republic : a law was 
 passed by the Senate, toward the end of the fifteenth 
 
96 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 century, forbidding the sale of these admirable imitations, 
 on the ground that it was fraudulent to make or sell 
 beads which could not be distinguished from genuine 
 oriental pearls ! The island of Murano, which was the 
 original seat of this manufacture, has continued until 
 now the principal locality for the production of these 
 artificial or seed-pearls, and their sale is no longer ham- 
 pered by republican regulations. 
 
 The city of Rome boasts of equal success, but achieves 
 it by very different means. Here glass is not so easily 
 obtained, and hence beads of alabaster are carefully 
 turned to a perfect sphere, and then covered with a 
 cement which consists chiefly of finely-ground mother- 
 of-pearl. They do not pretend to compete with genuine 
 pearls, but are an exceedingly pretty ornament, and 
 prove their popularity by never going out of fashion. 
 
 The French, whose brass jewels now defy detection, 
 have in the imitation of pearls also proved themselves 
 infinitely superior to all competitors. A few specimens 
 of their artificial productions, exhibited at the Exposition 
 of 1867, could neither in lustre nor in water and color be 
 distinguished from oriental pearls, even when the genuine 
 and the sham were laid side by side. There is but one 
 way by which they may be discovered : this is their spe- 
 cific weight they are much lighter than the real pearls. 
 
 The invention of their composition was, like so many 
 inventions of this kind, due to what is termed an accident. 
 A rosary-maker, in the days of Louis XIV., was walking 
 
PEARLS. 97 
 
 in the garden of his country-house, near Paris, when his 
 attention was attracted by the silvery lustre on a basin 
 of water. He inquired the cause, and found that a 
 number of bleaks a small white fish of that region 
 had been crushed in the water; further examination 
 convinced him that the lustrous sheen was produced by 
 countless scales of the little animals. This suggested to 
 his inventive mind the idea of using the scales for the 
 manufacture of artificial pearls ; but at first they de- 
 cayed too quickly to be of any use. Long reflection led 
 him at last to the happy thought of throwing the scales 
 into a strong alkaline solution, and, lo, the danger was 
 removed ! Now there exists large factories where this 
 substance is made. Enormous quantities of the fish, 
 which fortunately abounds in small tributaries of the 
 Seine and the Marne, are caught, and the scales scraped 
 off, well washed in water, and then compressed between 
 folds of fine linen. The fluid which trickles from them 
 is repeatedly filtered until it acquires the necessary de- 
 gree of purity, and then mixed with some alkaline solu- 
 tion, to prevent the animal-matter that remains from de- 
 caying. This is the famous Essence d'Orient, and it 
 takes from seventeen to eighteen thousand fish to make 
 one pound of the pure essence. 
 
 At the same time glass-beads are blown with special 
 care so as to produce perfect spheres, and into these the 
 costly essence, mixed with some isinglass, is gently 
 
 blown by means of a blow-pipe. As if by a magic touch, 
 5 
 
98 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 the glass-bead is instantly changed into a lustrous pearl. 
 They are then steeped in alcohol, dried over a hot plate, 
 filled with wax or cement to give them weight, and 
 finally exposed to various fumes, which constitute the 
 secret of the manufacture. 
 
 With all this labor and ingenuity a pearl is produced 
 a sham. We prefer the workmanship of Nature in the 
 wing-shelled pearl-bearer, the avicula margaritifera^ a 
 mussel as remarkable for its beauty and eccentricity of 
 shape as for the pearls which it contains. It is now 
 almost exclusively confined to the tropics, though in 
 ancient times it seems to have been found in the North- 
 ern Seas also. Its rivals are a mya, which abounds on 
 the shores of almost all seas, and a unio, the British 
 pearl-bearing mussel, found in rivers and small sheets of 
 water. These modest mollusks, unpretending in appear- 
 ance, but full of precious gems within, produce the pearl 
 which from time immemorial man has valued among the 
 most precious gems ; for there are few things so immor- 
 tal as good taste. Even the inferior pearls have their 
 mysterious value in the eyes of many. The imperfect or 
 discolored pearls are ground up, or dissolved, and used 
 as medicine in Eastern lands. They call the powder 
 Majoon ; it is an electuary, and myriads of small seed- 
 pearls are ground to impalpable powder in order to 
 make the costly dose. This is, of course, a mere matter 
 of taste, for the simple lime from the iriside of the shell 
 would be in every respect as white and as good, and com- 
 
mon magnesia would have preciseljrthe iwmre" effect. But 
 if some old Emir or rich Bouse is desirous to pay an enor- 
 mous price for something which he hopes will do his poor 
 old body good why should he not be allowed it to do 
 so ? Have not his betters swallowed everything from 
 pure gold to toad's brains, from tar-water to the filings 
 of a murderer's irons ? 
 
 The finer pearls, which are not sold on the spot to agents 
 from abroad, are sent to Europe, and of these the most 
 valuable find their way, in the course of trade, very 
 quickly, to London and Paris, where enormous prices are 
 paid for fine specimens. This mania is, however, by no 
 means of recent date, for antiquity has its lessons in this 
 respect also. We all know how Julius Caesar, when he 
 was in love with the mother of Marcus Brutus, gave her 
 a pearl worth nearly a quarter of a million of our money ; 
 and how Marc Antony drank one, dissolved in vinegar, 
 which cost nearly four hundred thousand dollars ; whilst 
 Clodius, the glutton, swallowed one worth forty thousand. 
 The example of Cleopatra found an imitator even in so- 
 ber England. Sir Thomas Gresham, not otherwise famous 
 for acts of folly, still so mistook the meaning of loyalty 
 that he ground a pearl, which had cost him fifteen thou- 
 sand pounds, into a cup of wine, in order thus fitly to 
 drink the health of his great queen ! This plagiarist 
 again had many rivals in the mad courtiers of Louis XIV., 
 who, in their insane extravagance, were wont to pulver- 
 ize their diamonds, and occasionally used the powder to 
 
100 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 dry the ink of letters which they sent to their beloved 
 ones. Is diamond-powder in the hair much worse ? 
 
 The largest pearl on record is probably one bought by 
 that most romantic of all travellers and dealers in precious 
 gems, Tavernier, at Catifa, in Arabia, where a pearl-fish- 
 ery existed already in the days of Pliny. It is said for 
 the pearl is unknown to our day to have been pear- 
 shaped, perfect in all respects, and nearly three inches 
 long ; he obtained from the Shah of Persia the enormous 
 sum of a hundred and eleven thousand pounds for the 
 gem. 
 
 Mr. Hope's pearl, which is looked upon as the finest 
 now known, is two inches long and four inches round ; 
 it weighs eighteen hundred grains, and, like all such rari- 
 ties, is of such enormous and uncertain value, that no 
 one would buy it at a market price. The most beautiful 
 collection of pearls belongs, however, to the Dowager 
 Empress of Russia. Her husband was exceedingly fond 
 of her, and as he shared, with other fancies, also that for 
 fine pearls with her, he sought for them all over the 
 world. They had to fulfil two conditions rarely to be 
 met with : they must be perfect spheres, and they must 
 be virgin pearls ; for he would buy none that had been 
 worn by others. After twenty-five years' search, he at 
 last succeeded in presenting his Empress with a necklace 
 such as the world has never seen before. 
 
 As this admiration for fine pearls has been the com- 
 mon weakness of man in all ages and in all countries, we 
 
PEARLS. 101 
 
 need not wonder at their playing a prominent part in 
 religious writings. The Talmud has a pretty story, 
 teaching us that those who believed in it, esteemed but 
 one object in nature of higher value than pearls. When 
 Abraham approached Egypt, the book tells us, he locked 
 Sara in a chest that none might behold her dangerous 
 beauty. But when he was come to the place of paying 
 custom, the officer said : " Pay custom ! " And he said : 
 " I will pay the custom." They said to him : " Thou 
 carriest clothes." And he said : " I will pay for clothes." 
 Then they said to him : " Thou carriest gold." And he 
 answered them : " I will pay for gold." On this they 
 further said : " Surely thou bearest the fine silk." He 
 replied : " I will pay custom for the finest silk." Then 
 they said : " Surely it must be pearls that thou takest 
 with thee." And he only answered : " I will pay for 
 pearls." Seeing that they could name nothing of value 
 for which the patriarch was not willing to pay custom, 
 they said : " It cannot be but thou open the box and let 
 us see what is within ! " So they opened the box, and 
 the whole land of Egypt was illumined by the lustre of 
 Sara's beauty far exceeding even that of pearls ! 
 
 Hence pearls are repeatedly used in Holy Writ also 
 for the most solemn comparisons, and to denote the high- 
 est degree of perfection. In the Old Testament wisdom 
 is praised as above pearls, and in the New Testament the 
 kingdom of heaven is compared to a pearl of great price, 
 which, when a merchant had found it, he went and sold 
 
102 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 all that he had, and bought it. Even the New Jerusa- 
 lem was revealed to St. John under the figure of an edi- 
 fice of twelve doors, each of which was a single pearl. 
 
 And this precious gem, fit to adorn an emperor's crown, 
 and to heighten the beauty of the fairest of maidens this 
 pearl of great price, perfect in form and beauteous in 
 lustre this jewel of the deep, sought for at the peril of 
 human life, and paid for with the bread of ten thousands 
 it sickens and dies and vanishes in a day. Every now 
 and then we hear of a noble family, which prided itself 
 on the possession of magnificent ancestral pearls, panic- 
 stricken by finding some of their precious gems turning 
 of a sickly color and crumbling into dust. It is but a 
 few years since the crown-jeweller of France solemnly 
 applied to the Academy of Sciences for a remedy against 
 this disease, caused probably by the decomposition of 
 the membranes which form part of the pearl, and are 
 after all liable to decay and corruption, like all animal 
 matter, by contact with the air. There was no answer 
 given, but the advice to preserve the precious gems, as 
 much as possible, from the influences of light and air ; 
 and the Crown of France has since lost some of its most 
 highly-prized jewels. " Behold, all is vanity and vexa- 
 tion of spirit ! " 
 
IV. 
 
 OOEALS. 
 
 ' Unheard by them the roaring of the wind, 
 The elastic motion of the waves unfelt; 
 Still, life is theirs, well suited to themselves.' 
 
 r\ LIDLNTG slowly over the blue waters of the Mediter 
 " ranean, you often see suddenly beneath you, at no 
 great distance from the surface, a meadow of surpassing 
 beauty. Long green grass, waiving gently to and fro, 
 shine with emerald beauty, speckled with flickering 
 lights; and all over the little prairie are scattered 
 flowers in brilliant colors. The restlessly heaving water 
 increases the splendor of the scene ; and 'dazzling hues 
 of green, orange, and deep red, shine upward through 
 the transparent waves. But the oar splashes, and in an 
 instant all the beauty of coloring has vanished, and the 
 whole region is clad in a dull dingy gray. You become 
 aware that you are in the midst of a colony of animals, 
 so small that the naked eye can hardly discern them, and 
 yet so powerful, by the strength of their united forces, 
 that they have built whole islands in distant oceans, and 
 
104 WOKDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 raised lofty mountain ranges in the very heart of 
 Europe. But they are most sensitive little beings, and 
 the slightest touch of a foreign body, a single ray of the 
 sun, or an angry splash of a headlong wave, makes them 
 shrink back into their narrow home. 
 
 They are altogether a strange, mysterious race, these 
 Maidens of the Sea, as the ancient Greeks used to call 
 them. Their beauty of form and color, their marvellous 
 economy, their gigantic edifices, all had early attracted 
 the attention of the curious, and given rise to fantastic 
 fables and amusing errors. They were well known to 
 the chosen people, for, singing of the grandeur of Tyre, 
 the prophet states that "Syria was thy merchant by 
 reason of the multitude of the waves of thy making: 
 they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, coral, 
 and agate ; " and ancient Job even mentions coral 
 among the most precious things, and yet was not fit to be 
 mentioned in comparison with wisdom thus proving the 
 high value which already in those early days was at- 
 tached to the red corals. We learn, from other sources 
 among profane writers, that priests wore them as amu- 
 lets, and physicians prescribed them in many diseases as 
 useful remedies ; whilst Pliny enters into a more detailed 
 account of the manner in which they were used for pur- 
 poses of ornament aticn, how weapons were adorned with 
 them, and costly vessels derived additional value from a 
 few deep-red branches of the Flowers of the Sea. 
 
 For flowers they were held to be from time immemori- 
 
CORALS. 105 
 
 al, and for centuries even of our Christian era. These 
 bright-colored, delicate forms, which, taken out of their 
 element, changed miraculously in an instant into dingy 
 brown stones, w r ere believed to be real water plants, which 
 the contact with the air turned at once into stone. Nor 
 is this belief extinct among men : the dwellers on the 
 coast of Southern Italy still swear to it, and laugh in their 
 beard when the foreign savant speaks of them as life- 
 endowed animals. It seems now astonishing how men 
 could quarrel so long and so pertinaciously over the ap- 
 parently simple question, whether corals belonged to the 
 vegetable or the animal kingdom. More fortunate in 
 this respect than many other organic forms, whose social 
 status is not yet recognized, corals were already, in the 
 beginning of the last century, raised to the dignity of 
 animals. This was not achieved, however, without much 
 trouble and much ludicrous blundering. It was a young 
 physician from Marseilles, called Peyssonel, whom the 
 French Academy had sent to the coasts of Barbary, for 
 the purpose of studying salt-water plants, who first dis- 
 covered their true nature, and observed how they ex- 
 panded and contracted at will and moved their arms with 
 a purpose. He communicated his discovery to the great 
 Reaumur ; but the illustrious naturalist was still so firmly 
 bound by precedent and scholastic method that he refused 
 to endorse the bold doctor's statement, withholding, how- 
 ever, with equal courtesy and discretion, his correspond- 
 ent's name ; for what is now praised as a noble progress 
 
106 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 in science, appeared to him a rash statement, likely to in- 
 jure the growing reputation of his young friend. It was 
 only after an interval of. twenty years, when Trembley 
 had published his beautiful discovery of sweet-water 
 polypi, and Jussieu, the master of botany, had given to 
 corals their papers of dismissal from his kingdom, that 
 Reaumur made the amende honorable, and acknowledged 
 both the correctness and the great value of PeyssonePs 
 discovery. But where was the victim of his previous re- 
 luctance to appreciate his merit ? He had gone, in dis- 
 gust and despair, to the West Indies, and there he had 
 disappeared from the sight of men, so that to this day we 
 know neither the time nor the place of his death. 
 
 Since then we have learnt much, but by no means all 
 yet, about the birth, the life, and the end of corals. In 
 the hot summer-months, when the waters are bringing 
 forth, as in the days of the creation, the moving creature 
 that has life, millions of diminutive, jelly-like spawn 
 are thrown out by the parent animal. For awhile they 
 enjoy their freedom, and seem to luxuriate in the exer- 
 cise of their powers of locomotion, which they are never 
 hereafter to recover ; but soon they become weary, and 
 settle down upon some firm, stationary body. At once 
 they begin to change their form ; they become star-like, 
 the mouth being surrounded by tentacles, very much as 
 the centre of a flower is surrounded by its leaves. 
 After some time, each one of these ray-like parts pushes 
 out extensions, which in their turn assume the shape of 
 
CORALS. 107 
 
 tiny stars, and establish their own existence by means of 
 an independent mouth. In the meanwhile lime has been 
 deposited at the base of the little animal, by its own 
 unceasing activity, and forms a close-fitting foot, which 
 adheres firmly to the rock. Upon this slender founda- 
 tion arises another layer, and thus, by incessant labor, 
 story upon story, until at last a tree has grown up with 
 branches spreading in all directions. But where the 
 plants of the upper world bear leaves and flowers, there 
 buds forth here, from the hard stone, a living, sensitive 
 animal, moving at will, and clad in the gay form and 
 bright colors of a flower. 
 
 This flower is the animal itself, seen only in its native 
 element, and unfit for air and light. What we call coral 
 is its house, outside of which it prefers to live rather 
 than within. How they build their dwelling, human eye 
 has never seen. We only know that the tiny animals, 
 by some mysterious power given them by the same great 
 Master on high who has given us a body after his 
 image, and immortal souls, absorb without ceasing the 
 almost imperceptible particles of lime which are con- 
 tained in all salt-water, and deposit them, one by one, 
 in the interior. This is done now more, now less 
 actively ; and the denser the deposit is, the more valua- 
 ble the coral. Gradually this substance hardens and 
 thickens, until in the precious coral, the Isis JVbbilis of 
 science, a large tree is formed, which often reaches the size 
 of a man's waist. It is perfectly solid and compact, and 
 
108 WONDEKS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 adorned on the surface with delicate, parallel lines. 
 Thus on the tree-shaped limestone grows the life- 
 endowed body of the polypus ; it moves, it feeds, it pro- 
 duces others, and then is turned again into stone, bury- 
 ing itself in its own rocky house, whilst on its grave 
 new generations build unceasingly new abodes. 
 
 This is the so-called Blood Coral of the common peo- 
 ple, the favorite of antiquity, and the fashion of our day 
 next to the pearl, the most precious jewel of the 
 deep. 
 
 It is not easy to obtain a piece of living coral, for the 
 purpose of studying its wondrous structure and admir- 
 ing its exceeding beauty. The great depth at which the 
 mysterious little animals dwell in the ocean secures them 
 against the mere amateur fisherman ; and the professional 
 coral-fisher, the son of superstitious races in Southern Italy, 
 is extremely reluctant to admit outsiders into the secrets 
 of his trade. If you ask him to bring home for you a few 
 valueless pieces, he is afraid of witchcraft, and the vessel 
 you have given him for the purpose is filled with every 
 animal from the deep but corals. If you follow him in 
 your own boat, as he sails out for his day's work, he is 
 more seriously frightened still, and takes to the open sea 
 preferring to lose rather a whole day's labor and profit 
 than to betray his favorite fishing-ground. He cannot 
 comprehend why you should be willing to pay him well 
 for what has no value in his eyes ; and, like the Arab 
 who suspects every travelling Frank of seeking after con- 
 
COEALS. 109 
 
 cealed treasures, the poor Neapolitan fancies you possess 
 a charm by which you can change his shells and sponges 
 into precious pearls and corals. Even after you have 
 succeeded in persuading him that you are no sorcerer, and 
 never studied in the school of that great magician, Virgil, 
 he fears you may betray the few, simple mysteries of his 
 trade, or the locality, from which he derives his support. 
 It requires much time, much money, and especially much 
 patience, to convince him of your innocence, and, even 
 when all these obstacles are removed, he still pertina- 
 ciously adheres to his hereditary superstition, that it is of 
 no use to try catching corals alive, as they are sure to die 
 of fright as soon as they behold the light of day. Hence 
 it was by an accident only that I was fortunate enough 
 once to see how corals are fished, and to examine them 
 closely, when fresh caught. 
 
 It was a Sunday, and we were sauntering up to the 
 tall olive-trees of St. Hospice, near Nice, in order to en- 
 joy there our self-caught meal of lobsters and cuttle-fish, 
 when we suddenly caught sight of an odd-looking craft 
 lying far out in the beautiful bay of Villafranca. The 
 sails hung carelessly about, and the bowsprit stood bold 
 upright, being crowned at the top with a couple of 
 saints carved in wood, while below two huge eyes were 
 painted on the waist of the vessel. 
 
 "It is a coraline," said one of our party, an Abbe, 
 familiar with all the features of the country ; " poor 
 people, who will stay here many weeks, catch nothing, 
 
110 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 spend all they have, and finally sell or pawn their boat 
 to enable them to return home." 
 
 " They have come for the great coral-tree," said our 
 boatman, who was carrying the hampers. " You know 
 the one that grows down in the dark grotto near Mount 
 St. Alban. There is no year that some Neapolitans or 
 Sicilians do not come up here in search of the treasure, 
 but no one has ever yet found it." 
 
 " Can you imagine," asked the Abbe, " that these 
 people really believe in an immense tree of coral, which 
 grows a hundred fathoms below the surface of the sea in 
 a grotto, large, like an ancient oak-tree, and stretching 
 out its gigantic branches in all directions, but drawing 
 them in instantly, like a cuttle-fish, when a net comes 
 near ? That is the story here, and these poor fishermen 
 believe in it as firmly as in their Holy Virgin, and laugh 
 us to scorn when we attempt to reason with them, and 
 prove to them the impossibility of such a thing." 
 
 We made up our mind, on the next day, to go on 
 board the odd-looking boat, and to see what could be 
 learnt from the crew. Fortunately one of our party 
 was a Neapolitan, well known to all the fishermen on the 
 Chiaga, and speaking their curious dialect. By a num- 
 ber of masonic signs he made himself known ; and the 
 air of mistrust and repugnance with which he had at first 
 been received, gave way to a less suspicious manner. 
 The padrone, or master of the vessel, was an oldish man, 
 with a .deeply-furrowed face, and a hard expression about 
 
CORALS. Ill 
 
 the mouth, which did not promise a very mild govern- 
 ment on board. They are a strange class of men, these 
 padroni of coral-boats, hundreds of whom come annually 
 from Naples and Sicily, from Genoa and Sardinia, and 
 sail, with the exception of a few adventurers bound from 
 the coast of France, along the coast of Algiers in search 
 of precious treasures. How on earth they manage to 
 sail, far out of sight of land, without telescope or com- 
 pass, and there on the broad ocean to find, year after 
 year, the precise place where, far down in the deep, there 
 lie vast masses of rock, which contain in cleft and crevice 
 the desired coral branches, is more than ordinary sea- 
 manship can explain. Three things only they need to 
 aid them in these venturesome journeys, which recall to 
 us forcibly that first great search after the Golden 
 Fleece : money in large sums for the outfit of their cora- 
 lines, a good stock of falsehoods to screen their real pur- 
 poses, and an invincible silence to oppose to all direct 
 questions. They have a saying among themselves, that 
 purse, and falsehood, and silence, must all three be as 
 deep as the sea in which they mean to fish. 
 
 Our padrone owned himself his little vessel, which did 
 not measure over five tons; his son, a clever, restless 
 little scamp, served as ship-boy ; and three sailors suf- 
 ficed to handle the nets and to work the boat. They 
 had come across the Mediterranean from Torre del 
 Greco, near Naples, in search of the fabled giant-tree, 
 which his favorite saint had shown the padrone in a 
 
112 WONDERS OF THE DE.EP. 
 
 dream. There was no log and no compass on board, 
 and all their provisions consisted of the never-failing 
 galetta, a white ship-biscuit, and some water ; for there 
 is no cooking on board these coralines. The padrone 
 was proud of having a few onions and some dried fish 
 in a locker, the key to which never left the lucky owner's 
 pocket. 
 
 We found that the fishing was done with a large net, 
 fastened by a stout rope to the stern of the vessel. At 
 the end of this rope hung first an iron cross, consisting 
 of two hollow tubes laid cross-wise, through which 
 strong ash poles had been thrust, and to this were fast- 
 ened a number of old sardine-nets, no longer fit for their 
 first purpose, and countless ends and bits of wide-meshed 
 pieces of rope, as thick as a finger the whole appa- 
 ratus a mass of rags and rotten net-work. But the more 
 such wretched-looking pieces of net-work the padrone 
 can fasten to his iron cross, the better are his chances. 
 When the sea is perfectly quiet, he lets them sink down 
 to a depth of sixty or even a hundred fathoms, where 
 they slowly spread and unfold themselves over a vast 
 extent. Then he hoists his lateen-sail and slowly drifts 
 before the wind, or, in a calm, sets his men to work at 
 the huge oars of the vessel. If not so engaged, they 
 stand watching at the sheets, the oars, and the tiny cap- 
 stan, to obey instantly his orders. His one great pur- 
 pose is to wrap as large a number of his fluttering pieces 
 of net-work as he can around the branches of coral 
 
COKALS. 113 
 
 below, to tear them by main force from the parent stems, 
 and to wind them up, together with the fragments of 
 rock to which they are attached. 
 
 The padrone seeks by the aid of his mysterious science 
 a favorable spot where corals grow, and his delicate and 
 experienced touch feels instantly, by the gentle stretching 
 of the rope, when the net has caught hold of coral 
 branches. The little vessel, no longer obedient to sail or 
 rudder, is held in check by the stout rope, and hence 
 jumps forward and backward as the net seizes and lets 
 go again far down at the bottom of the sea. The work 
 is hard, and the perspiration is running down the neck 
 of the poor sailors. At times the nets are caught be- 
 tween rocks, and the boat must tack and vere in all di- 
 rections to try to loosen them ; at other times the padrone 
 makes desperate efforts to creep in between overhanging 
 rocks, into a narrow cleft, for there, in eternal shade and 
 almost inaccessible recesses, they believe they find the 
 largest and most valuable coral branches. Thus they try 
 and drift along, they work and toil and draw up perhaps 
 twenty times a day, and each time it is a mere lottery. 
 And this is the very charm which this kind of fishing has 
 for the poor children of the South ; they hope and hope 
 on, and, sick or well, old or young, not one of them 
 would, when the season comes, willingly give up his 
 chance of finding some precious tree that is to make him 
 rich for life. 
 
 At last the padrone thinks he has a net full. The 
 
114 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 sailors, whistling a tune through their teeth, man the 
 capstan and work with their hearts beating a jerk, and 
 the net is loosened and conies up slowly, slowly. All 
 eyes are eagerly bent upon the place where it will ap- 
 pear on the surface ; at last it shines with a white gleam, 
 far down still. If the pieces of net-work appear wide 
 spread, the evil omen is greeted with muttered curses : 
 " Dio grazia ! Maledetto ! " If they hang straight 
 down, heavy-laden, the deepest anxiety is seen in all 
 features, and the excitement becomes intense. Now it 
 shines reddish ! "Santissima ! " exclaims the master, and 
 the men work with renewed energy. At last it is along- 
 side. It is heaved on board with great care, and now 
 comes the task of picking out the precious treasure from 
 the meshes of the net-work, and to loosen them from the 
 fragments of stone on which they were growing. 
 
 With these stones a thousand odd and outlandish citi- 
 zens of the deep are curiously intermingled. Here hang 
 worthless horn-corals, and among them the Black Hand 
 of the sailors, which they love dearly in spite of its use- 
 lessness, because it is an unfailing sign of the presence 
 of genuine coral. There come up sepia-fishes with star- 
 ing eyes, long waving arms, deformed bodies, biting 
 beaks, and mighty suckers, abounding in weird and ghost- 
 like shapes. Between these frightful forms wave sea- 
 weeds with broad, green, and purple fronds ; while little 
 tufted bunches of red and white and violet and yellow 
 lie marvellously close to feathers, crusted all over by the 
 
COKALS. 115 
 
 salt sea-wave. Elfish faces, with huge staring eyes, peep 
 at you from every side, and seem to threaten you with 
 wild, unearthly horrors if you dare touch them. A 
 fulness of strange things, unseen and unsuspected by the 
 dweller on firm land, comes thus forth from, the hand of 
 Nature, in her great workshop of the unfathomable, fer- 
 tile sea. But they are all pitched overboard ; only, the 
 men are sure first to open the shell-fish and to swallow the 
 contents with truly marvellous dexterity, before the 
 shells are allowed to return to their dark homes below. 
 The branches of coral are carefully picked out down to the 
 smallest fragment, and great is the joy of the lucky finder 
 if he discover a piece naturally bent in the shape of a little 
 horn, for it is an amulet, a sure protection against the 
 dire effects of the Evil Eye. The whole is thrown into a 
 large chest, the key to which the padrone wears hanging 
 around his neck along with a tiny bag of holy relics ; and 
 if there should be a peculiarly thick branch among them, 
 he places that in some mysterious hidden corner, for it is 
 very valuable, as the price of coral increases almost in 
 geometrical proportion with its size. 
 
 When all that has been fished up is saved, the boat 
 returns to the harbor and delivers the result of the day's 
 labor to an agent, who carefully and judiciously assorts 
 the pieces according to size and color, and sends them 
 at once to Naples, Leghorn, or Genoa, where they are 
 quickly worked up into every kind of ornament. 
 
 But woe to the poor sailors if the net should come up 
 
116 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 empty, or, worse still, if it should catch at some project- 
 ing point of rock, and refuse to come up altogether ! It 
 is they alone who are blamed ; it is they who have, by 
 their idleness or their wickedness forfeited the favor of 
 saint and madonna, and who must now labor and toil 
 until exhausted nature refuses to sustain them any 
 longer. 
 
 The only way to examine the living animal is to seize 
 the little fragment of rock, or the shell to which the mys- 
 terious creature is fastened, at the very moment that it 
 appears near the surface, and to dip it, if possible, with- 
 out exposing it to the air, immediately into a vessel with 
 salt-water, which you hold ready for the purpose. At 
 first there is nothing to be seen but a vague indistinct 
 mass of grayish substance. You suspend the animal and 
 its tiny abode by a string in the middle of the glass globe, 
 and carry it to a dark place ; for the coral will not dis- 
 play its beautiful form and color in the gleaming light of 
 the day. It takes hours often before the obstinate little 
 creature condescends to give a sign of life. At last you 
 fancy that the club-shaped extremity of the dingy red 
 substance begins to wrinkle up into little rings here and 
 there. You take up your magnifying glass, and you see 
 with joy and satisfaction that the eight star-shaped in- 
 dentations, which mark the diminutive wart-like rising, 
 assume a white tinge, contrasting pleasantly with the red 
 at their base, which grows every moment to a more 
 lively hue. The lines widen and show an opening be- 
 
CORALS. 117 
 
 tween two bright-colored lips ; a vague, undefined sub- 
 stance rises slowly, like a transparent globule, but soon 
 it grows and swells, and at last it stretches out eight 
 bright, leaf-like arms, edged all around with delicate 
 fringes. Now the whole resembles strikingly a beauti- 
 ful flower of eight leaves, not unlike a gentian or a cam- 
 panula, and you acknowledge at once how pardonable 
 was the error of those who, for generations, insisted upon 
 believing the strange animals to be nothing more than 
 submarine flowers, endowed with the power of motion. 
 
 The colors are brilliant beyond all the art of man can 
 produce. In the true coral a resplendent, almost daz- 
 zling red surrounds the base of the bell-shaped body of 
 the animal, whilst the latter itself, and the arms, appear 
 as if carved out of transparent crystal. And as soon 
 as one of the diminutive creatures, bolder than the rest 
 or more hungry has set the example, the others fol- 
 low in rapid succession, and soon the whole little branch 
 is covered with living flowers, crowding each other so 
 closely that it seems as if they would prevent one 
 another from unfolding. Flowers, however, are still and 
 motionless ; here all is full of life and activity. They 
 move in slow, measured ways, it is true, but with what 
 variety ! Now the beautiful carolla looks like a half- 
 opened bell, with its delicate white leaflets rising out of 
 a deep-red crown ; now again it resembles an urn with 
 faintly - drawn outlines of classic purity, *and then it 
 changes into the shape of a wheel with eight spokes. 
 
118 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 As you are still gazing and marvelling at all this exu- 
 berance of colors and beautiful forms, which the bounty 
 of the Creator has bestowed upon the dweller in the 
 deep, far below the warm light of the sun and the 
 admiring eye of man, you touch the vessel that holds 
 these wonders, and in an instant the scene is changed. 
 Quicker than the eye can follow, the fringes that adorn 
 the arms disappear, the arms fold themselves up and 
 draw in toward the centre, where the mouth was but just 
 now standing open, ready to receive its invisible food, 
 the beautiful bell is shut up, and the bright-red lips close 
 once more, so that there is nothing left again but the 
 insignificant little branch of dingy color. They are evi- 
 dently most sensitive little creatures, these strange little 
 animals ; like true children of the dark deep, they can 
 bear neither heat nor light, nor the slightest touch of a 
 foreign body, and although they close in an instant, they 
 dare not unfold their beauty again for hours. 
 
 In spite of this delicate sensitiveness, nothing looks ap- 
 parently more simple than the structure of these polypi. 
 Each one is firmly seated in the red, leathery substance, 
 in which his tiny cell is hollowed, out. By means of his 
 moveable arms and their cilia, he creates a little whirl- 
 pool before his mouth, and seizes the infusoria that serve 
 him as food, together with the particles of lime which he 
 needs for his house. Whatever thus enters passes down 
 into the comtnon receptacle, where it is digested ; for the 
 coral polypus is not only a sociable animal, fond of living 
 
CORALS. 119 
 
 in large numbers together, but he is a perfect socialist 
 and communist. It is only by the common labor of 
 thousands and tens of thousands of these diminutive be- 
 ings that the coral branch can be formed, which is to 
 become in the hands of man a jewel of priceless value. 
 This result, moreover, can only be obtained by the readi- 
 ness with which each individual surrenders the fruit of 
 his labor for the benefit of the whole community. Each 
 polypus, ever busy with its eight agile arms, works night 
 and day, catching as many tiny things as he can seize in 
 the water. He takes the first taste, as of right, throws 
 out all that is unfit for his purposes, and then sends the 
 surplus down into the common stock, from whence it is 
 afterwards distributed equally, through countless chan- 
 nels, into every part of the living tree. The common 
 substance, which serves as highroad for what comes and 
 goes, and in which dwells, so to say, the life of the com- 
 munity, is the thick, red bark which covers the cells of 
 the polypi not a skin to cover and warm the little ani- 
 mals, but the very mother and nurse of the whole stock, 
 the bond that holds them all together, and the place 
 where the inner, solid kernel is made, which supports 
 the whole tree. Through a thousand little openings and 
 wide-meshed net-works passes the nutritious juice of 
 milky whiteness, which oozes out if the covering be cut, 
 and which the fishermen hence call coral-milk. It is 
 propelled onward and upward by microscopic cilia, simi- 
 lar to those in the inner vessels of the human body. 
 
120 WONDERS OF THE PEEP. 
 
 Thus here also the astounding wisdom of God is beauti- 
 fully displayed, and the almost unknown body of the 
 stone-animal is as fearfully and wonderfully made as 
 that of man himself. 
 
 Far away from the Mediterranean, in the vast waters 
 of the Pacific Ocean, and amid the South Sea Islands, a 
 kindred race of the true coral, the Madrepores, have been 
 at work for countless generations. They are the humbler 
 brethren, unadorned with beauty and unable to furnish 
 man with costly jewels. But as everywhere in Nature 
 the humbler is the more useful, and the smaller the more 
 powerful, so here also. These corals have raised, by in- 
 defatigable labor, colossal structures, by the side of which 
 the walls of ancient Babylon, the Chinese wall, and the 
 Pyramids of Egypt, dwindle into dwarfish proportions. 
 Amid the most violent storms, and in the most agitated 
 seas, where wind and waves would easily destroy the 
 grandest works devised by the skill of man, they erect 
 their marvellous edifices architects so feeble and insig- 
 nificant, that, when they are drawn out of their elements, 
 they vanish, and can hardly be perceived. 
 
 Their works are works of beauty. Like enchanted isl- 
 ands, these circular coral-reefs bask in the brightest light 
 of the tropics. A bright green ring encloses a quiet in- 
 land lake ; the ground is white, and, the water being 
 shallow, it shines brilliantly in the gorgeous floods of 
 light that fall upon it, whilst, outside, the dark black bil- 
 lows of the angry sea approach in long lines of breakers, 
 
CORALS. 121 
 
 tossing their foaming white crests incessantly against the 
 impregnable ramparts. Above there is a clear blue 
 heaven, and, all around, the dark ocean and the hazy air 
 blend harmoniously into each other. The contrast is 
 beautiful beyond all similar scenes : within all is peace, 
 and soft, mirror-like beauty ; without, all is strife and 
 eternal warfare. But the battle is here emphatically not 
 to the strong. The small and lowly polypi, by whose 
 united labor and strength these colossal walls have been 
 raised to say to the ocean, " so far and no farther thou 
 shalt go ! " defy the mighty waves. Year after year, 
 generation after generation, the tempest beats upon their 
 fragile homes, and the mountain-like waves of the ocean 
 come thundering on, like armies of giants, to rush upon 
 the slender reef. But ever and ever the attack is re- 
 pulsed, and the minute animals work quietly, silently, 
 with modest industry and untiring energy, at their 
 heaven-appointed task ; and the living force, though so 
 small, triumphs victoriously over the blind, mechanical 
 force of the furious waves. 
 
 Their great works either stretch out far into the ocean 
 like huge barriers in continuation of the natural coast, or 
 they form gigantic rings of rock, upon which plants soon 
 spring up, soil is formed, and at last a habitation is pre- 
 pared for man himself. The little polypi find themselves 
 there in strange company. First there are the only ene- 
 mies which they are as yet known to have. Outside the 
 
 reef, as well as inside of the lagoon, but always within 
 6 
 
122 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 reach of the coral rocks, large shoals of small fishes are 
 found, which actually feed upon the pulpy, leathery sub- 
 stance of the polypi, and secrete the indigestible mate- 
 rial it contains, thus producing a kind of calcareous pulp 
 which soon changes into fertile soil and serves as an ex- 
 cellent ground for palm-trees and other plants. But as 
 the eater is always eaten in all nature, so here also the 
 avenger is at hand. Hungry dogs are waiting patiently 
 on the reefs and shallows, and as soon as the voracious 
 fish rises to the surface, where alone he finds the tender 
 polypus, they pounce upon their prey and swallow it 
 eagerly. On shore, where the graceful palm-trees flourish, 
 a feast is provided for another class of hungry claim- 
 ants. With a heavy thump a cocoanut falls upon the 
 hard ground, shaken down, before it is perfectly hard- 
 ened, by a sudden gust ; at once land-crabs are seen hur- 
 rying up at the sound of the simple dinner-bell, and one 
 of them seizes it, bores with its long, sharp claws into 
 one of the eyes, where the shell is softest, and sucks with 
 delight the sweet, milky juice. In light, fragile boats, 
 daring Malays come from far and near and dive into the 
 thick grove of coral trees, where they are sure at all 
 seasons to find a valuable variety of turtle, which often 
 reaches the enormous weight of a hundred and twenty 
 pounds. As soon as they perceive one of these mon- 
 sters, they chase it and try to drive it into shallow water, 
 or at least, by constant, skilful hunting to and fro, to 
 exhaust it, so that they can approach quite near. As 
 
COEALS. f 123 
 
 soon as this has been accomplished, an active, agile man 
 jumps upon the back of the turtle, takes hold of the 
 slender neck, and, riding boldly on his strange mount, 
 profits by the first firm footing he can obtain to use it as 
 a lever and to turn the animal on its back, when it falls 
 an easy prey to its captors. 
 
 Thus plants and animals, and man himself, all owe 
 their food and their life to the tiny coral. But, small 
 as it is, its power of production is so enormous that these 
 diminutive polypi could long since have filled up the 
 basins of the great ocean, and covered the continents of 
 the earth, if their existence were not limited, by an all- 
 wise Providence, within certain local boundaries and 
 fixed conditions of temperature. For, with the excep- 
 tion of a few rare varieties, corals cannot live where they 
 are not permanently covered with water, or at least con- 
 tinually bathed by breakers. Nor can they exist below 
 a depth of about two hundred feet, partly because the 
 enormous pressure of the weight of the water above 
 them would be fatal to all kind of life, and partly 
 because they require a higher temperature than that 
 which prevails at so great a depth. The bright colors 
 in which most of these polypi are clad prove, moreover, 
 that light, the gay painter of nature, is indispensable to 
 their existence, and this element they can only enjoy in 
 the regions nearer the surface. But, above all, being 
 citizens of the animal kingdom, they need, like all ani- 
 mals, oxygen to support their life, and this food is not 
 
124 f WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 attainable where the air cannot impart it to the water 
 directly by contact with the surface, or send it, by 
 the agitation of the waves, down to a certain limited 
 depth. Thus we meet here also with those great immu- 
 table laws, by which the Creator of all things has 
 assigned to each one of his creatures its abode upon 
 earth, and bestowed upon it powers of grateful enjoy- 
 ment. Great and wonderful are His works, teaching us 
 everywhere, on land and at sea, on the mountain-top and 
 far down in the depth of the ocean, not merely to glance 
 at the surface, but to look down into the deep, where 
 the costliest jewels are hid in the dark abyss ; nor merely 
 to glance at the clouds and the sky, but to lift up our 
 eyes to the heavens, where there are wonders yet await- 
 ing us that " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
 have entered into the heart of man." 
 
V. 
 
 THE KNIGHT IN AEMOE. 
 
 ' And, like a lobster boiled, the morn 
 From black to red began to turn." BUTLEB. 
 
 rjlHERE are few subjects of deeper interest to us, and 
 *- few that present greater difficulties, than the precise 
 relation in which man stands to that creation which was 
 assigned him by the Creator as his domain, and which 
 " groaneth and travaileth in pain together " with him in 
 a common cause and a common hope of redemption. 
 When little was known about the lower creatures, j udg- 
 ment was easy ; but as information increased and wonder 
 after wonder was reported concerning the rare powers 
 and strange sagacity of many animals, increased interest 
 led to deeper research, and finally skill, instinct, and even 
 reason, were assigned to certain families. The most re- 
 cent theory, the favorite of German savants, is to divide 
 all created beings, endowed with animal life, into classes 
 independent of their outward form and nature, according 
 to their inner, psychical life. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the universe was created 
 
126 WONDEKS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 not for man alone, but for that " whole creation " with 
 which he finds himself by divine will indissolubly con- 
 nected. But this great world is not equally open to all, 
 and its unnumbered inhabitants are most variously en- 
 dowed with means of contact. Some have numerous or- 
 gans by which they place themselves in communication 
 with the world around them ; others appear almost her- 
 mits, unwilling to enter into relations with others. But 
 it is evident, even to the superficial observer, that no out- 
 ward organs are ever given without an inner sense to 
 render the perceptions of the former useful. How the 
 connection is established between the outer sense and the 
 inner reflex is a mystery of mysteries in the most perfect 
 of beings, in man himself how much more in the animal 
 of whose soul we know so little ! This secret belongs to 
 the things which were too wonderful for the wisest of 
 wise men, to the " way of an eagle in the air, the way of 
 a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of 
 the sea." It is the secret which has led the materialist, 
 in his despair, to deny the existence of a soul altogether, 
 which makes the trifler content with the term Instinct, 
 that says nothing, and which leads the faithful believer 
 to the one great source from which alone come wisdom 
 and knowledge. 
 
 This much, however, has been ascertained, that each 
 organism is fearfully and wonderfully adapted to the life 
 of the owner, and yet also in complete harmony with that 
 part of the outer world with which it is placed in rapport. 
 
THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR. 127 
 
 Organism, soul, and world, constitute thus an indissolu- 
 ble trinity, and nothing excites the marvel of the student 
 of natural history so much as the infinite wisdom dis- 
 played in this union. The smallest of infusoria is, con- 
 sidered in this light, as perfect as the eagle that soars in 
 the clouds and gazes undazzled into the face of the sun. 
 Every class is equally perfect in itself; no* instinct ever 
 grows, no powers of discrimination are developed ; man, 
 animal, and plant are, as far as their relations to nature 
 are concerned, made, once for all, after a perfect pattern. 
 Poeta nascitur^ non fit, is here as true as in poetry. But 
 with every class new powers are seen to be given, new 
 bonds established between their inner life and outer 
 nature. The worm in our intestines discerns nothing but 
 food or starvation ; the butterfly knows colors, the eagle 
 distinguishes men and animals, and man himself knows 
 the past and the future as well as the present. 
 
 According to this principle, the lowest animals are 
 those which know least and distinguish least ; others, 
 more favored, have more numerous points of contact 
 With the world, and the highest orders distinguish, com- 
 paratively speaking, all that surrounds them. As there 
 are even among men whole classes who cannot hear cer- 
 tain very high notes, or see some of the colors familiar 
 to others ; as some minds soar freely and intelligently 
 into the highest regions of thought, while others are 
 unable to rise above the common things of the earth, so 
 there are, no doubt, still higher beings around us, who 
 
128 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 discern much that escapes our duller senses and our in- 
 ferior mental powers.*-. 
 
 But where is the line to be drawn, and what symptom 
 is to be chosen as the standard by which to measure the 
 rank of each class of beings in the great realm of na- 
 ture ? Here it has occurred to some of our savants, that, 
 with all the marvellous diversity of form and endow- 
 ment, no creature yet comes forth fully made and de- 
 veloped, when it first enters the world of life. All, on 
 the contrary, must begin at the lowest end, and painfully, 
 slowly, make their way upward. Man himself, made 
 after the image of the Most High, and but a little lower 
 than the angels, begins his career as an almost invisible 
 atom, a shapeless egg. Nor is he alone in this. Every 
 living being commences the earthly existence as a germ 
 or an egg, and is then asleep ! Here was found the 
 common feature of all creation sleep. Sleep is the first 
 condition, from which dates all life. It is not death ; 
 for there is in sleep already some power of discernment, 
 not from reasoning but from sensation. Men and ani- 
 mals alike turn towards heat when they feel cold, and 
 towards the cold air when they are hot, although in deep 
 sleep. A person, fast asleep, carries instinctively, as we 
 call it, the hand to the point where he is unduly touched. 
 Others, suffering from thirst, will go to drink and yet 
 never awake nor remember afterwards what they have 
 been doing. Man, being the highest, shows also in pro- 
 found sleep the finest distinctions. When two persons 
 
THE KNIGHT IN AEMOB. 129 
 
 suffer or do the same thing in their sleep, they yet act 
 not alike but show even then the difference in temper 
 and character. Sleep, however, is almost passive and 
 the child of darkness. It has nothing in common with 
 light, but shares with its brother Death the love of 
 night. There is but a short step from sleep to death 
 do we not all fall finally asleep, when we leave this 
 earth ? Hence sleep has no active powers ; vegetation, 
 reproduction, and nutrition, alone continue as long as it 
 holds the living being captive. Now there is a class of 
 animals who sleep during all their life ; to awake is to 
 die for them. These are the lowest in the scale of be- 
 ings; they merely exist, feed, and reproduce them- 
 selves, but their soul is dormant. Such are intestine 
 worms, beautifully made in their adaptation to their 
 peculiar mode of life, but doomed to live in eternal dark- 
 ness and seclusion. Bring them to the light, let the free 
 air of heaven blow upon them, and they die at the in- 
 stant. 
 
 The dreamer is no longer fast asleep. His fancy is ex- 
 cited and certain powers of his inner being are actively 
 engaged in forming images of the real world without. 
 But not the imagination alone is at work; there must be 
 more, since it is possible to make mistakes in dreams. 
 The impossible is strangely mixed up with the possible. 
 The dreaming hound runs madly after the fox without 
 advancing ; the horse becomes excited in dreams, and 
 snorts as if it sniffed the battle from afar. Men perform 
 
130 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 mental feats in their dreams, of which they would be in- 
 capable when awake, and even the Lord spake of old in 
 dreams to his favored children on earth. Dreams, how- 
 ever, are as yet nearer to sleep than to waking life ; they 
 prefer, if not absolute darkness, the more genial twi- 
 light. They represent the first budding forth of the tree 
 of knowledge. Hence children begin to dream in their 
 earliest infancy some say they dream in their mother's 
 womb. But their activity is as yet dim and instinctive ; 
 they see the outer world only as through a bright-colored 
 veil, and respond only faintly to impressions from with- 
 out. As a pressure upon certain parts of the body pro- 
 duces invariably the same dream, so appeals to the ear 
 are understood by the dreamer ; he replies to them or he 
 embodies them in his dreams. Hence his intelligence is 
 at work ; he is by turns a king and a beggar ; and the 
 dreaming animal, like the cat under the influence of va- 
 lerian, evidently uses its highest powers. Here also the 
 correspondence with the state in which large classes of 
 animals perform all their functions is striking. They live 
 in a dream, and become only vaguely conscious of their 
 
 relations to the outer world. 
 
 
 
 Higher than the dreamer stands the somnambulist 
 not the man with the diseased mind and disordered func- 
 tions, who is exhibited to a gaping crowd by a charlatan 
 but the man endowed with the mysterious gift of per- 
 forming, while apparently asleep, actions which require 
 the wisest judgment and the soundest reflection. His 
 
THE KXIGHT IN AEMOE. 131 
 
 condition is no longer merely passive ; he becomes active, 
 and the outer world is evidently quite apparent to him, 
 though he walk with closed eyes. He writes at his desk 
 and arranges his books, or he milks his cows and carries 
 the pail indoors ; he walks on the frail gutter hanging 
 from the eaves of a house, or along the brink of a preci- 
 pice, where no waking man would dare to venture. There 
 are somnambulists who even speak through half-closed 
 lips, and answer rationally to, well-considered questions. 
 The link, which here connects the outer world with the 
 inner consciousness, is as yet altogether beyond the ken 
 of man, since even the senses are locked in apparent 
 sleep, and yet impressions are made on the mind and the 
 heart. 
 
 There is a large class of animals, those most intimately 
 in contact with men, who are genuine somnambulists. 
 The bee builds her cell, the ant works at her house, the 
 bird fashions his nest, by some such power. It is this 
 manner of life which, no longer a sleep nor a dream, but 
 neither as yet a full waking activity, makes them cling 
 to man, and attaches the horse and the dog to their owner. 
 It is this mysterious power which we most commonly 
 call instinct, by which the brute knows its owner, 
 discovers untaught the remedies it needs, when sick, and 
 which finally culminates in the second sight ascribed to 
 dogs and to horses. 
 
 The highest state of life which we know is the waking 
 life, in the full blaze of noon. Man himself, capable of 
 
132 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 becoming a Plato or a Newton, and striving to follow 
 the example of Him who became the Light of the world, 
 still sleeps and may be a somnambulist. But he does so 
 only because his body requires it, and the inspiration of 
 the poet, the energy of the statesman, or even the de- 
 termined will of the lowest amongst us, gives us 
 strength to remain awake for days and nights together. 
 Man alone forms this class of created beings, and yet he 
 dreams of still higher modes of life, given to invisible 
 fellow-creatures of his, whose existence he merely pre- 
 sumes, but whose influence he is willing to acknowledge 
 under the name of evil spirits or guardian angels. 
 
 Whatever the merit of such a division may be, there 
 can be no doubt that it leads to a more careful investiga- 
 tion of what may not inaptly be called the inner life of 
 animals, and as we have seen that this is invariably rep- 
 resented outwardly by corresponding organs, it lends a 
 new interest to the study of certain individual characters 
 among the different classes. As we have on a previous 
 occasion endeavored to sketch the life of one of the best- 
 endowed of higher animals, we propose here to give an 
 outline of one of the lowest, in whose remarkable form 
 and strange character we yet find new evidence of the 
 Supreme wisdom that made him also useful to others and 
 endowed him with sources of happiness and simple 
 enjoyment. 
 
 He dwells far down in dun twilight, among sor- 
 rowful brethren, whose homes are the dark earth and the 
 
THE KNIGHT IN ARMOE. 133 
 
 great deep. There is no beauty of color in the dismal 
 waters in which he spends his checkered life ; there is no 
 comeliness of shape to be seen in his friends and neigh- 
 bors. The bright light of heaven never penetrates to 
 the dark caves in which he makes himself a rude home 
 after his own fashion, and weird, wayward life surrounds 
 him on all sides. The diver comes back to the welcome 
 day above, his heart beating high with fearful excitement 
 and his fancy filled to overflowing with quaintest shapes 
 and hideous horrors. Misshapen lumps of quivering 
 flesh, bloated bladders shining in sickly colors, oddly 
 twisted ribbons, with gloating eyes where you least 
 expect them, roll blindly and limbless through the murky 
 waters. Sharp pricks threaten on all sides, long slimy 
 threads slowly and silently wrap themselves around the 
 
 intruder, and fearful arms of great length, and set with 
 
 fr 
 long rows of suckers, stretch eagerly out to catch the 
 
 welcome prey. Here glassy, colorless eyes stare with 
 dull imbecile light, there deep blue or black eyes glare 
 with almost human sense and unmistakable cunning. 
 And all this world of beings is incessantly at strife ; 
 through every submarine bush and thicket glide hosts 
 of fierce, gluttonous robbers. For the calm of the sea is 
 a treacherous rest, and under the deceitful mirror-like 
 peace reigns eternal warfare. Infinite, unquenchable 
 hatred seems to dwell in the cold, unfeeling deep, amid 
 the "things, innumerable, both great and small, that 
 are there." 
 
134: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 It must needs be a comfort, therefore, to many denizens 
 of the great deep, to be well protected against the rest- 
 less spirit of destruction. Happy are the tiny sea-snails, 
 and the countless mussels, who dwell in safe houses of 
 marvellous beauty, presenting to the astonished eye such 
 a variety of turrets and cottages, of staircases and wind- 
 ing passages, of pinnacles and buttresses, as were never 
 dreamt of by human architect. There is an endless va- 
 riety of stony flowers, now waving to and fro amid the 
 silent currents of the ocean, now rigid and firm forever, 
 when left by the short-lived owner. But all these present 
 but the gorgeous mosaic of the great sub-marine palace ; 
 the animal within has little to attract us, and when we 
 draw them up from their dark homes below, it is the 
 house only we value and not the tenant. 
 
 Far different is the case with the knight in armor, who 
 leads a fbrange life, not without humor, in their midst, 
 and blushing bright red for his disgrace adorns our table. 
 His undersized cousin, a mere landlubber, is the familiar 
 crawfish, who dwells in deep miniature caves, next-door 
 neighbor of the bald-tailed water rat, beneath the over- 
 hanging network of willow roots and elder bushes on 
 the banks of little streams and brooks. He also is always 
 armed cap-a-pie ; his helmet and cuirass in one piece, but 
 the heavy armor below skilfully jointed together and 
 ending in a graceful fin-like rudder. The heavy burden 
 is borne by numerous pairs of stout feet, a very host of 
 legionaries painfully pushing forward the weighty ma- 
 
THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR. 135 
 
 chine that rests on their broad shoulders. Before him 
 he bears on high a sharp pair of shears ; the first foot has 
 been changed into a hand, consisting only of a first finger 
 and thumb, but clever beyond expectation in seizing and 
 holding whatever it may desire. By the side of the bold 
 prick which adorns his nose, as knightly horses wore of 
 old a steel point above the nostrils, rise the two long, 
 lithe feelers, and upon two delicate pillars appear the 
 bright, black balls of his eyes, twinkling and twisting 
 with ludicrous energy towards all sides. Far down in 
 his innermost recesses he hides a precious stone, the pre- 
 cious gift of ^Esculapius, resembling, with the aid of a 
 lively imagination, a human eye, and endowed with magic 
 powers. The common people, especially the lower Rus- 
 sians, still use these so-called stones for many medicinal 
 purposes, and gather thousands of poor crawfish on the 
 banks of the Volga, to die a miserable, slow death in the 
 burning sun, merely to extract from them the highly 
 prized " white eyes." 
 
 Thus strangely accoutred and formidably armed, the 
 hermit broods all day long in his dark home, a dreamer 
 in every sense of the word, and a child of dim twilight ; 
 for when night begins to lay her dark mantle upon the 
 earth, he sallies forth, and, in spite of his weighty armor 
 and his ungainly shape, he swims about swiftly and 
 catches many a frog or sleeping fish. Even the water- 
 snail, in its firm, well-secured house, falls an easy prey 
 to the great warrior. But, alas ! he prefers the dead 
 
136 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 body of an animal to all other dainties, and where a 
 poor pike has died a natural death, or a trout has been 
 left wounded sorely by a heron, a whole host of craw- 
 fisk are soon seen to revel in the feast. Nor do they 
 spare one another, and like many a savage tribe of 
 Africa they also relieve the sick and the aged of their 
 race from the troubles of life by despatching them 
 speedily. 
 
 Little valued in this country, the crawfish is looked 
 upon as a dainty dish on the continent of Europe, and 
 hundreds are caught during the bonny month of May, 
 on every creek and every river. But it is not easy to 
 take hold of him ; he slips treacherously between your 
 fingers, and if you seize him by one of the claws, he 
 gives it up heroically, like another Scsevola, and flees 
 backward into his home. The unwieldy body seems all 
 of a sudden endowed with marvellous agility ; he bends 
 the broad tail like a well-tempered spring under the 
 body, and beats with it the water so powerfully that he 
 darts through it like an arrow. His ear is prominent 
 and powerful. The crawfish is the lowest animal en- 
 dowed with a distinct organ of hearing, and careful 
 observers insist upon it that he is a lover of music. 
 More certain is his love of light, for he is generally 
 caught at night by means of a burning torch ; and still 
 more susceptibility does heshow for the electric powers 
 of nature, for when a thunder-storm breaks out, he rushes 
 forth from his safe retreat and rages wildly about, as if 
 
THE KNIGHT IN AEMOK. 137 
 
 he feared the end of the world, and vainly sought for a 
 place of refuge. 
 
 But what is this pigmy after all to the giant cousin in 
 distant ocean ? The lobster is a true knight in armor, 
 fully equipped and of colossal proportions. Some have 
 been found nearly a yard long, true mammoths of long 
 gone-by days, with enormous rods for feelers, and feet 
 covered with knotted hair, while on their broad back a 
 close carpet of mosses and mushrooms had clad the an- 
 cient ruin, and snails had found a safe home ! 
 
 His armor shines like blue steel, unless he should have 
 found a home on rocks strongly empregnated with cop- 
 per, when his new coat assumes the livery of the sea and 
 changes to green. It is one of the mysteries connected 
 with this strange animal, that he turns bright red when 
 boiled; for no satisfactory explanation has yet been 
 found of the change, and it is not even known whether 
 the new color is the result of a mechanical* or a chemical 
 process. Painters love him, therefore, and there are few 
 still-life pictures of the Dutch school that have not a lob- 
 ster in the fore-ground, now blue amid bright-colored 
 flowers and vegetables in the centre of a market, and 
 now brilliant red by the side of a sparkling glass of wine, 
 and crowned with finely contrasting parsley. 
 
 His home lies far down at great depth in the briny 
 waters near rocky coasts, from which he rises only 
 occasionally to lay his eggs and provide for his posterity ; 
 for the Crustacea have, almost all, curious fancies about 
 
138 WOXDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 that time; the nautilographus fastens himself to the 
 back of a sea-turtle and travels on this safe conveyance 
 through the wide world, while another crab sets forth 
 alone and often wanders over enormous distances. It 
 may be remembered that one of these eccentric creatures 
 was picked up by Columbus in the open sea, when he 
 was yet eighteen miles from land, and gave new courage 
 to his despairing crew, as they saw in the encounter a 
 sign that the new continent was within reach. So true 
 is it that the smallest of beings in His hand may gain 
 an unforeseen influence on the gravest events that regu- 
 late the welfare of mankind. He produces eggs, the so- 
 called berries which enrich our lobster salad, and carries 
 them for awhile attached to finger-like projections on the 
 lower surface of his tail. These receptacles, in the male 
 animal but short and imperfectly developed, are in the 
 female quite large and full of clusters of eggs during the 
 season. Hence the fishermen know at a glance the sex 
 of their prey, and value their capture accordingly. But 
 the lobster represents in the sea the marsupial tribes of 
 the land, and as the kangaroo carries her newly-born 
 young in her pouch, the lobster also keeps the tender off- 
 spring for a while under the secure shelter of the broad 
 rudder-like tail. The eggs are amazing by their number, 
 for not less than twelve thousand have been counted in 
 a single female, and yet the enemies are so numerous and 
 so voracious that without this gift of parental affection 
 bestowed even upon a creature so low in the scale of 
 
THE KNIGHT IN AEMOE. 139 
 
 beings, the race would have long since become extinct. 
 They love their young very manifestly ; for the younger 
 Buckland tells us, in his Curiosities, that fishermen of 
 Cornwall frequently see lobsters surrounded by their 
 young, even when already over six inches in length. Or 
 the mother would be noticed lying with her head peep- 
 ing from under a rock, with her large claws extended, 
 while the young ones were playing merrily between 
 them ; when danger approached, the old one would rat- 
 tle her claws and the young ones at once seek shelter un- 
 der the rock. 
 
 The numerous legs are but feeble and barely able to 
 drag the heavy armor slowly over the ground, but far 
 down in his own element, the lobster glides rapidly over 
 the rocks and reefs. His many-linked tail, well-jointed 
 and yet extremely pliant and agile, possesses great power, 
 and with a single blow a full-grown lobster will dart to a 
 distance of fifty feet and instantly escape pursuit. To 
 aid him in his movements, he is endowed with a marvel- 
 lous instinct, which enables him, though moving back- 
 ward, always to hit exactly the entrance to his little 
 cave, distant as it may be, and barely large enough to 
 admit his body. 
 
 The lobster, however, is not only larger and stronger 
 than his cousin on shore, but he shows also superior fac- 
 ulties. Far from all tendency to cannibalism, he lives in 
 friendly union with his brethren, and often joins a merry 
 company on a common excursion to distant seas. When 
 
140 WONDERS OF THE -DEEP. 
 
 in his warfare strength does not avail him, he resorts to 
 stratagems and shows great cunning. Thus he never 
 despairs of conquering the stubborn resistance of shell- 
 fish ; patiently he lies in wait for hours and hours, until 
 the poor animal, lured into security, timidly opens the 
 shell. Quick as lightning, he shoots up and places a tiny 
 pebble between the two valves, and the oyster surren- 
 ders. Nor is he less susceptible to electricity ; for the 
 thunder of the clouds or the roar of cannon affects him 
 in his remotest caverns, so that he wildly rushes out and 
 in his terrible fright casts off his claws. Freebooters are 
 reported to have taken advantage of this idiosyncrasy, 
 to threaten poor Norwegian fishermen with the firing of 
 their guns, if they were not willing to share with them 
 their loads of lobsters. 
 
 Their claws are the result of a most ingenious and yet 
 marvellously simple device of nature. The first foot is 
 inserted sideways in the second, and thus forms a kind 
 of shears ; the changed foot becomes, of course, unfit for 
 locomotion, but in return extremely useful in seizing the 
 prey, in resisting an attack, and overcoming an enemy. 
 With them the common lobster also carries food to its 
 mouth, and skilfully skims the water to catch all par- 
 ticles of food that may float on the surface. These 
 claws, as well as the feet, can be thrown away under the 
 influence of fright, or be lost in the heat of the com- 
 bat, without causing pain or special discomfort. The 
 mutilated animal runs away on the remaining legs as 
 
THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR. 141 
 
 if nothing had happened, and soon sees a new limb 
 replace the lost one ; nor does the cast-off claw seem to 
 be much missed until a substitute has grown out again. 
 The latter, however, is never the same size as the old 
 one, and hence lobsters are so frequently found with one 
 claw much larger than the other. Here, also, we cannot 
 help admiring the benevolent wisdom which has endowed 
 animals so constantly in danger of having their limbs 
 snapped off by countless enemies, and yet so entirely 
 dependent on them, with the power of reproduction. 
 The time for the latter is not always the same ; it 
 depends much on the warmth of the season and the sup- 
 ply of food, as well as on the part which has been lost ; 
 the tail is never replaced, and the animal that has lost it 
 dies without fail. 
 
 But by far the most interesting feature in the life of 
 the lobster is the change of his armor. This coat of mail 
 is of one piece, and consequently incapable 'of extension 
 or alteration ; hence the lobster, having once grown up 
 to the size of his house, could never hope to grow 
 beyond the tight uncomfortable garment of his youth, 
 if an all-wise Providence had not provided a way, by 
 which he may change his armor at least once a year. At 
 the proper season, generally toward the end of spring, 
 when food is plentiful, the knight begins to feel ill at ease 
 in his close armor, and seeks some dark cleft in the 
 rocks, or other dark place of retreat, where he may 
 undergo, in seclusion and security, a change that exposes 
 
WONDERS OF THE- DEEP. 
 
 him to great suffering in body, and much danger from 
 abroad. Here he begins to agitate his limbs, to move in 
 violent contortions, and to swell out his body. After a 
 little while the shell bursts, like the cracked bark of a 
 tree, splitting exactly down the centre of the head por- 
 tion, so that a slight pull would tear the two parts asun- 
 der. The shell then comes off in two halves, exactly as 
 the cuirass of a modern cuirassier or a Horse Guard's 
 man ; then follows more pulling and jerking till the legs 
 also come out, and at last the tail even follows the exam- 
 ple, and slips out quietly, like a hand withdrawn from a 
 glove. But the process is not so easy with the claws, 
 broad as they are at the end, and very narrow at the 
 points of juncture. Fortunately the flesh of the animal 
 has become, at this season, quite soft, and as elastic as 
 India-rubber ; by long continued efforts the broad hand 
 is drawn slowly through the narrow wristband and soon 
 spreads out again into its former shape. Sometimes, to 
 be sure, an impatient creature pulls too suddenly, or too 
 violently, and the hand remains in the glove, but they 
 seem to mind the loss but little. When the whole ope- 
 ration is over, which generally takes three days, the 
 knight sinks into a state of utter exhaustion ; the limbs 
 are so soft and limber that they bend like pieces of wet 
 paper, and only on the back the flesh has retained some 
 firmness. Yet not a particle is wanting; every delicate 
 feeler has shed its outer coating ; the eye has lost its 
 covering, and even the stomach has cast out its lining 
 
THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR. 
 
 membrane. A shining secretion moistens the whole 
 body and helps during the painful process. 
 
 Now the poor animal wants rest, and above all, a 
 place of perfect security; for he is a knight in armor 
 no longer, but utterly helpless and defenceless. After a 
 few days, however, the outer covering begins to harden, 
 and in a short time the happy lobster, about one-fifth of 
 his size larger than before, enjoys the bliss of being 
 young and beautiful once more, and feels, in his bright 
 and strong armor, no doubt, as happy as a lobster well 
 can feel. What would man not give for this most envia- 
 ble power to renew the outer coat from time to time, and 
 even to restore the stomach to primitive power and 
 freshness ! 
 
 Now he sallies forth, once more, armed cap-a-pie, and 
 ready to encounter all adversaries and to overcome all 
 enemies. He is starved, and fearful is the havoc which 
 he makes among small fry, and all weaker animals that 
 can serve him for food. Now also he shows the most 
 marked evidences of the acute sense of smell with which 
 he has been endowed. Nine miles out at sea, says Buck- 
 land, off Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire, there is a ledge of 
 chalk rocks which abounds in lobsters, and here this re- 
 markable instinct has been most accurately observed. 
 They will smell a putrid object, down in the water, at a 
 distance of more than a hundred yards, and when a ship- 
 wreck occurs, it becomes at once known to the horrid 
 epicures. A vessel thus once perished off the island of 
 
144 WONDERS or THE, DEEP. 
 
 Portland and many persons were drowned ; soon after- 
 wards a great number of prawns and lobsters were noticed 
 in those waters, and hundreds of the latter were caught. 
 The good people of Weymouth refused to buy them, as 
 they were suspected, and very justly, to have fed on the 
 bodies of the drowned people, but they did not hesitate 
 to send every one of them to London, for the benefit of 
 those who knew nothing of their sad history ! 
 
VL 
 A PINCH OF SALT. 
 
 " Salt is good." ST. MABK ix. 50. 
 
 fT^HE servant of the great chemist, Berzelius, was once 
 JL approached by one of his countrymen with the 
 question, " What is that chemistry by which they say 
 your master has made himself so famous ? " "I will tell 
 you," was the ready answer. " First, I have to fetch all 
 manner of things in large vessels ; then he pours them 
 into bottles, and at last into quite small phials ; when he 
 has done that, he pours them all once more into two big 
 buckets, which I carry out and empty into the river. 
 That is chemistry." 
 
 The popular idea of the science is not much clearer in 
 our day. The name conjures up, in many minds, a large 
 laboratory, with quaint retorts and vile smells, or at best 
 a huge factory, sending forth clouds of disgusting smoke. 
 In many a lively imagination the chemist is still sur- 
 rounded by stuffed monsters and bottled infants, after the 
 manner of Hogarth's admirable etching, and his labors 
 
 are looked upon with timid admiration and doubtful 
 
 7 
 
14:6 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 wonder; for the alchemist has not yet entirely faded 
 away into a myth, and the Black Art has still his vota- 
 ries in our midst. Few among us are really aware how 
 deeply and practically the chemist's science affects our 
 daily life and contributes to our happiness upon earth. 
 
 And yet he has a duty to perform which ranks but lit- 
 tle below the very highest that falls to the lot of man 
 here below. He is the self-appointed guardian of the in- 
 destructible part of our globe. Man glories in his abso- 
 lute sway over all Nature, whose gifts he employs for his 
 pleasure, and whose creatures he treats as his vassals. 
 But his dominion is of short duration, and soon Nature 
 resumes her own sway again, unimpeded by his hand. 
 He wrests massive rocks from her bosom, and tears gi- 
 gantic trees from their ancient homes, and changes them 
 into houses and palaces and ships ; he digs into the bow- 
 els of the earth, and fashions the hidden treasures into 
 bright ornaments and useful tools, or he transforms even 
 the worthless sand and the shapeless clay into costly 
 wares of brilliant splendor. But a few years pass away, 
 and his beautiful handiwork changes in shape and in 
 color ; a century more, and they crumble into dust. His 
 magnificent temples, his lofty walls, his graceful bridges, 
 his proud monuments that were to give immortality to 
 his name and his deeds they all succumb, sooner or 
 later, to the silent but unfailing efforts of Nature to re- 
 claim her own children. What the waters of the ocean 
 and the winds of heaven have left undestroyed, falls un- 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 147 
 
 der the unseen attacks of frost and rain and heat. As 
 worms feed under the green turf on his body, fearfully 
 and wonderfully made though it was, so tiny lichens and 
 minute mosses consume, little by little, his obelisks and 
 his pyramids. Diminutive seeds, flying unseen through 
 the air, come and nestle in the cracks and crevices of his 
 castles and palaces, and strike their frail roots in the rents 
 of his massive walls, while treacherous ivy sends his ten- 
 drils into every cleft of the ruin. Insects, creeping about 
 by night, undermine the foundations of colossal struc- 
 tures, and animal life teems ere long among the debris 
 of his loftiest edifices. The trees he has planted and the 
 animals he has raised, return to the dust from whence 
 they sprang ; the wood he has carved with cunning craft, 
 decays into impalpable powder ; the metals he has 
 wrought into shapes of wondrous beauty, are eaten up 
 by rust ; and the very stones he has piled up in lofty 
 structures, are consumed by wind and weather. 
 
 And whither go all these fading, fleeting elements, 
 which thus continually pass from his sight, and return, 
 as he calls it, to the bosom of their mother Nature? 
 The chemist alone can answer the question ; for he 
 alone watches them forever, and never for a moment fails 
 to trace them to their new home, though they assume, 
 with Protean power, a thousand new forms, and defy him, 
 for a time, by their incessant and marvellous changes. 
 
 But his power is greater yet. For this knowledge of 
 the eternal duration of the elements in nature endows 
 
148 WONDERS OF THE DJEEP. 
 
 him with a power that might almost be called creative ; 
 for though he may not absolutely produce them out of 
 naught, like the one great Creator above us, he can at 
 least make them assume the form which he wishes. He 
 can take the dust, that seems worthless, and endow it 
 with priceless value ; he can gather impalpable powder 
 and hardly perceptible vapor, and bid them combine in 
 a form that shall rejoice our eye by its beauty, and 
 prove itself a blessing like few others to all mankind. 
 One of the most striking instances of this power is the 
 manner in which his science transforms an unsightly 
 gift of nature into the most precious boon that man re- 
 ceives at her hands a little gray substance into a price- 
 less crystal, far more valuable than all the most costly 
 jewels he possesses, and indispensable to his very exist- 
 ence upon earth. 
 
 This precious treasure is a little square-fashioned 
 grain, of gray color, born far down in the darkest re- 
 cesses -of the earth, in times when fierce fires raged 
 below; and there it has lain for thousands of years, along 
 with countless little grains of like shape, never seeing a 
 beautiful flower by its side or hearing the sweet notes 
 of a bird as it sings of spring and budding love. Its 
 ancestors were two strange beings, that have but quite 
 lately become known to us : a metal with a silver sheen 
 and a gas of yellowish-green color. The former is per- 
 haps the oddest of its kind. Other metals are heavy 
 and hard ; this is so light that it swims on the water, 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 149 
 
 and so soft that it can be cut with a knife and kneaded 
 with the hand. Other metals resist all impressions from 
 without ; this is so yielding that if exposed for a little 
 while to damp air, it oxydizes quickly and changes into 
 a white powder ! While its near cousins, gold and silver, 
 sink quickly to the bottom of a vessel filled with water, 
 Sodium, on the contrary, floats like a very gnome of the 
 mountains ; and the little silvery globes, in which it is 
 ordinarily seen, swim merrily for a while on the surface. 
 But after a few moments, they begin to glow and to 
 shine like liquid fire, and now perform a dance so weird 
 and wild that it startles us by its strange, fantastic 
 figures. The smooth surface of the water becomes the 
 well-polished floor of a ball-room, on which the bright 
 pearls of shining metal perform their quaint dance like 
 enchanted princesses dressed in silver robes. If you at- 
 tempt to hold the lovely little dames by force, they 
 know at once how to escape from your violence and to 
 regain their liberty. A beautiful bluish flame begins to 
 surround the little globules, and a few moments after 
 the metal has vanished. No trace is left, and only the 
 peculiar smell of the water betrays their secret : they 
 have sought refuge in the friendly element, and water, 
 the stanch enemy of fire from of old and ever ready to 
 conquer it by its own power, has been forced by the 
 little magicians to burn, for a little while, in a bright, 
 flickering flame, before it could afford them a new home 
 and a safe shelter. 
 
150 W<XNDERS OF THE I>EEP. 
 
 Nor is the other ancestor of the tiny grain less odd in 
 its nature. While every other substance on earth has 
 some shape and form of its own, by which it may be 
 known, and even water, though ever changing and rest- 
 less, never fails to fashion itself in lovely globules, Chlo- 
 rine has no form or substance of its own. Like a prince 
 of the air, it passes unheeded through the atmosphere, 
 visible only as a faint, yellowish-green vapor. You catch 
 it and imprison it in a glass, you compress it by all the 
 means at your disposal with terrible force, and at last it 
 comes down reluctantly, in the shape of a bubbling liquid. 
 But relieve it for a moment of the enormous pressure, and 
 it rises instantly again as a vapor, and escapes from your 
 grasp. Unfit to be breathed by man or beast, whom it 
 would smother in a few moments, it yet is not merely fa- 
 tal to life, but has its good use in the wonderful house- 
 hold of nature, where every atom finds its noble vocation, 
 and serves its great though often unseen purpose to the 
 glory of the Most High. Chlorine has been endowed 
 with a truly wonderful power of combining with all other 
 elements without exception, and hence becomes of vast 
 importance to the chemist and the manufacturer. But 
 it serves us must faithfully where danger threatens us 
 most nearly, and carries off, with unfailing fidelity, the 
 death-bringing gases of wells and neglected cellars, and 
 purifies our sick-rooms and hospitals. 
 
 These two strange beings, the flitting gas with its re- 
 pulsive color and fatal breath, and the quaint metal whose 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 151 
 
 merry dance forces water to turn into fire, seek each other, 
 throughout nature, with unceasing longing. And yet, 
 whenever they meet, they embrace each other only for a 
 moment, and for their own destruction. The bright sil- 
 very substance has no sooner been breathed upon by the 
 foul gas, than it vanishes as if by magic, and all that re- 
 mains of the two is a tiny crystal of white color and sil- 
 very sheen. You examine it closely, and you find that 
 it resembles a hollow cube ; every minute particle of the 
 grain is clear and transparent, like the most perfect of 
 crystals, and it is only when many are lying close fo each 
 other that the broken rays of light give them a pure, 
 white hue. The poisonous powder of chlorine and the 
 fiery nature of sodium have utterly disappeared, and in 
 their stead man is presented by his beneficent mother 
 Nature with a little grain of salt, without which his life 
 would be a burden, and happiness upon earth forever out 
 of question ! 
 
 Fortunately, Nature is as bountiful as she is wise, and 
 hence the indispensable grain of salt is provided by her 
 with such a lavish hand, that it may be found in immense 
 quantities all over the earth. The land hides it in its 
 dark caves, and holds it forth In large shining masses on 
 the surface ; and the sea is filled with it, from the top- 
 most wave to the bottomless abyss. For the unsightly- 
 grain, little noticed by careless man, and taken as a mat- 
 ter of course by most of us, is the great guardian of 
 health throughout our world ; without it the waters of 
 
152 WONDERS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 the earth would soon stink with corruption and all flesh 
 would be foul with decay ; without it the plants would 
 no longer deck the land with their beauty, and man would 
 die a death of misery and unspeakable horror. Hence 
 the mercy of the Creator has scattered it broad-cast over 
 our domain, and we have but to stretch out our hand to 
 gather the precious gift from on high. 
 
 For away, in Eastern Europe, the traveller comes up- 
 on a long, low range of hills, stretching from east to 
 west, which enclose, with their soft outlines and well- 
 wooded slopes, a lovely valley, dotted here and there 
 with smaller hills and little knolls. A cluster of low but 
 well-kept houses lies toward the opening from which he 
 approaches the plain, and the eye wanders freely beyond 
 them into distant lowlands. It is a busy scene to which 
 he comes, and men are moving briskly about through the 
 narrow streets and the countless paths that lead over the 
 common. They wear a strange costume of sombre black, 
 and have thick leather aprons tied on behind instead of 
 in front ; but they look cheerful and happy, and many a 
 merry song and sweet carol is heard far and near. The 
 traveller engages one of these men, who all greet him 
 with a pious wish for his soul's welfare, to show him the 
 way into the mysterious world below, of which he has 
 heard much ; and soon he finds himself arrayed in a white 
 blouse and black velvet cap, such as are kept ready for 
 visitors, at the mouth of a shaft which seems to lead down 
 to the very "bowels of the earth. When his eye has be- 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 153 
 
 come somewhat better accustomed to the dim light of 
 the candle stuck in his hat, he notices that wooden rails 
 are laid all the way down the gently inclined plane ; and 
 he is invited to mount a wooden contrivance, wondrously 
 like the hobby-horse of our happy childhood. The miner 
 sits down before him ; the horse a sausage, it is called 
 in local parlance starts with alarming swiftness on the 
 smooth, oiled rails, and his right hand, armed with a 
 stout, leathern gauntlet, grasps frantically the rope that 
 runs along the wall, to check the painful velocity. At 
 last the two horsemen are stopped, by reaching a piece 
 of level ground, and the traveller finds himself in a vast, 
 subterranean corridor, cut out of the live salt. Huge 
 blocks of the precious material are lying about, some 
 colorless, some shining in beautiful though subdued blue ; 
 the roof rises high above him, and looks gray and grim 
 in the dim light, and on his right the vaulted ceiling rests 
 on gigantic pillars, in which each tiny grain shines 
 brightly and sparkles as the light falls upon it ; and yet 
 they all hold so firmly to each other that there is no 
 danger of their ever giving way and proving faithless to 
 their trust. A little further on the miners are hard at 
 work ; they attack the mountain-side by cutting out im- 
 mense blocks in the shape of huge casks ; then water is 
 poured down the furrows and allowed to remain stand- 
 ing there a few days, so as to soften the rock ; at the 
 proper time wedges are driven in, which soon swell in the 
 
 water and blast out, as it were, without further help from 
 
 7* 
 
154: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 human hands, the great blocks in the desired form. As 
 the traveller wanders on through the long dark passages, 
 with statues in niches and holy images at the corners, 
 he passes large vaulted rooms, dark caves, and huge re- 
 cesses, that seem to have no end, and at times he comes 
 upon stairs, cut in the rock, which he has to descend cau- 
 tiously, so smooth and slippery is the material of which 
 they are formed. Every now and then he sees, at a dis- 
 tance, a bell-shaped shaft, from the top of which hangs a 
 frail ladder, free in the air, swaying and swinging to and 
 fro with the cold currents that blow here perpetually ; and 
 he looks with wonder and fear at the poor miner, who 
 trembles and crosses himself piously, as he sets foot on 
 the slim rounds and descends slowly into the apparently 
 unfathomable darkness below. All of a sudden he sees 
 bright lights before him, and, dazzled and surprised, he 
 enters a vast cathedral, the walls of which shine and shim- 
 mer all around in fanciful, flitting lights, as the light of 
 torches and candles fall upon the bright masses of salt ; 
 there is the altar with its colossal cross, and at the side 
 the organ and choir; here also statues and images 
 abound on all sides, and even human worshippers, kneeling 
 down in silent adoration, are cut out in the yielding 
 material. He has little relish, perhaps, for the vast ball- 
 room, with its orchestra on high and tis brilliant chande- 
 liers, glittering and glistening like the fairest of crystals- 
 and bed-chambers with mocking couches ; for the whole 
 upper world is repeated here below in grotesque caricature. 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 155 
 
 Gradually the passages become lower; the ceiling 
 sinks more and more on the left, and at last the travel- 
 ler is forced to bend, until he fairly creeps along on all 
 fours. But suddenly he sees before him a fairy scene : 
 dark waters, sparkling bright in the light of torches fas- 
 tened to the glistening walls. Like a vast black mirror, 
 the subterranean lake, silent and motionless, stretches 
 far into the endless darkness. Never has wing of bird 
 dipped its feathers into the mysterious water ; never has 
 a breath of air ruffled its placid, patient surface. Like 
 walls of iron, the rocks of salt rise all around in grim 
 solemnity, and hold the restless element bound in eternal 
 silence and peace. The scene is beautiful, and yet fear- 
 ful in its utter loneliness and death-like stillness. 
 
 A few shells and debris of marine-plants are found on 
 the banks of the black tarn, but they belong to genera- 
 tions as old as the Deluge. No life has ever been known 
 to grace the lake. Only ages and ages ago, when the 
 waters that now rest deep below the world of men, were 
 purling merrily down the mountain-side, they bore with 
 them the tiny houses of friendly animals ; and in their 
 wanderings through the hidden depths of the earth, car- 
 ried them with them to their silent home. At the fur- 
 ther end, to which the traveller is rowed in a crazy punt, 
 a little chapel rises, unpretending and unhonored, and 
 yet of great import. It is devoted to the memory ofthe 
 pious wife of one of Poland's early kings, to whom 
 Heaven vouchsafed, in 1252, the boon of bestowing the 
 
156 WONDEES OP THE DEEP. 
 
 knowledge of these wondrous treasures on her impover- 
 ished subjects. She was afar off in Hungary, the legend 
 says, and hearing there of the fearful suffering of her na- 
 tive land, she was ordered, by her patron-saint, to cast a 
 precious ring, whicli she most valued of all her trinkets, 
 into a deep well. She did it in simple faith, and, when 
 she returned to her home at the foot of the Carpathian 
 Mountains, some peasants brought her a piece of rock- 
 salt, believing it to be a costly jewel. It was of no value 
 in itself, but, oh wonder ! in the heart of the transparent 
 mass her ring lay imbedded. She understood the revela- 
 tion from on high ordered search to be made for more 
 of the shining substance, and thus were discovered the 
 great mines of Wieliczka, which have ever since been a 
 source of greater wealth than the richest mines of gold 
 or diamonds. 
 
 Beyond the little chapel the work begins once more, 
 and miners are seen busy loosening vast lumps of salt 
 from the parent mass, blasting the less pure material 
 with powder, and cutting oat the more valuable blocks 
 carefully with chisel and chipping-knife. Others har- 
 ness the twelve horses that are kept below and have 
 never seen the light of heaven, to rude sledges, on which 
 the blocks are drawn to the foot of the shafts, that lead 
 up to the world above; while still others are opening 
 new passages or propping up dangerous places with large 
 wooden pillars. With a feeling of pity for their hard 
 work and thankfulness for the boon they bestow upon 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 157 
 
 mankind, the traveller passes them, returning their 
 friendly greeting, and gladly beholds once more, as he 
 rises to the top of the shaft, the bright light of day 
 and the fresh air of the earth above. 
 
 Thus the salt is found crystallized in large beds and 
 boulders, stowed away between layers of clay and lime- 
 stone, in more or less regular shapes, and then called 
 rock-salt. Nearly every part of our globe is endowed 
 with vast deposits of the kind. Bergen in Norway, and 
 Cardona in Spain, vie with each other in the abundance 
 of their supply. In the latter place, a huge mountain of 
 almost pure salt rises clear and sheer from the plain, the 
 whole mass shining brilliantly like a glacier in the sun- 
 light, or glittering in a thousand hues and sh*ades, when 
 day fades away. The salt here is so hard that it has to 
 be blasted, like real rock, with gunpowder, and the chips 
 are worked up by skilful hands into snuff-boxes, crosses, 
 and rings. Norwich, in England, boasts of a field of 
 salt more than seventy-five miles long ; Salzburg proud- 
 ly bears the name of its staple product ; and Mexico and 
 Persia, the East and the West, are all full of ample sup- 
 plies, which, by God's providence, have been laid up in 
 store for many generations to come. 
 
 Not in all parts of the world, however, is salt found 
 so pure as to be fit for immediate consumption. Gener- 
 ally it is mixed up with clay and sand, and then has to 
 be purified by the aid of water. Man leads the purifying 
 element down to the beds of rock-salt, allows it to dis- 
 
158 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 solve as much as it is capable of holding, and then raises 
 it, by vast pump-works, once more to the surface of the 
 earth. In vast kettles and pans, beneath which huge 
 fires burn day and night, the brine is then evaporated, 
 and white crystals of salt remain, pure and unadulterated, 
 at the bottom and on the sides of the vessels. 
 
 In other regions Nature is even more liberal, and 
 saves man the necessity of leading the water down to 
 the depths in which salt is hidden. Large rivers be- 
 neath the ground are led, by the hand that holds the 
 earth in its grasp, over extensive deposits of salt, and 
 then break forth as saline springs at the side of the 
 mountain. Thus there is near Minden, in Prussia, a well 
 nearly two thousand feet deep, which holds a water, the 
 temperature of which exceeds 25 Reaumur, and which 
 is, below, continually dissolving large blocks of salt, in 
 order to gush forth above and bring the precious gift up 
 to the surface. Germany boasts of not less than eighty 
 such valuable springs ; and our own country is most 
 richly endowed in like manner, so that the two States of 
 New York and Virginia could supply, if need be, the 
 whole of the Union with the salt they require. 
 
 Brilliant as it appears in the shape of rock-salt, and 
 pleasing as are the waters of saline springs to the eye, 
 salt yet presents itself, at times, under an aspect much 
 less inviting. No words can describe the horror of the 
 vast salt-plains, which here and there interrupt the 
 beautiful carpet that covers the surface of our earth. 
 
A PINCH or SALT. 159 
 
 Thus there is a vast district in South America, extending 
 over more than twenty thousand square miles, which 
 forms one enormous group of desolate mountains inter- 
 sected with vast deserts, saline swamps, and dried-up 
 salt-lakes. Currents of hot air meet here from all parts 
 of the compass, and with such vehemence and persistent 
 fury, as they rise incessantly from the heated, steaming 
 soil, that no clouds can be formed and no rain can fall 
 from the ever-serene sky. 
 
 Even more fearful yet is an endless, lifeless plain in 
 the heart of Persia, so sterile and accursed than even 
 saline plants do not thrive here ; but the salt itself, as if 
 in bitter mockery, fashions its crystals in the form of 
 stems and stalks, and covers the steppe with a carpet of 
 unique vegetation, glittering and glistening like an en- 
 chanted prairie in the dazzling light of the Eastern 
 sun. In the rare places, where the thick crust is broken 
 and vegetation is favored by night-dews, a few strag- 
 gling herbs and grasses appear ; but they are saturated 
 with salt and soda, the sap tastes bitter and salty, and 
 stalks and leaves alike are covered with a thick incrusta- 
 tion of salt, as if with impalpable powder. They afford 
 no nutriment to the herds, and soon give away again to 
 the genuine salt-desert, where shepherd and flock alike 
 find their death. For here a light, loose sand rules 
 supreme, now treacherously quiet, but sure to engulf the 
 heedless herdsman who puts his foot on the glistening 
 surface, and is swiftly sucked in by the tricky soil ; and 
 
160 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 now rising in large, deep-red clouds, which fill the valleys 
 and level the ridges, till every landmark is effaced, and 
 the whole vast region resembles a petrified ocean of 
 blood-red waters. 
 
 Who can describe the bitter, mournful disappointment 
 of the thirsty traveller, who sees, at last, afar off, the wel- 
 come glittering of waters, and hastens, with renewed 
 vigor and high hopes, toward the enchanted spot ? En- 
 chanted, indeed ! For as he approaches, the fairy spec- 
 tacle strikes him with wonder and sad misgivings. In 
 the midst of the brown, desolate plain, a vast level sheet 
 of pure white stretches far and near ; he draws nearer, 
 with faltering, doubtful step, and sees, at last, to his hor- 
 ror and dismay, that what he fancied a basin of cool, 
 refreshing water, is nothing more than a white crust of 
 salt. Or, it may be, he descends, with eager expecta- 
 tion, the steps hewn in the precipitous walls of an an- 
 cient crater in South America, of which Darwin tells us, 
 in order to reach the little circular lake, embosomed 
 among rugged fields of lava, and fringed with a border 
 of bright-green, succulent plants. As he looks down 
 from the immense tuft crater, he sees the water clearly, 
 and fancies his ear even discerns the pleasant splash 
 against the modest beach ; but when he reaches the lake 
 and dips his parched lips into the liquid, he draws back 
 with dismay ; for it is bitter and brackish, and unfit for 
 the use of man. Other travellers tell us of the sad fate 
 of black slaves who work in the salt-plains of the Sahara, 
 
A PINCH OP SALT. 161 
 
 collecting the salt from the surface, hundreds of miles 
 away from the nearest oasis, and sure to perish by hun- 
 ger and thirst, if the caravan that is to bring them food 
 and water should lose its way in the desert or fall into 
 the hands of merciless robbers. 
 
 Even Europe is not free from these unfortunate places, 
 which seem to bear the curse of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 and have become what Zephaniah threatens, " a breed- 
 ing of nettles, and salt-pits, and a perpetual desolation." 
 Here nothing grows but impoverished looking plants, 
 with pale, bluish-green color and faded blossoms, which 
 give to the region an air of overwhelming monotony and 
 ghastly sterility. The burning rays of the sun are mer- 
 cilessly reflected from the white crust of salt, which cov- 
 ers the soil, with such fierceness, that the eyes are una- 
 ble to bear the unearthly splendor, and the soil opens 
 here and there in huge cracks and crevices, burned, as it 
 is, to the core, and but rarely refreshed by scanty rain 
 or nightly dew. 
 
 How did these desolate lakes originate, and whence 
 come the bubbling springs which so industriously bring 
 up to their master the salt he needs for his life ? The 
 question, for a long time, defied the wisest among men ; 
 but modern science has solved the riddle, at least with 
 regard to the latter. We know now that the water that 
 comes in the shape of snows and rains from the skies, and 
 of the dew distilled near the surface, slowly but surely 
 finds its way, through the porous crust of the earth, 
 
162 WONDERS OF THE I>EEP. 
 
 down to the interior of mountains and far below the 
 level of plains. It stops not till it meets with a layer of 
 firm rock, which prevents it from sinking still lower ; 
 and here, on the unyielding stone, it forms, gradually, 
 subterranean lakes ; the waters are not at rest yet, but 
 silently and steadily keep on, dissolving all that they 
 can reach around them, and thus they become saturated, 
 now with sulphur or salt, and now with minerals of 
 every kind. When man discovers such a spot, he sinks 
 a shaft to the basin below, and at once the waters, re- 
 lieved of the pressure, leap up in wild joy at their return 
 to the bright light from which they came, and rise as 
 high, once more, as the place where they first entered 
 the earth. Science tells us, of course, that there must 
 ever be found, near such springs, large beds of salt ; 
 and this has led, of late, to most valuable discoveries of 
 immense deposits in Germany and in France. 
 
 The origin of extensive surface-beds of salt, such as 
 are found in the vast steppes near the Caspian Sea and 
 the Aral, high above the surrounding country and far 
 beyond the reach of supplies from a distance, is less 
 clearly understood. Some believe that they are the 
 beds of ancient oceans, from which the water has grad- 
 ually evaporated, leaving nothing but the bare bright 
 crystal behind. This explanation may apply to the 
 Siberian salt-plains, which, like the Sahara, were no 
 doubt once the bottoms of great oceans, drained by 
 some fearful upheaving of the ground or the breaking 
 
A PINCH or SALT. 163 
 
 down of gigantic walls, which formerly held in the waters 
 of the enormous inland lakes. But with regard to others, 
 
 None can reply all seems eternal now. 
 The wilderness has a mysterious tongue, 
 Which teaches awful doubt. 
 
 Others think that the salt, which now glistens on the 
 surface, once lay buried far below, and was raised, by 
 volcanic upheavings and fiery eruptions, in the shape of 
 boiling brine ; the waters then evaporated, or were car- 
 ried by rivers into the sea, and the salt remained spread 
 out on the low bottom of the steppes. But this theory 
 would hardly account for the strange fact, that the salt 
 on these immense plains actually grows there ; it is no 
 sooner removed by the hand of man, than it begins to 
 reappear, and ere long the crust is close and compact 
 once more. This is the case with the terrible Desert of 
 Dankali in Abyssinia, where, for four days' journey, 
 nothing is seen but a rank vegetation of apparent plants, 
 with their stems and leaf-stalks all of salt, and where no 
 effort to clear the soil ever makes the slightest impression. 
 The same has been observed near the Salt Lake of Utah 
 and on the banks of the Mingo Lake in Texas, where the 
 crust of salt is so thick that it can be removed in large 
 blocks, and yet no diminution is ever observed. 
 
 Where neither masses of rock-salt, nor waters holding 
 large quantities of salt, provide for the wants of man, he 
 knows how to force the very plants that delight, like 
 him, in the precious boon of nature, to furnish him all he 
 
164 WONDERS OF THE' DEEP. 
 
 desires. For it is not the miner alone who goes down 
 into the deep of the earth to search for salt, but plants 
 also send down their roots, draw up the salt water, and 
 deposit the proceeds in beautiful crystals in their cells. 
 There are few plants, altogether, which do not contain in 
 their delicate tissues a certain quantity of salt, especially 
 in the stems and the branches, and leave it behind in 
 their ashes, when they are burned. Some cereals require 
 it, therefore, for their satisfactory growth, and much salt 
 is sown on the broad lands of England and the fields of 
 China ; others, like asparagus and flax, do not thrive at 
 all without such aid. But the growth which surrounds 
 salt-springs and the plants that love to dwell on the sea- 
 shore, delight in the little grains ; even the lofty cocos- 
 palm sends its large oval fruit adrift, to seek some briny 
 strand, where it may find a rich soil and abundance of 
 salt ; and the careful husbandman of those regions, when 
 planting the nut that is to give him his daily bread, 
 drops a handful of salt into the hole, to which he con- 
 fides the gigantic seed-corn. 
 
 Here and there, in favored lands, you see a vast, 
 marshy meadow, spread out in beautiful luxuriance be- 
 fore your eye, dotted with pretty copses of elders and 
 willows. Close by one of these groups of low, spread- 
 ing trees, where the soil almost imperceptibly rises into a 
 little knoll, there gushes forth a clear, powerful spring, 
 and forms, at its very birth, a large, circular basin, filled 
 with transparent water. A rivulet runs from it slowly 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 165 
 
 but steadily, wanders, as if enjoying the luxury of leis- 
 ure, through level meadows, saturating the porous soil on 
 the right and the left, and at last falls, at the edge of the 
 high table-land, with merry laughter, into the lower 
 plain, to bring its modest tribute to the large river be- 
 low. 
 
 There are other meadows scattered over the plateau, 
 but not one of them can boast of the bright flowers and 
 waving grasses which bud and blossom forth in un- 
 wonted richness. Thousands of purple asters peep out 
 with their bright eyes, set in golden yellow, from the 
 midst of dense clumps of reeds ; luxuriant plantains over- 
 shadow a host of minor plants of strange and uncouth 
 appearance, and a variety of glaux spreads all around a 
 deep-green carpet, strewn with an abundance of small 
 white flowers. Further on, a quaint salicornia appears, 
 in large patches ; its long-linked stem looks as if it would 
 burst, filled, as it seems, to overflowing with exuberant 
 sap, and in the axes between the branches, lurk countless 
 diminutive blossoms of bright yellow. Even the grasses 
 and reeds which cover the marshy ground, when more 
 closely examined, prove to be entirely different from all 
 that grow on adjoining lands. 
 
 The flocks of birds who have left their homes in the 
 far north, and now, with swift wings, move southward to 
 more genial climes, might fancy they beheld here, once 
 more, the shores on which they last sought rest and re- 
 pose. For here are the same flowers which they saw 
 
166 WONDERS OF THE -DEEP. 
 
 there, near the downs ; the same lowly herbs that love to 
 be bathed daily in the briny waters, and the same reeds 
 that grow there within reach of the unfailing tides. For 
 it is a salt-spring which here wells up, and unable, at 
 once, to reach the lowlands by any other outlet, has here 
 formed a lake, and furnished food to an exuberant vege- 
 tation. 
 
 It is from these saline plants, growing now near the 
 shores of the ocean, and now far inland around merry 
 springs, that large provisions of salt are won by the aid of 
 fire. The soda, or barile of commerce, comes almost ex- 
 clusively from the ashes of the saltwort, a plant of grayish 
 green color, wjh stems a foot long, thickly set with 
 prickly hair, and with uncouth, swollen-looking leaves, 
 ending in sharp, pointed thorns. The Arabs hardly knew 
 what a blessing they bestowed upon mankind, when, up- 
 on settling in Spain, they brought with them not only 
 their merino sheep, their cotton and sugar-cane, but also 
 the unsightly saltwort, from which they already knew 
 how to obtain the soda of our day. 
 
 Another salt-plant, the leafless glasswort, is eaten as a 
 salad in England and the whole north of Europe ; but 
 the most curious of them all is perhaps the variety known 
 to our green-houses as the ice-plant. This strange-look- 
 ing plant is a treasure to the inhabitants of the Canary 
 Islands, who raise it in large fields, pull it up when ready 
 for use, burn it, and drive a most profitable trade with 
 the soda they obtain from the ashes. 
 

 A PINCH OF SALT. 167 
 
 It is, however, not the water only which gives us salt, 
 but we owe it also, at times, to the benevolence of fire. 
 For although the beautiful crystals do not become vola- 
 tile till they are heated to a white -glow, they are still 
 not unfrequently found among the strange medley of 
 substances thrown out by volcanoes. After an eruption, 
 the cracks and crevices of Mount Vesuvius are often 
 covered with a thick crust of salt, and the surface of pet- 
 rified streams of lava appears, at times, from the s-ame 
 cause, as if thickly strewn with white powder. In 1822, 
 the salt cropped out in such very large masses, that the 
 greedy Government of Naples laid an embargo on the 
 treasure, and obtained, through its own w.orkmen, blocks 
 of twenty-four feet square from the vicinity of the crater. 
 The same takes place occasionally at the foot of Mount 
 Hecla, in Iceland, and the industrious peasants carry 
 whole wagon-loads to their fields and their houses. 
 
 Such is the history and home of the .precious little 
 grain, which the world, from the beginning, has looked 
 upon with a feeling akin to awe and reverence. For 
 while deeply grateful to the Giver of every good and per- 
 fect gift for the tiny crystal, on which life itself is depend- 
 ent, men have ever felt that it was endowed also with a 
 dread power of final destruction. The ancients had no 
 doubt that salt was a direct gift of the gods, and hence 
 they joined it, symbolically, to every sacrifice offered on 
 holy altars ; and Moses ordained that " every oblation of 
 thy meat shalt thou season with salt : neither shalt thou 
 
168 WONDERS OP THE -DEEP. 
 
 suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking 
 from the meat-offering : with all thine offering thou shalt 
 offer salt." The Aztecs of Mexico had a special goddess 
 presiding over the use of the indispensable condiment ; 
 the Chinese celebrate, to this day, an annual feast in 
 honor of him who first introduced it into general use ; 
 and the old Egyptians, when they performed the rites of 
 their great festival in honor of Neith, the mother of life, 
 filled the lamps of their temples with salt as well as 
 oil. 
 
 Miraculous powers, also, seem to have been attributed 
 to salt, from olden times ; for the Hebrews used to rub 
 new-born children with it, partly from a belief, sanctioned 
 by Galen, that this hardened and strengthened their skin, 
 and partly from faith in its special blessing. Hence the 
 prophet Ezekiel reproaches the stubborn people, by say- 
 ing : " Thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all ; " 
 and even the early Christians adhered to the old usage, 
 for they initiated young converts into the mysteries of 
 their faith by placing salt in their mouth, as they did 
 with infants at the time of their baptism. 
 
 It was but natural, therefore, that the semi-sacred 
 character of salt should lead soon to its being used in 
 connection with treaties and compacts to render them 
 more binding. The Old Testament is full of allusions to 
 this ancient usage, and Moses already speaks of " a salt- 
 covenant forever before the Lord unto thee and unto thy 
 seed with thee." Its power to protect against corruption 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 169 
 
 lent its symbolic force to stipulations even among infidels, 
 and few such compacts were made without a plate of salt 
 being placed ready at hand, from which each of the con- 
 tracting parties eat a few grains, instead of swearing an 
 oath. The Arabs of our day still enter into the most sa- 
 cred treaty of friendship with each other by pushing a 
 piece of bread, strewn with salt, into each other's mouth, 
 and then call it a " salt-treaty." The ancestral salt-cel- 
 lar, that played so prominent a part in the household of 
 ancient Romans, was, in like manner, the great symbol 
 of the union that bound the members of a family to each 
 other. 
 
 Scarcely less general is, however, the dread which salt 
 inspired by its strange power of destroying the produc- 
 tiveness of the soil ; and thus it became, very early, al- 
 ready the symbol of sterility also. Jeremiah cursed Ju- 
 dah, by condemning it " to inhabit the parched places in 
 the wilderness, in a salt-land, and not inhabited ; " and 
 the terrible fate of Lot's wife has left the curse vivid in 
 the memory of men. For the same reason, when Abime- 
 lech had destroyed the city of Sichom, and rased its 
 walls to the ground, the place where it had stood was 
 sown with salt, not in order to make it sterile, but as a 
 sign that it should remain waste forever. Even the Mid- 
 dle Ages employed the dread symbol ; and the great 
 Barbarossa, after taking rebellious Milan, and destroy- 
 ing its beautiful buildings, ordered the plough to be 
 
 passed over the city, and then salt to be strewn on the 
 
 8 
 
170 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 spot, .leaving only the churches unharmed, " for the 
 greater glory of God." 
 
 On the other hand, salt makes " unsavory things " 
 palatable again, as Job already mentions ; and hence it 
 soon became usual to speak of it as a symbol of that 
 sagacity which uses apparently worthless matters for a 
 good purpose, and employs words of trifling import in 
 themselves with great effect. This was the first meaning 
 of Attic salt ; hence, also, St. Paul writes, " Let your 
 speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye 
 may know how to answer every man ; " and the Saviour 
 Himself calls His disciples " the salt of the earth," as 
 men by whose instruction and example their brethren 
 are to be taught and saved from condemnation. 
 
 All this worship of salt as a divine gift, this venera- 
 tion of its sacred character, and this dread of its 
 destructive powers, centre, however, in the simple fact, 
 taught by modern chemistry, that salt is the great 
 regulator of the health of the world. Without it the 
 seas would be impure, and the land a desolate scene of 
 destruction ; man would not be able to live, and the 
 beasts of the field, with the plants that feed them, 
 would no longer be seen. The little grain of salt at 
 which we hardly glance, is thus of vital importance in 
 the great household of nature. But it shares the fate of 
 all indispensable things by which we are surrounded : 
 habit makes dull the sensibility of our senses, and with 
 it the activity of thought that depends on such impres- 
 
A PINCH or SALT. 171 
 
 eions. Only what is rare and unusual attracts our atten- 
 tion, though it have but an outside brilliancy and useless 
 beauty. The sparkling diamond is sure of admiration ; 
 set in bright gold, it is esteemed above all things, and 
 serves to enhance beauty, to display our wealth, or to 
 symbolize supreme power. The unattractive twin- sister, 
 black coal, has to do hard work in the kitchen, the work- 
 shop, and the factory, like a true Cinderella ; and yet on 
 coal, and not on the diamond, rests the true wealth of a 
 nation, the foundation of happiness for countless mil- 
 lions. Thus it is with the tiny grain of salt ; rich and 
 poor see it, day by day, on their table, and enjoy it with 
 everything they eat and drink, but few ever inquire 
 whence it came, and what accident or what necessity 
 brought it there. And yet, let it be missing but for a 
 single day, and how we would suffer ! 
 
 We all know that the ocean is salt, and that without 
 it neither animal nor plant could live in the vast basins 
 of the earth. But it is less generally known that the 
 amount of salt in different seas is not the same, but 
 steadily decreases in the direction from the equator to 
 the poles. Scoresby tells us that, of European seas, the 
 Mediterranean holds most, the Baltic least ; so that the 
 fishermen of the north have to send for the salt they 
 need in preserving their fish, to the more favored regions 
 of the south, and salt becomes a patron of active trade. 
 The Atlantic Ocean, again, has more salt than the 
 Pacific, and the Polar Sea least of all. With the amount 
 
172 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 of salt, which makes the water denser, and thus better 
 able to bear heavy vessels on its broad shoulders, 
 changes, of course, also the degree of density ; and as 
 water is naturally desirous to restore the equilibrium, 
 there follows a constant flow to and fro ; so that salt 
 here appears as the great motive-power, which causes 
 the currents of the sea ! These again, in their turn, be- 
 stow warmth on Western Europe, mix the differently 
 heated waters of the ocean so as to protect the life that 
 teems in them against cold, and favor the sailing of 
 trade-ships. Thus climate and temperature, winds and 
 currents, navigation and the fertility of coast-lands, all 
 depend on the presence of the little pinch of salt ! 
 
 Far better known is the fact that man, like all animal 
 life, cannot exist without salt, but must miserably perish, 
 so that among the most terrible punishments, entailing 
 certain death with fearful suffering, that of feeding crim- 
 inals with saltless food was not uncommon in barbarous 
 times, and prevailed, to our disgrace, until quite recently, 
 in one of the northern countries of Europe. Animals, 
 deprived of salt, lose their hair, become lean and hid- 
 eous to look at, and die a death of unspeakable suffering. 
 The reason is simple. A man, weighing a hundred and 
 fifty pounds, carries in him at least one pound of salt ; it 
 constitutes five per cent, of the solid matter of his blood, 
 and an almost equal proportion of all the cartilages of 
 the body, and the bile contains soda as a special and in- 
 dispensable element in the process of digestion. If the 
 
17 
 
 A PINCH OF SALT. 
 
 salt, then, be withdrawn, or the ounce which every one 
 of us daily loses by perspiration and other means, be 
 not replaced, digestion is arrested, the bony part of our 
 frame is not rebuilt, the eye loses its brilliancy, and the 
 whole system breaks down. 
 
 Hence the craving of man and beast alike for the pre- 
 cious grain. Pliny but expressed the necessity of its 
 use for life, when he said that all the loveliness and joy- 
 ousness of life could not be better expressed than by the 
 name of salt, and the rulers of the world were not slow 
 in taking advantage of this fact, by taxing the, indispen- 
 sable gift of nature. Five hundred years before Christ, 
 already, the mythical king, Ancus Mar this, established, 
 at the mouth of the Tiber, a saline, under the control of 
 the state ; and at a later period the censor Livius earned 
 the name of Salinator, by raising the duty on salt. 
 From distant China to the west of Europe, every Gov- 
 ernment learned to treat salt as one of the regalia ; and 
 not many years ago, poor French peasants were still 
 cruelly punished if they dared draw a bucket of water 
 from the great ocean, in order to secure the few grains 
 of salt it contained ! 
 
 As vegetable food is both unpalatable and little nutri- 
 tious unless accompanied by salt, herbivorous animals 
 everywhere delight in its use. The wild buffalo and the 
 deer, as well as our domestic cattle, enjoy it with evident 
 relish ; and the Alpine herdsman, like the Gaucho of the 
 Pampas, trains his half-wild herds to meet him at certain 
 
174 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 places, by depositing small quantities of salt at regular 
 intervals. When the eager huntsman, in Southern 
 Africa, is in search of rare sport, he hides himself at a 
 favorite salt-lick, and is sure to be amply rewarded ; and 
 the cunning chamois-hunter of the Alps prepares his 
 way, years ahead, by cautiously placing a handful of salt 
 in accessible spots, until even those sagacious animals are 
 beguiled, by their greediness, and finally fall into the 
 hands of their enemy. 
 
 Even here, however, man shows his strange superiority 
 over lower beings ; for while animals, without exception, 
 love salt with equal fondness, the desire among men dif- 
 fers essentially. Nations who live largely on animal 
 food, value it naturally less than those who prefer a vege- 
 table diet. Thus Mungo Park speaks of certain tribes 
 in Southwestern Africa, who never take salt by any 
 chance, and adds that even Europeans, travelling in their 
 country, never feel the want of it. The same disregard 
 prevails in the colds of Siberia, where the peoples of 
 whole districts eat their food without a particle of salt. 
 On the other hand, there are Indian tribes, true vegeta- 
 rians, who consume it in large quantities, so that the 
 children are seen sucking pieces of salt like sugar. In 
 certain portions of Africa, he is deemed a rich man who 
 can afford eating salt with his food ; in the mountains of 
 the South, small pieces of it circulate as money, and on 
 the Gold Coast a handful of salt will purchase two ser- 
 viceable slaves. 
 
A PINCH OF SALT. 175 
 
 A nicer distinction, yet, is the well-established fact, 
 that the active races require salt more imperatively than 
 the passive races ; and this, in connection with the re- 
 fined instincts of the body, explains, no doubt, the start- 
 ling difference between the Gaucho of South America, 
 who hardly knows what salt is, and the intelligent son 
 of European races, who could not live a fortnight with- 
 out his accustomed supply. 
 
 How wonderful, then, that the presence of " a pinch 
 of salt," a thing of no value and hardly noticed by mil- 
 lions of us, should be the condition of animal and vege- 
 table life on our earth ! Truly, not only is man fearfully 
 and wonderfully made, that his physical life and the ac- 
 tivity of his heaven-born mind should depend on the lit- 
 tle white crystal, but great are the works and wondrous 
 is the wisdom of Him, who, from His throne on high, or- 
 ders alike the heavenly bodies in their unmeasured space, 
 and the invisible grain of salt in the bowels of the earth 
 and the deep of the sea. 
 
vn. 
 
 MINE OYSTER 
 
 Oh sea, old sea, who yet knows half 
 Of thy wonders or thy pride ? 
 
 TTTHEN" you visit the famous old town of La Rochelle, 
 with its Huguenot memories and its countless his- 
 toric associations from the days of the great Louis to the 
 closing scene in the Napoleonic drama, you are most 
 likely invited to take a peep at the sea-farms, which are 
 the pride and the honor of that harbor. You push out 
 with rapid stroke or spread a picturesque but useful 
 little sail into " the sea, the open sea," you just begin to 
 feel the swell of the billows, and then you enter a rough 
 enclosure formed of huge blocks of stone, and are bid to 
 gaze into the depths, lighted up by a warm southern 
 sun, and to look at the living things innumerable which 
 there find a home in the mighty waters. There, near 
 the island of Rhe, you will be introduced to the new 
 sea-farms of our day, where not many years ago a row of 
 enormous and unproductive mud-banks stretched out 
 more than four leagues long, and where now, by a rnira- 
 
MINE OYSTER. 177 
 
 cle of enterprise and energy, some six thousand fisher- 
 men may be seen, as busy in their parks and claires as 
 market-gardeners in their strawberry-beds. You ask 
 what gives this multitude of men their lucrative occupa- 
 tion, and adds millions every year to the revenue of the 
 region around, and you learn with astonishment that it 
 is a scheme, first introduced by a stone-mason with the 
 curious name of Beef, to raise oysters ! 
 
 If you have read your classics well, you may remem- 
 ber, at the mention of the dainty shell-fish, that there 
 was in Rome a man famous for the same bold under- 
 taking, who also bore a name of quaintest meaning. 
 This was Sergius Aurata, so called because of the num- 
 ber of gold rings he loved to wear, as some said, or, 
 according to others, because he was passionately fond 
 of gold-fish. He seems to have liked shell-fish even 
 better, however, for he was the first to transport oysters 
 from their birthplace on the coast to 'the Lucrine Lake, 
 where they were cleaned by the purer waters and fat- 
 tened for the table, retaining their own native juices, as 
 Pliny tells us, and acquiring the flavor of their new 
 home. He must have been a pleasant man to deal with, 
 thanks probably to his intimacy with the delicate dish, for 
 Cicero sings not only the praises of his enormous wealth, 
 but calls him also a most pleasant and " delicious " per- 
 son. To these attractive qualities he seems to have 
 added great cleverness, for he was at all times able to 
 
 supply the tables of Roman epicures with their favorite 
 8* 
 
178 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 natives from his own park ; and so great was his renown 
 for ingenuity, that when he was sued in the courts and 
 threatened to have an injunction put upon his trade, his 
 advocate said defiantly, that if his client was prevented 
 from rearing oysters in the lake, he would grow them 
 upon the roof of his house. 
 
 They will, in all probability, present you with an oyster, 
 and ask you to taste its flavor. Like all of us, you look 
 upon it simply as a delicacy, good to eat ; you open the 
 creature's rough and unsightly shell, and swallow the 
 delicate morsel to satisfy your craving appetite and to 
 please your palate. But even the most refined and cul- 
 tivated of oyster-eaters takes little note of the curious 
 intricacies of its organization, and knows nothing, nor 
 cares to know, of its wisely contrived network of nerves 
 and tiny blood-vessels. In fact, men generally clip its 
 beard, that wondrous membrane of strange and curious 
 mechanism, by which the creature breathes, as thought- 
 lessly as they shave their own, and gulp down the lus- 
 cious substance, unmindful that they are devouring a 
 body endowed with organs which all the science and gen- 
 ius of man has hardly yet been able to know and to ad- 
 mire, and which no power but that of the Most High 
 could ever devise and send forth into life. They bolt 
 the living carcass, and decline being bothered and bored 
 in the act of cannibalism by the ill-timed and impertinent 
 interruptions of science. And yet they are not the worst ; 
 for if Lucian already ridiculed the philosophers who spent 
 
MINE OYSTER. 179 
 
 their lives inquiring into the souls of oysters, such wise- 
 acres were respectable, and the man who eats the oyster 
 with gratitude is at least excusable, when compared with 
 those who care neither for the oyster's soul nor its body, 
 but concentrate all their faculties on the shell. The sad 
 conchologist eviscerates the oyster as earnestly and as 
 gloatingly as the veriest Dando, but alas ! he flings the 
 soft and savory substance from him, and delights in the 
 hard and unprofitable covering. His only pleasure is to 
 count all the little waves and scales and ribs, ill-shapen 
 and sad-colored as they seem to others, and he thinks not 
 of the living body within, as fearfully and wonderfully 
 made as his own. 
 
 Whilst, however, to the mass of men the oyster may 
 be nothing more than a rude and sportive device of 
 Nature, others, fortunately, have learnt to spell and to 
 read, to peruse and to study the great Bible of Nature, 
 in which this shell also is an humble letter, and they 
 have found out that the device is a sign pregnant with 
 suggestive meaning, carrying them onward and upward 
 to other forms higher in the scale of beings, and leading 
 them thus, with all things created, from Nature up to 
 Nature's God. But, to share in their joys and to receive 
 like rewards for our labor, we must first learn to ap- 
 proach all that was made with the reverence due to the 
 majesty of its Maker, and to be able to see half-hidden 
 grandeur in the minutest object, and veiled beauty in 
 the most ungainly creature. We must learn to estimate 
 
180 WCXNDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 each thing not carnally only, by its use and its pleasant- 
 ness to our senses, but spiritually also, by the amount of 
 Divine thought which it reveals to our mind, believing 
 that every pebble holds a treasure, every bud a revela- 
 tion. With such a spirit we shall soon find wonders in 
 every insect, sublimity in the tiny world of a pool, the 
 clearly-written records of past ages in a stone, and 
 boundless fertility of thought as of life upon the barren 
 sea-shore. 
 
 Even the life of a poor, silent shellfish, once reputed 
 the dullest and most inert of all animals, will then be 
 found to have its interest and its romance. In vain did 
 Plato already assign, in his transmigration of souls, peo- 
 ple who, as men, were thoroughly ignorant and without 
 thought, to oysters thereafter, and speak elsewhere of 
 the soul being fettered to the body like an oyster to its 
 shell ; in vain does Yirey, in our time, call them the poor 
 and afflicted among the beings of creation, who seem to 
 solicit the pity of happier animals they are, as we shall 
 see, beautifully made, capable of enjoying much happi- 
 ness, and susceptible of being taught a lesson, which 
 most of us proud men have never been able to acquire. 
 
 Their life, usually pictured as one of utter helplessness 
 and unbroken seclusion, is by no means spent in unvary- 
 ing repose. At the proper time, in the spring of the 
 year, when all Nature is full of tender love and restless 
 activity, the mother-oyster also is visited by the ruling 
 passion, and " the icy bosoms feel the secret fire." Soon 
 
OYSTER. 181 
 
 after, they are seen to contain a large quantity of milk- 
 white fluid, which the microscope shows us to consist of 
 almost invisible eggs and milt, lying snugly side by side 
 in the same shell. Unlike most marine animals, however, 
 the oyster does not heartlessly abandon its spawn and 
 leave it to the mercy of winds and waves ; but from the 
 ovary the eggs pass into the sheltering folds of the man- 
 tle, where they remain for some time. Here they are 
 surrounded by a nutritious substance, which serves to 
 sustain them as the white of an egg supports the young 
 chicken. After a while the whitish mass thickens, and 
 oysters in this state are called "milky," because the 
 mass of eggs resembles thick cream in consistency and 
 color. The latter turns into yellow, then into darker 
 brown, and the eggs are hatched ! Suddenly the mother 
 opens the shell; a dense mist is spread all around, and 
 the young brood scatters far and wide. 
 
 Upon their first appearance in their new career, they 
 are all life and motion, flitting about in the sea as gayly 
 and lightly as the butterfly roams from flower to flower, 
 or the swallow skims through the air. They are odd 
 little cherubs, consisting, like the angels of old masters, 
 of nothing but a couple of wing-like lobes on both sides 
 of a mouth and shoulders, but not encumbered with a 
 heavy, awkward body. The wings, fastened to rudi- 
 mentary shells, are covered on the surface with countless 
 little hairs, which move incessantly up and down, and 
 thus enable the tiny creature to swim about in the 
 
182 WONDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 water. Their infancy is one of perpetual joy and viva- 
 city ; they skip to and fro as if in mockery of their heavy 
 and immovable parents. They do not go far from her, 
 however, and the time of their joy is in their life, as in 
 ours, but brief, and soon at an end. After a day or two 
 they seem to have sown their wild oats, and if luck has 
 favored them so as to escape the thousand voracious 
 enemies that lie everywhere in wait or prowl about to 
 prey upon their youth and want of experience, they 
 finally settle down upon some suitable resting-place, a 
 stone or a branch, and become steady, domestic oysters. 
 But how few of them reach the goal ! When they start 
 from their mother's safe home, they count nearly a mil- 
 lion ; before they can find a new habitation, at least'nine- 
 tenths of their number have perished ! 
 
 After they have attached themselves by means of a 
 glutinous substance, with which provident Nature has en- 
 dowed them, to some permanent place on what is called a 
 good spatting-ground, the little wings, now useless, gradu- 
 ally dwindle and shrink, until they disappear, like the tail 
 of a tadpole when it changes into the full-grown frog. 
 Then they begin to grow, slowly, like all good things of 
 this earth, from the size of a pin's head, at two weeks, to 
 that of a pea, at three months ; when they are a year old 
 they are perhaps as large as a small lady's-watch, and at 
 the age of five years they are in their prime. The shell 
 remains frail and tender until they reach the size of that 
 rare coin, an American dollar, but is hard and complete 
 
MINE OYSTEK. 183 
 
 when they become fit for the table, which is in their 
 fourth year. At that time they are rudely torn from their 
 native bed by terrible iron prongs, to which they yield 
 with philosophic resignation, and are carried unresisting 
 to busy cities and the hum of crowds. If they should 
 escape the gluttony of man, they die at the appointed 
 time, leaving their shell, thickened by old age, and 
 adorned with rings which show their years like the rings 
 of a tree, to serve as a monument for times to come, and 
 to add, with millions of their kind, a new layer to the 
 crust of the earth. 
 
 Such is their life, simple and unromantic, but by no 
 means as void of enjoyment as we are apt to imagine. 
 There are countless sneers at the poor immovable oys- 
 ter to be found in poet and prose writers, as if to be 
 in perpetual motion was to be the perfection of happi- 
 ness. The oyster has its time of merry wandering, when 
 it is young ; but it remembers, by times, that a rolling 
 stone gathers no moss, and settles down quietly in its 
 cool, pleasant home. We are so used to roam over the 
 earth by rail and by steam, that we are apt to forget 
 how Cain's curse was that he should be a fugitive and a 
 vagabond all of his life ! We learn a different lesson from 
 the great Kant, whose philosophy DeQuincey praises 
 above all ancient and modern wisdom, and who yet, never 
 for a day, left his native town on the Baltic, and from 
 thence wielded the lever that moved a world of minds ; 
 or from Burns, who said once that he envied only two 
 
184 WONDEBS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 beings in this world a wild horse roaming freely over the 
 steppes of Asia, and an oyster on a lonely rock in the 
 ocean the former had no wish it could not gratify, the 
 latter knew no wish and no fear. Poor Burns preferred 
 to lead the life of the horse, and we all know what came 
 of it. Others have chosen the better part, and followed 
 the example of the oyster, either withdrawing with stoic 
 heroism into their shell, on which all the storms of fate 
 could make no impression, or travelling sadly from Baby- 
 lon to Jerusalem, from the wicked world and its tem- 
 pest-tossed waves into the quiet convent, the peaceful 
 haven on earth. 
 
 An oyster-bed in the sunny sea is the concentration of 
 undisturbed happiness. The countless creatures congre- 
 gated there may seem to be dormant, but we are sure they 
 lead, each, the beatified existence of an epicurean god. 
 The world without does not trouble them ; its cares and 
 joys, its storms and calms, its passions and sins, are all 
 indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Apparently unob- 
 servant of what passes around, its whole soul is con- 
 centrated in itself, and like the sublime sage of the 
 East, in his one word Cm, the oyster finds bliss in 
 simple existence. And yet it does not enjoy itself 
 sluggishly or apathetically; its pleasures are neither 
 few nor unvaried, for its body is throbbing with life 
 and a thousand sources of enjoyment. The perform 
 ance of every function with which the Creator has en 
 dowed them and we know not yet half their number 
 
MINE OYSTEK. 185 
 
 brings with it as much happiness as they are capable of 
 enjoying. 
 
 The mighty ocean itself is subservient to their pleasure, 
 and its rolling waves waft ever fresh and varied food 
 within their reach. They have no care for the morning, 
 for He who feeds the young lions provides an abundance 
 for their wants ; they need no effort, no labor, for the flow 
 of the current brings the food to their very doors. Be- 
 sides, each atom of water that comes in contact with their 
 delicate, sensitive gills, sets free its imprisoned air to 
 freshen and invigorate their pellucid blood. Nor can 
 we doubt that the gentle agitation of the water as it 
 flows around them, the equal temperature of the ocean, 
 varying only from one degree of pleasantness to another, 
 the act of imbibing the fluid and softly expelling again 
 what is not required for breathing, that all these changes, 
 unceasingly affecting their tender substance, afford them 
 both wholesome occupation and cheerful amusement. We 
 little suspect, when looking at the rough shell and the 
 shapeless mass within, how beautiful the structure of the 
 animal is, and at how many countless points it is suscep- 
 tible to influences from the outer world. But if we put 
 an oyster into a vivarium, and then aid our feeble sight 
 by the inventions of science, we are struck at once by the 
 millions of tiny hairs, cilia, which now are seen to vibrate 
 incessantly, and to keep time most marvellously, as they 
 beat on every fibre of each fringing leaflet. Even the 
 very imperfect instrument in the hands of the great 
 
1 SO WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Leeuwenhoeck made him exclaim with amazement : "The 
 motion I saw was so incredibly great, that I could not be 
 satisfied with the spectacle, and it is not in the mind of 
 man to conceive all the motion which I beheld within the 
 compass of a grain of sand ; " and yet his untrained eye 
 saw but a tithe of what is now known to careful observ- 
 ers ! Well may we marvel, and adore the sublime good- 
 ness which devised all this elaborate and inimitable con- 
 trivance for the well-being of a despised shellfish. 
 
 As the oyster has a mouth, that also must be a source 
 of enjoyment, although its suspicious nearness to the 
 stomach deprives the mollusc, in all probability, of that 
 enjoyment which the passage along the gullet affords to 
 the gourmand among ourselves, so that one of them 
 wished it could be lengthened out into a mile. The 
 oyster, however, has an appetite, and no doubt also its 
 own power of appreciating the varied provisions with 
 which it is continually supplied, and which are taken im- 
 partially from the animal as well as from the vegetable 
 kingdom. It has its nervous system, moreover, very 
 simple as far as we know, but connected with the ovarium, 
 and thus affording the pleasant sensations of love ; the 
 mantle, in whose folds its young are so tenderly kept for 
 a long time ; and the heart itself, with its two cham- 
 bers and its gentle pulsations, showing clearly that it 
 feels and enjoys, though it may have but obscure sensi- 
 bilities and limited instincts. Then there are still other 
 portions of its frame, which the careless and the ignorant 
 
MINE OYSTER. 187 
 
 simply declare useless, because they cannot at once see 
 what essential purpose of life they are made to serve, and 
 because they might apparently be omitted without dis- 
 turbing the course of daily duties. But as they are never 
 found missing, and as we now know that nothing in created 
 beings is the result of chance, we may safely assume that 
 they are symbols of organs to be more fully developed 
 in animals of higher perfection anticipations, it may be, 
 of limbs and senses given to other creations, and badges 
 of the relationship which exists between these lower and 
 despised beings, and man himself in all his sublime 
 strength and beauty. 
 
 It is true, the oyster is not visibly endowed with other 
 senses than taste and touch, which it exercises and 
 enjoys in almost. unceasing activity. We do not know 
 that it ever ceases to take in food, and we can see dis- 
 tinctly that the beautiful cilia, more delicate than the 
 costliest lace on the wedding-robe of an aristocratic 
 beauty, shrink and shiver at the slightest warning, by 
 day or by night. There is no outward eye perceptible, 
 as, in fact, there is no head to which it might lend light 
 and beauty in- its dark home ; and yet the oyster is 
 exquisitely sensitive to every change of light, and finds 
 in this susceptibility at least one means of protecting 
 itself against an enemy. As soon as the shadow of a 
 passing boat falls upon it from on high, and long before 
 the pressure of the agitated waters can have reached its 
 home on the rocks, it closes its shell, unfortunately with 
 
188 WONDERS or THE DEEP. 
 
 no better success than that of the cunning manoeuvre 
 of the ostrich, when it hides its head under a bush. The 
 ear is, on the contrary, very fully developed, and a most 
 curious organ, consisting mainly of a number of diminu- 
 tive grains, shut up in a transparent prison, and there 
 dancing in perpetual motion, which changes with every 
 sound that strikes upon the outer walls. Here, then, is 
 a new source of enjoyment, and the thousand subdued 
 notes of the great ocean may have their melodies 
 unknown to human ears, but appreciated by the dwel- 
 lers in the vasty deep. 
 
 In spite of these organs, and the undoubted fact that 
 oysters have senses and various sources of happiness, 
 men have generally believed them to be very imperfect 
 beings after all, and fit only to be mentioned among the 
 lowest of created beings. But " there is a philosophy in 
 shellfish, and above their jackets," in more senses than 
 one, and whilst we have seen that they are endowed, in 
 their own peculiar way, with sufficient acuteness and 
 sensibility to make their so-called instinctive proceedings 
 often very surprising, there are men, who know them well, 
 claiming for them a certain degree of intelligence and 
 thoughtful action. In fact, utterly helpless and thought- 
 less molluscs as they seem to be, they have proved them- 
 selves capable of learning that hardest lesson which man 
 has to acquire in the world to keep their mouth shut at 
 the proper time ! The manner in which they came first 
 to be trained in this rare accomplishment was this : 
 
MINE OYSTER. 189 
 
 There are large establishments on the coast of Calva- 
 dos, like those near La Rochelle, where oysters are kept 
 to be cleaned and fattened for the market. These artifi- 
 cial beds are constructed between tide-marks, and their 
 denizens, accustomed to spend the greater part of the 
 twenty-four hours under water, open their valves and 
 allow the waves to come in, when so situated, but close 
 them firmly when the receding tide leaves them exposed. 
 Thus they get gradually used to these alternations of sub- 
 mersion and exposure, and the practice of opening and 
 closing the shell becomes a regular habit. After a few 
 years' residence here, they are ready to be carried to 
 Paris; and as the distance is great, even by rail, this 
 habit of gaping at a certain hour would insure their de- 
 struction, as the oyster can as little live without its sup- 
 ply of air, which it derives from the sea-water, as we our- 
 selves. The French owners of these parks, therefore, 
 undertook to train them to keep their valves shut in 
 order to avert the evil. Each batch of oysters intended 
 to make the journey to Paris, is now subjected to a pre- 
 liminary exercise in keeping close even at such hours, at 
 which the tide is in, by giving them at the right time a 
 slight blow, which instinctively closes the door. The 
 molluscs learn, after a while, to do so whenever they are 
 uncovered by sea-water ; and when the time for the jour- 
 ney arrives, they are tapped, and quietly close the 
 shells, keep the gills moist with the water within, and 
 arrive safely and lively in the great capital. Thus they 
 
190 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 prove themselves capable of understanding and profit- 
 ing by a lesson, and are enabled to arrive in the metropo- 
 lis like polished citizens of the Empire, and not like gap- 
 ing rustics, with their mouths wide open. 
 
 The mollusc is, moreover, by no means so intensely 
 selfish, that all the joys and pleasures connected with its 
 existence should be strictly confined to its own secret 
 life. In building up its house, for instance, it does not 
 labor for itself alone. We cannot yet answer the ques- 
 tion, which the fool asked of King Lear, how the oyster 
 built its shell, but we can see with deep interest how 
 varied its colors and how perfect its form. The upper 
 part is generally raised the oyster of Holstein alone has 
 a concave top, having caved in, as the poor people say, 
 when the Prussians took possession of the country the 
 lower part is flatter, only deep enough to hold some 
 water, and both valves are movable by means of a power- 
 ful muscle, which holds the door more strongly than the 
 best of our locks or latches. The outside varies accord- 
 ing to the locality where the oyster grows : it is dark 
 on black, muddy bottoms ; the Spanish oyster is dressed 
 in red, the Illyrian has a brown armor to protect its 
 dingy body, the favorite of the Parisians is green with- 
 out and within, and the natives of the Red Sea shine 
 after the fashion of the Orient, in all the colors of the 
 rainbow. At night the shell emits a dim, sulphurous 
 light, arising from a variety of microscopic algae, which 
 enjoy their existence as parasites of the oyster. Nor are 
 
MINE OYSTER. 191 
 
 the brilliant lustre and the gleaming iridescence of the 
 inner lining of the shell destined to remain hid forever in 
 the depths of the ocean. The nacreous shells, which fur- 
 nish our mother-of-pearl, belong to a variety of oysters, 
 and are eagerly sought for, wherever they can be pro- 
 cured in sufficient quantities, forming an article of con- 
 siderable importance in trade. Those of the tropics con- 
 tain, however, still more precious treasures, for they 
 change the luckless grain of sand or unproductive egg 
 into costly pearls, and teach us the great lesson, that we 
 also should endeavor to treat our troubles in like man- 
 ner, and convert our secret cankers, by help from on 
 high, into pearls of great value. 
 
 " On some far-distant shores, 
 There are who seek the oyster for the pearl 
 She sometimes brings with her, a priceless dower- 
 But Dando only sought her for herself." 
 
 And Dando was right; for what are all the beauties 
 of the shell, and all the charms of the rare pearl, to the 
 luscious food and the certain health promised to the 
 lover of oysters by the inside ? Much has been said in 
 comic wonder and half-serious admiration of the man 
 who first ventured to eat an oyster. A quaint old Ger- 
 man writer, Lentilius, said of the mollusc that it was " an 
 animal of horrid and nauseous appearance, whether you 
 look at it shut up in its shell or open, so that bold must 
 have been the man who first raised it to his lips." The 
 popular legend has it, that a man, walking one day by the 
 
192 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 side of the sea " with its many voices," picked up one of 
 these savory bivalves just as it was in the act of gaping. 
 Observing the extreme smoothness of the sides within, he 
 insinuated his finger to feel the shining surface, when 
 suddenly they closed upon him with a sensation far less 
 pleasant than he had expected. The prompt withdrawal 
 of the finger was hardly a more natural movement than 
 his bringing it to his mouth, by that unfailing instinct 
 which comes to us in early childhood. In this instance 
 the result was fortunate in the extreme. The happy 
 owner of the injured finger tasted for the first time the 
 delicious juice of an oyster, as the Chinaman in Elia's 
 Essay, having burnt his finger, first tasted Cracklin. 
 The savor was superb, and he had made a great dis- 
 covery ; he picked up the oyster, forced open the shell, 
 banqueted upon the contents, and soon brought the 
 mollusc into fashion a fashion which, unlike all others, 
 has never gone and never will go out again. To ascribe 
 to the lucky man wonderful courage, is a vulgar error; 
 he deserves admiration, on the contrary, for his highly 
 sensitive and exquisite taste, and his prophetic apprecia- 
 tion of a dainty, as he saw the tempting morsel lie all 
 succulent upon its own plate in its own delicious sauce. 
 We can sympathize with the regret he must have felt, in 
 common with all oyster-eaters, when gazing upon the 
 entombed remains of millions of well-fed and elegantly 
 shaped oysters, which geologists point out to us in the 
 Eocene formation. We can imagine, with Mr. Forbes, 
 
MINE OYSTER. 193 
 
 how lie would chase " a pearly tear " away, as he calls to 
 mind how all these delicious beings came into the world 
 and vanished to so little purpose. 
 
 Even when man and oyster were first brought in con- 
 tact, they do not seem to have taken kindly to each 
 other ; at least, the silence of the Old Testament leads to 
 the idea that to the Hebrews the shellfish was forbidden 
 as one of the abominable beings. The ancient Greeks 
 were far wiser in their generation, and enjoyed them 
 heartily, but they deserve no mercy for the vile use they 
 made of the outer shell. It was black ingratitude all 
 around ; for after having feasted upon the delicious oys- 
 ters of their waters at the expense of some great patriot 
 like Aristides, they escaped thanking him for his largess 
 by writing his name on the shell, and banishing him 
 from his native land. How could men blessed with lus- 
 cious natives ever be guilty of ostracism ? 
 
 The Romans, on the contrary, showed their apprecia- 
 tion of Nature's rich bounties by the fostering care with 
 which they raised them, and the religious fastidiousness 
 with which they prepared them for their enjoyment. We 
 have seen already how they learnt to improve them, but 
 they also took to importing them even from distant Brit- 
 ain, whose natives they prized above all others. Unfor- 
 tunately, the gluttony of the time of the Caesars affected 
 their appreciation of oysters also, and a Vitellius could 
 with beastly voracity set them the bad example of eat- 
 ing oysters at all times of the day, and up to a round 
 9 
 
194: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 thousand at a sitting. To increase the heniousness of 
 the offence, he availed himself, in order to make this pos- 
 sible, of the abominable fashion prevailing in those days, 
 which made room for new supplies by removing the older 
 inmates through the agency of a peacock-feather, tickling 
 the palate with great effect. Seneca, who so admirably 
 'praised poverty in his writings, and complained on the 
 forum that he could not live comfortably with only ten 
 millions of dollars, treated oysters with the same du- 
 plicity. The temperate sage ate a few hundred every 
 day, until, in a fit of indigestion, and after having lis- 
 tened to a brother philosopher, who inveighed against all 
 the follies and vices of the times, he renounced them for- 
 ever. With the bitterness of a friend changed into a foe, 
 he turned round and denounced them as vile things, 
 pleasing only to gluttons, because " they so very readily 
 slipped down and so very readily came up again." The 
 cooler Cicero, while confessing his fondness for them, 
 claims to find no difficulty in abstaining ; but the poets, 
 fortunately, speak with more enthusiasm. Horace, de- 
 voted to the delicious mollusc with his whole heart, sings 
 their praise again and again, and Juvenal breaks forth in 
 admiration of him 
 
 " who could tell 
 
 At the first bite, if his oysters fed 
 On the Eutupian or the Lucrine bed," 
 
 the Rutupians being the fine natives of Britain, which 
 had but just come into fashion. The Emperor Trajan 
 
MINE OYSTEE. 195 
 
 was so fond of them, that his famous cook, Apicius, 
 had to provide them even during the summer months, 
 and to send the master's favorite dish after him to Parthia, 
 at a distance of many days' journey from salt-water. 
 From that time onward, nearly all great men have been 
 fond of oysters. Cervantes loved them, and satirized 
 the oyster-dealers of his country ; French authors pro- 
 fessed a like fondness, from the learned doctors of the 
 Sbrbonne under Louis XL down to the unhappy encyc- 
 lopedists, who were joined by the great men of the 
 Revolution in the days of their innocence. Nor have 
 the Parisians degenerated since, for they still consume 
 daily a million. Pope and Swift shared this partiality 
 for oysters, and the Scottish philosophers of Hume's day 
 spoke in raptures of their "whiskered pandores," an 
 enthusiasm fully appreciated afterwards by Christopher 
 North and the shepherd. 
 
 It is not the mere savor, moreover, which makes 
 oysters such favorites among men, but they have valua- 
 ble qualities besides, and have been recommended from 
 of old by physicians of all countries for many diseases. 
 It may not be true that their own fertility is transferred 
 to those who eat them, as was fondly and firmly believed 
 in former days ; but there can be no doubt that they are 
 marvellously nutritious, very digestible, and especially 
 famous for their effect on the increased production of 
 blood, so that they are ofte*n prescribed in cases of 
 wounds or after repeated bleedings. Dr. Pasquier 
 
196 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 recommended them as curing gout, and Dr. Leroy, by 
 taking two dozen every morning, preserved his youthful 
 vigor to an advanced age. We need not wonder, then, 
 that their consumption is enormous, and nothing can 
 give a better idea of the quantity brought to market, 
 than to see the fleet of oyster-vessels dredging in our 
 great estuaries, or, what is perhaps even more impressive, 
 to pay a visit to Billingsgate, the one great fish-market 
 of the city of London. At the early hour between four 
 and five in the morning, the visitor here sees one of the 
 marvels of the overgrown city ; the immense amount of 
 fish of all kinds which London grasps by means of its 
 gigantic iron arms, its railways and its steamers, from 
 every sea that beats against the island-coast, and brings 
 here in one point together. There he sees superb sal- 
 mons, fresh from the friths and bays of Scotland, or 
 from the fertile Irish seas, floundering about ; delicate 
 red mullet, all the way from Cornwall, which await 
 being carried to the West End ; smelts, with delicate 
 skins varying in hue like an opal, brought from Holland 
 in Dutch boats ; pyramids of lobsters, a vast moving 
 mass of spiteful claws and restless feelers, savage at 
 being torn from their clear, cool homes in Norwegian 
 waters ; and perhaps a royal sturgeon of colossal dimen- 
 sions, dragged with ropes through the excited crowd by 
 a yelling knot of men. Among these there are heaped 
 up such mountains of oysters as to appal the inexperi- 
 enced, and down Oyster-street, as it is called, lie long 
 
MINE OYSTEK. 197 
 
 lines of oyster-boats, moored side by side, and heaping 
 full of natives and the lower kinds. And yet the rail- 
 ways bring in even larger supplies, especially since the 
 discovery of a great natural bed, called the Mid-Channel 
 Bed, which stretches for forty miles between the ports 
 of Shoreham and Havre, and has proved, as the dredging- 
 ground is free to all comers, a source of vast wealth. 
 Nor are private banks less remarkable for their extent ; 
 so that long years ago a Mr. Alston, then the largest 
 oyster-fisher in the world, could, in a single year, send 
 fifty thousand bushels from one of his parks to London, 
 and pay eight hundred pounds metage to the owners of 
 the market. The whole supply, now, is stated at eight 
 hundred millions a-year, and yet there is a pause, at least 
 during a part of 
 
 " those four sad months, wherein is mute 
 That one mysterious letter, that has power 
 To call the oyster from the vasty deep." 
 
 The question has often been raised, why, if oysters are 
 really the greatest of gastronomic blessings, and life is 
 proverbially short, the dainty creature should not be eaten 
 all the year round. The prejudice, however, which for- 
 bids them during the months that have no letter R in 
 their names, is not altogether unfounded. In May and 
 June they generally spawn, and then their^life's blood is 
 essentially changed for the benefit of their posterity, and 
 their own flesh is lean and unpalatable. Besides, how- 
 ever productive they may be, a conscientious lover of the 
 
198 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 mollusc will hardly reconcile himself to the barbarous 
 waste of swallowing with each living parent a million of 
 promising offspring. In the next two months the heat is 
 apt to be so great as seriously to endanger all oysters 
 that are not eaten immediately after they are taken from 
 the water ; and one spoiled oyster does more harm than 
 a thousand good ones. Hence the English rarely have 
 them brought to market before the first days of August, 
 when the " common oysters " from Colchester and Fever- 
 sham appear gradually, but the " melting natives " are 
 not seen before the beginning of October, reach their 
 meridian of perfection at Christmas, and disappear again 
 towards the end of April. 
 
 In the remaining months, however, they throng the 
 markets of the world, and then they are eaten by old and 
 young, by rich and poor, " the only meat which men eat 
 alive and yet account it not cruelty," as old Fuller says 
 quaintly. For this is their great merit, that one may eat 
 them to-day, to-morrow, and forever, and as many as one 
 wants, and yet their presence hardly makes itself felt, 
 while they gratify the palate, quiet the excitement of 
 certain nerves which we call hunger, and leave no feeling 
 of satiety, no reproach, no remorse for the following day. 
 They are the true grata ingluvies of Horace. Hence we 
 marvel how a" clever man like Malherbe could say that 
 he knew nothing nobler in the world than women and 
 melons, and yet, living as he did on the coast of Nor- 
 mandy, and near the finest of oyster-banks, forget oys- 
 
MINE OYSTER. 199 
 
 ters ! We all know men with whom women do not agree, 
 and how many of us can eat melons with impunity ; but 
 who ever heard of fresh oysters making themselves at all 
 disagreeable ? They can, moreover, be eaten at all times 
 of the day ; they are good at breakfast, excellent as a 
 prelude to dinner, and Juvenal speaks already of his be- 
 loved Venus Ebria, 
 
 " Who at deep midnight on fat oysters sups, 
 And froths with unguents her Falernian cups." 
 
 The true way to eat them, profitably to taste, health, and 
 enjoyment, is, of course, to eat them raw, and without 
 condiment ; for vinegar, pepper, or lemon-juice, all spoil 
 the natural flavor of the bivalve. The only good dress- 
 ing is its own gravy, which is not sea-water, as many 
 fancy, but its life's blood, which it sheds when the shell 
 is violently broken open. Hence a master of the art 
 says of all other ways of dressing : " Frivolity ! profani- 
 ty ! sacrilege ! If after such treatment they taste well, 
 they are no longer oysters ; if they are still oysters, they 
 have no longer any taste ; " and the poet adds sagely, 
 that in his view oysters ought to be eaten, as we love to 
 see white roses, with the dew of a fine summer morning 
 on their tender leaves. To all of which famous Dr. 
 Kitchener adds, with refined cruelty : " Those who wish to 
 enjoy this delicious restorative in its utmost perfection, 
 must eat it the moment it is opened, with its own gravy 
 in the under shell ; -if not eaten absolutely alive, its fla- 
 
200 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 vor and spirit are lost. The true lover of an oyster will 
 have some regard for the feelings of his little favorite, 
 and contrive to detach the fish from the shell so dexter- 
 ously that he is hardly conscious he has been ejected 
 from his lodging till he feels the teeth of the gourmet 
 tickling him to death." Would Dr. Kitchener be very 
 grateful for being tickled to death ? 
 
 If dressings are not allowed, some drink to accompany 
 the mollusc on its way is generally considered indispen- 
 sable. Strong wines and liquors should be eschewed, 
 although in this country whiskey or gin, and in Germany 
 and Russia rum, is taken with them ; these beverages 
 simply pickle the oyster at once, and deprive it of its 
 best qualities as nutritious, digestible food. Lighter 
 French wines are less objectionable, such as Chablis, 
 Sauterne, and even Moselle, but Port is said to turn them 
 into stone ; porter and ale, on the contrary, and better 
 still half-and-half, are considered the true friends of the 
 oyster. 
 
 The question as to how many may be eaten at a time 
 is fraught with ' great difficulty, for here men differ as 
 well as doctors. The experienced say that oysters after 
 the fifth or sixth dozen cease to be a delight ; specially 
 favored individuals speak of seven or eight as profitable 
 in times of great political or domestic excitement, when 
 the system has to be appeased by a specially cooling 
 and soothing food. But Brillat Savarin, in his admirable 
 book on Taste, expressed a different opinion. " It is well 
 
MINE OYSTEE. 201 
 
 known," he says, " that formerly, under the Louises, be- 
 fore the Revolution, every festive meal began with oys- 
 ters, and that a certain number of guests were always 
 found who did not rest until they had eaten a gross, viz., 
 twelve dozen. The abbes of those happy days, espe- 
 cially, never were content with less, and the chevaliers 
 often went beyond them. As I wished to know the ex- 
 act value and weight of such a preparation for a good 
 meal, I took my scales, and found that twelve dozen 
 oysters, with the water they contained, weighed exactly 
 three pounds. How much happier, now, were these 
 worthy guests with such a weight of oysters than if they 
 had eaten three pounds of meat, or even of poultry ! " A 
 handsome compliment, surely, to our friends the oysters, 
 which could not have been more happily turned by the 
 best of cooks. In another place he adds a remarkable 
 instance of individual capacity. It seems that he acci- 
 dentally fell in, in 1798, with a certain Laperte, an officer 
 in one of the public courts, who professed to be passion- 
 ately fond of oysters, but never to have had, as he said, 
 " his fill " of them. The author offered to give him that 
 satisfaction, and invited him to dine the next day at his 
 house. The gourmet came, and Brillat kept him com- 
 pany up to the third dozen, when he let him go his 
 way unaided. He marched on bravely, till he reached 
 the thirty-second dozen, which he did in about an hour, 
 as the man who opened the oysters was not very expert. 
 Brillat became impatient, not at the endless capacity, 
 
202 "WOXDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 but at his own forced inactivity, thinking it both " pain- 
 ful and unwholesome to sit at table without eating," and 
 stopped his valiant guest in the midst of his exploit. He 
 expressed his regrets that the Fates had evidently denied 
 him the privilege to let his friend have his fill that day, 
 and invited him now to join him at dinner. The guest 
 assented, and behold! to the author's amazement, he 
 went to work with all the energy and perseverance of a 
 man who had sat down to table after long fasting ! 
 
 It is not impossible that this happy Laperte may have 
 belonged to the school of the poet Lainez, in Paris, who 
 was asked, after four hours' active devotion to an unin- 
 terrupted dinner, if he had dined yet, and replied, in- 
 dignantly : " Do you imagine my stomach is endowed 
 with memory ? " Whereupon he resumed his work with 
 renewed zeal and increased vigor. 
 
 There is comfort in the thought that even in such ex- 
 treme cases no man has yet been known to have suffered 
 seriously because he loved oysters " not wisely but too 
 well." There is comfort, also, in the fact that all the 
 voracity of man could make no impression on the vast 
 numbers of oysters which exist in our seas. Spenser 
 already said, it was 
 
 " much more eath to tell the stars on high, 
 Albe they endless peem in estimation, 
 Than to recount the sea's posterity ; 
 So fertile be the floods in generations, 
 So huge their numbers, and BO numberless their nations." 
 
 Natural beds and banks of oysters are found in all the 
 
MINE OYSTEK. 203 
 
 seas of the temperate and torrid zones, now stretching 
 out miles after miles in all directions, and now rising so 
 high that ships are wrecked on their crests. And thus 
 it has been apparently from time immemorial, for gigan- 
 tic structures, consisting of fossil oysters, are found in 
 many places. In Berkshire, England, a petrified colony 
 of oysters covers more than six acres ; in Massachusetts 
 and Georgia enormous breakwaters are formed between 
 the firm land and the hungry ocean, ramparts twelve to 
 fifteen feet high, the lower layers of course fossil, but 
 the upper strata alive, and affording delicious food to 
 the negro of our day, as their forefathers did to the In- 
 dians, and perhaps to the Aztecs. On the west coast of 
 this continent vast surfaces are covered with fossil oys- 
 ters, which have been raised by volcanic action, and now 
 tower to the height of sixty feet and more, for thirty 
 miles at a time. 
 
 Among the living, however, there is as great a differ- 
 ence as among the races of men. Those of our country 
 are acknowledged jto surpass in size and luscious flavor 
 all others ; and even English travellers, like Charles Mac- 
 kay, have acknowledged them to be superior to the 
 famous Whitstables at home. But Frenchmen, accus- 
 tomed to their own smaller and richer oysters, with a 
 strong taste of copper, object to their inconvenient 
 dimensions, and miss the metallic flavor. Germans 
 utterly at sea in all that concerns the sea, either do not 
 appreciate oysters at all, or, if they do, are enraptured 
 
204: WONDEKS OP THE PEEP. 
 
 by the ample provision contained in each shell and the 
 amount of lager it requires for easy conveyance. Next 
 to our own come undoubtedly the English oysters, of 
 which there are many varieties, the best growing on 
 submarine rocks, an inferior kind on sandbanks, and the 
 coarsest on muddy bottoms. England values them 
 largely according to size, and sends the smallest kind, 
 called Dutch-size, over to Holland. The common oyster 
 from the Western coast is very large, with thick shells 
 and little meat. The Colchesters go by the name of 
 Middle Ware, and are larger than the best kind, the 
 Little Natives, reared carefully at the mouths of a num- 
 ber of small rivers and in Southampton Water. Scot- 
 land is justly proud of her Pandores, so called because 
 they are found near the salt-pans in the neighborhood of 
 historic Prestonpans, and caught, it is said, by a bit of 
 magic. The fishing-crews keep up, while the dredging is 
 going on, a kind of wild monotonous chant, to which 
 they ascribe great virtue, and sing : 
 
 " The herring loves the merry moonlight, 
 
 The mackerel loves the wind ; 
 But the oyster loves the dredger's song, 
 For he comes of a gentler kind." 
 
 Paddy claims for his Pooldoodies of Burra, and espe- 
 cially for his Carlingfords, that they are superior to all 
 the world, and is as usually correct in his patriotism, but 
 mistaken in his assertion. They are very fine, however, 
 with a dark, almost black beard and delicious flavor, but 
 
MINE OYSTER. 205 
 
 not to be compared to some of our own varieties. The 
 natives of England are largely sent over to Ostend to 
 be cleaned and fattened in Belgian parks, and then 
 assume a perfection almost unsurpassed. The shell 
 becomes very fine, almost transparent ; the fish is small, 
 but rich and beautifully white, and bearing to the best 
 of common oysters the relation that a well-fed capon 
 bears to an ordinary chicken. This is the oyster which 
 gourmets prefer to all others. It goes from Ostend all 
 over Germany, to Russia, and even to distant Odessa. 
 
 French oysters are limited to northern seas, the Medi- 
 terranean coast having none that are worth eating. Those 
 raised at Marennes, in the Bay of Biscay, and at the 
 Roches de Cancale, are the most famous, though the whole 
 coast, from Normandy to Dunkirk, abounds in excellent 
 kinds ; they are brought, to the amount of about two 
 hundred millions a year, to the Rue Montorgueil, which is 
 to Paris what Billingsgate is to London. The most 
 striking feature, however, is the preference which Pari- 
 sians give to green oysters, and the pains which are there- 
 fore taken to produce the color artificially, by favoring 
 the growth of certain sea-algae. These parasitic plants, 
 when once introduced into oyster parks, soon cover the 
 walls and rocks, and gradually spread their transparent 
 veil over the molluscs themselves. The adversaries for, 
 like all superior things in this world, oysters, and espe- 
 cially green oysters, meet with opposition at times say 
 that the green matter enters into the gills of the luckless 
 
2,06 WONDEBS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 creature, stops the breathing, and thus causes dropsy. 
 The disease makes the oyster to swell, by which process 
 the texture of its meat becomes looser, finer, and more 
 palatable ; and epicureans revel in dropsical shellfish as 
 they delight in diseased goose-livers. The Baltic has a 
 small supply of the precious molluscs, but the variety is 
 coarse and insipid, probably because the waters of that 
 sea are not salt enough ; those of the Adriatic, however, 
 and of the Bosphorus, are better, and in great demand 
 during the long fasts of the Greek church. 
 
 Wherever the oyster, therefore, appears in sufficient 
 quantities, there men are found ready to consume them 
 as fast as they can be procured ; but the poor unselfish 
 oyster has enemies nearer home, in its own native ele- 
 ment, and close upon its borders. The arch-enemy is 
 the sleepy, stupid-looking starfish, the Master Five-fingers 
 of our boys, who eats them as spat, or even when grown 
 to considerable size. These greedy devourers have the 
 curious power of rolling themselves up and floating 
 away, so that they appear and vanish again, no one 
 knows how. But all of a sudden, and often at the very 
 time when the sanguine fisherman -gets ready to reap a 
 rich harvest from a well-stocked oyster-bank, he finds, 
 upon coming to the grounds, that the foe has been there 
 before him, and millions of starfishes have settled down 
 like a flock of wild pigeons on a field of wheat. Gene- 
 rally, they prefer the spat or very young oysters, which 
 they take whole into their capacious mouths, and there 
 
MINE OYSTER. 207 
 
 digest slowly. But how do these tender, fragile creatures 
 manage to get at the full-grown mollusc in its impreg- 
 nable fortress? The ancients had a story, that they 
 watched it till they found it incautiously yawning, and 
 then slyly slipped their greedy fingers between the valves 
 to keep them open, while they devoured the contents. 
 This is, of course, a mere fable, as the soft, slimy finger 
 would be squeezed off in an instant, even if the starfish 
 were not famous for falling to pieces by immediate sui- 
 cide as soon as it is brought into contact with a hard 
 substance. Its murderous assault is far more curious. 
 The first step in the process is for the enemy to lie close 
 upon its prey, folding its slimy arms tightly over it, so 
 as to hold itself in the right position. Then it applies 
 its mouth closely to the victim, and as it cannot, by any 
 force of its own, put the oyster into its stomach, it de- 
 liberately proceeds to put its stomach into the oyster ! 
 It begins slowly but steadily to push out this organ 
 through the mouth, and wraps the mollusc in the folds 
 of that capacious bag ; patience always does its work, 
 and in due time the hapless native surrenders to the de- 
 vourer. 
 
 Another enemy shows, if less originality, at least 
 equal perseverance. This is the whelk, who also seems, 
 like the vulture, to smell its prey from afar, and although 
 endowed with very slender means of locomotion, appears 
 in vast multitudes, when least expected, on the oyster- 
 beds which it deems ready for use. It assails the shell 
 
208 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 boldly from above, and with marvellous patience drills, 
 by means of its sharp tongue, a hole in the upper valve, 
 by which it gets at last fairly inside, and then enjoys the 
 dainty food. Mussels come by myriads, when young, 
 and cover the luckless oyster with a fine, ropy texture, 
 which catches mud and sand, and finally smothers them ; 
 and gray mullets appear in swarms, and, greedily grub- 
 bing, devour whole beds of well-fattened natives. Even 
 the elements combine against the helpless mollusc ; heavy 
 gales of wind at times roll them up in ridges three feet 
 deep, when mud and seaweeds settle on them and choke 
 them speedily ; or frost and snow and ice kill large 
 numbers, when they are not safely sheltered at a depth 
 of at least three or four feet of water. Thus it is, that 
 by the wise provisions of Nature, the danger of over- 
 stocking her vast reserves is avoided ; for wherever 
 animals multiply their species at such enormous rates, 
 there are, on the other side, numerous enemies ever 
 present to keep it down and to prevent an undue pre- 
 ponderance. 
 
 All the voracity of man, however, and all the persecu- 
 tion of enemies, does not destroy enough oysters annually 
 to prevent them from forming, as we have seen, gigantic 
 deposits in various parts of the globe. For, if left to 
 themselves, oysters grow old and die a natural death, 
 though it has not yet been ascertained fully what age 
 they are allowed to reach in their solitude. The expert 
 fisherman, it is true, can tell at a glance and to a nicety 
 
MINE OYSTER. 209 
 
 the precise age of his flock. He examines the successive 
 layers on the upper shell, technically called shoots, and 
 as each of them, overlapping the lower, marks a year, he 
 is at no loss to ascertain how old the house and the 
 inhabitant for they are always of the same age. These 
 layers, it seems, are regular, and laid in even succession 
 one upon the other, until the oyster attains its maturity, 
 which is generally fixed at seven or eight years; but 
 after that time they become irregular, are recklessly 
 piled upon each other, and make the shell look bulky 
 and ill-shapen. As some molluscs have been found with 
 shells nine inches thick and of a perfectly enormous size, 
 it is fair to presume that the oyster, when left to its 
 natural changes and unmolested, may reach a patriarchal 
 age, and even outlive our race. 
 
 Unfortunately, man nowadays rarely allows them to 
 pursue the even tenor of their life. On the pretext of 
 protecting them against their powerful enemies and of 
 improving their race pleas not quite unknown to certain 
 nations of our day they are taken when quite young 
 from their home, and brought to so-called sea-farms, where 
 they live, safe against all danger, well fed and happy, 
 and reward the favor shown them by increasing at least 
 to double their value. Little is known of the labor and 
 expense, the care and attention bestowed upon the ap- 
 parently trifling mollusc, in order to make it acceptable 
 to fastidious palates or even simply fit for market. First, 
 the spat, or fecundated sperm, is stored up in large vats, 
 
210 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 specially designed for the purpose, and thus the immense 
 quantity of seed-oysters are saved, which on natural 
 banks fall an easy prey to countless devourers. These 
 are sold as Native Brood to dealers in the article, and 
 conveyed to artificial ponds or reservoirs, called oyster- 
 parks. These receptacles, which are often of vast size, 
 have a floor of clean stone slabs, covered with fine sand, 
 on which the small oysters are carefully laid on the proper 
 side, and a little inclined. The sea-water is made to en- 
 ter gently, so as not to wash sand into the shells, which 
 would kill them instantly, and rises and falls with the 
 tide outside. If the oysters are to be very large and of 
 light color, each tide must bring fresh water ; but if they 
 are to be delicate and of finer taste, the water is allowed 
 to remain some time in the basins, so as to favor the de- 
 velopment of the microscopic plants, which are always 
 present in sea-water and largely form the food of the 
 oyster. Here they are kept generally three or four years, 
 till they have reached a good size and are considered fit 
 for consumption. So far, their education has been left 
 largely to Nature ; but now additional steps are taken 
 to perfect their condition, if they are to bring specially 
 high prices. They are stored in large, shallow vats, 
 where they gradually get rid of the taste of mud, which 
 many still have, especially when they come from beds 
 and banks situated at the mouths of rivers. Here they 
 are simply kept in fresh sea- water ; the method of fatten- 
 ing them with oatmeal having been given up, as the 
 
MINE OYSTER. 211 
 
 throwing in of dead stuff only makes the water foul and 
 the oyster sick, and because very fat oysters are consid- 
 ered, like prize cattle, none the better for overfeeding. 
 Such oyster-farms exist now in large numbers, mainly in 
 England, where a single private oyster-park, near Whit- 
 stable, is valued at two millions of dollars ; and in 
 France, where the Government, true to its fostering 
 policy, supports the enterprises by every means in its 
 power. 
 
 When the poor oyster leaves these vats, it approaches 
 its tragic end, which it reaches only after much tribula- 
 tion. The journey to the landing-place, whether it be a pier 
 in the river or a railway-station, is generally pleasant 
 enough ; they are transported carefully, travel in good 
 company, and are occasionally refreshed by supplies of 
 new sea-water. But when they arrive, the bad treat- 
 ment begins ; they are pushed into baskets, tossed into 
 barrels, pitched on carts, fortunate, yet, if a kind hand 
 brings them at intervals a pittance of water. Too often, 
 however, the same hand gives them a stone instead of a 
 loaf, for the common error still prevails, that salt and 
 common well-water will do as well a cruel mistake, 
 since it is neither the salt nor the water which sustains 
 the life of an oyster, but the abundance of invisible plant- 
 seeds and microscopic spores contained in sea-water, 
 which kitchen-salt kills on the spot. At last they reach 
 their goal : if handsome, well-shaped, and well-flavored, 
 they are introduced to the palaces of the rich and the 
 
212 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 noble, to give, like wits and poets, additional relish to 
 their sumptuous feasts; but if sturdy, thick backed, 
 strong-tasting creatures, Fate consigns them to the capa- 
 cious tubs of common carters ; they are dosed with coarse 
 black pepper and pungent vinegar, and depart this life, 
 partly embalmed after the manner of ancient Pharaohs. 
 
 
vm. 
 
 LIGHT AT SEA. 
 
 " The swift-winged arrows of light." ALEXANDER SELKIRK. 
 
 TjlAR out in the great harbor of Portsmouth, at a dis- 
 tance of over fourteen miles from the town, there 
 rises amid the stormy channel waves, a group of rocks, 
 the dread of all sailors, and the scene of dire disasters. 
 For more than two centuries efforts have been made to 
 place a beacon there, to warn the vessels which con- 
 tinually throng the great thoroughfare, and to prevent 
 the further loss of precious lives, and not less than ten 
 structures have, one after the other, been erected on the 
 ill-fated spot. It was only after many sad failures and 
 bitter disappointments that at last the true principles 
 were discovered upon which light-houses ought to be built, 
 and the noble tower of Eddystone could be raised, one 
 of the greatest glories of England. 
 
 The first of these experiments was perhaps the drollest 
 ever made, and worthy of its eccentric author. E. Wis- 
 tanley was already well known all over England as a 
 
214 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 man of wonderful learning and unbounded resources of 
 mind. His home in Exeter was looked at with fear by 
 his neighbors, and had a strange fame abroad. Visitors, 
 whom curiosity or friendship had drawn there, came back 
 with strange accounts of slippers, which had no sooner 
 been touched by their feet, than ghosts, gaunt and grim, 
 had arisen before them ; of easy chairs whose arms had 
 seized them as they sat down, and held them with an 
 iron gripe; and of charming bowers in the trim garden, 
 which greeted the thoughtless wanderer with showers 
 of water. How he came to think of building his first 
 light-house, is not known ; but he certainly deserves all 
 the more credit for his humane enterprise, as he lived in 
 an age (1696) when old women were still thought capa- 
 ble of raising a storm in the channel by their incanta- 
 tions, and the church thundered anathemas against all 
 who dared interfere with God's own appointed messen- 
 gers the winds. The structure which he erected at his 
 own expense was as odd as the times and the character 
 of the builder. It had open galleries running around the 
 tower, and was adorned in all its stories with enormous 
 beams, projecting far over the rocks, and intended to 
 serve for cranes and pullies. It resembled more a Chi- 
 nese pagoda, ornamented with quaint devices and gigan- 
 tic inscriptions, than a light-house of our day ; and not 
 the least ludicrous feature was a covered balcony in one 
 of the upper stories, from which the benevolent builder 
 loved to fish with a rod. He used, in the pride of his 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 215 
 
 success, to step out on this balcony and boldly defy the 
 storm, crying aloud : " Blow, oh winds ! Rise, oh ocean ! 
 Break forth, ye elements, and try my work ! " The 
 winds were not long in coining, nor the ocean in rising : 
 on the 26th of November, 1703, Wistanley had gone to 
 his tower in 'order to superintend some repairs ; during 
 the night a fearful storm arose, and on the morrow the 
 sea had swallowed up the tower and its author. 
 
 It is true that this was one of the most fearful storms 
 ever known in the Channel ; thirteen men-of-war perished 
 in it, with 1,519 souls on board, and among them the 
 " Mary," commanded by Admiral Beaumont, which dis- 
 appeared entirely on the Goodwin Sands. This immense 
 loss of life, the injury inflicted on the trade Bristol lost 
 150,000 pounds, and London a million and the terror it 
 had inspired on land even, made so deep an impression 
 that a public fast was ordered by the authorities to avert 
 the wrath of God by deep penitence. By one of those 
 curious coincidences, which no doubt occur frequently 
 but are noticed only in rare cases, the model of the fa- 
 mous light-house in the library of Wistanley's house at 
 Littlebury, Essex, was thrown down and broken at the 
 same moment when the structure itself was blown down 
 by the storm, at a distance of over 200 miles. 
 
 The second effort was made by a remarkable man, 
 Rudgard, a silk merchant of London, who had a natural 
 talent for engineering, and who, from great grief for the 
 repeated losses and a laudable ambition to become a 
 
216 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 public benefactor, resolved to give his time and hi? 
 money to the erection of a new light-house. With the 
 aid of only two carpenters and three workmen, he set 
 out on his labor of love, but, though as ill prepared as 
 his unfortunate predecessor, his plan was far superior to 
 Wistanley's, and possessed certain marks of such un- 
 doubted genius, that Smeaton, the highest authority on 
 such subjects, speaks of it with unbounded admiration. 
 Instead of giving his structure a number of corners and 
 openings, by which wind and waves might attack it, 
 as his predecessor had done, Rudgard built a simple, 
 solid cone, well fastened to the foundation, and present- 
 ing no hold to the elements. It might have stood to our 
 day, if it had not been built in alternate courses of wood 
 and stone, for it had successfully resisted the storms of 
 forty-six years, when it fell before a more dangerous 
 element even than air or water. On the 1st of November, 
 1755, when one of the watchmen went up to the highest 
 story to snuff the candles, he found the lantern on fire. 
 He knew not how it had broken out, tried to extinguish 
 it, and finding his efforts unavailing, called upon his two 
 comrades to help him. They did not hear him at once, 
 and, faithful to his trust, he remained at his post. In 
 the meantime, the roof had begun to melt, and a shower 
 of molten lead fell upon his head, his shoulders, and even 
 in his mouth ; he was at last carried out, but died on the 
 twelfth day after the occurrence, and the physician 
 actually found a small piece of lead in his stomach! 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 217 
 
 His companions had fortunately been able to escape to a 
 neighboring ledge of rocks, from which they were res- 
 cued on the next day by fishermen whom the bright 
 light had attracted. 
 
 The light-house at Eddystone was farmed out like all 
 others, and this made it the interest of the so-called 
 owners to rebuild it quickly, as in the meantime no dues 
 could be collected from passing vessels. The absence of 
 the light, moreover, caused at once several disasters, and 
 public indignation rose to a high pitch. It was then 
 that the great Smeaton was called in, and gave it at once 
 as his opinion that the new light-house should be built 
 of granite. At first they were disheartened by the time 
 and the large capital such a work would require, but 
 they prudently yielded to the suggestions of the great 
 engineer, and have been well rewarded for their wisdom, 
 for his noble structure is still standing, and proudly 
 claims the first rank among the light-houses of all 
 nations. 
 
 Little as we may credit the stories of Newton's apple 
 falling from a branch overhead, or of Watt's tea-kettle 
 sending forth clouds of hot steam, there is no denying 
 that Nature is ever ready to furnish us with suggestions, 
 and that the careful observer has no better teacher than 
 her. Thus it was with Smeaton, when he was trying to 
 solve the great problem how such a tower as he proposed 
 could be made fast to the rocky foundation. He had 
 
 been in the habit of walking over the flat country near 
 10 
 
218 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Plymouth, and of resting at times under a clump of trees 
 to enjoy their grateful shade. On one occasion he found 
 that they had been torn up by the roots during a fearful 
 storm ; one only of the whole group had braved the tem- 
 pest, and stood unharmed in all the pride of its strength. 
 Smeaton examined the oak which had shown such marvel- 
 lous power of resistance, and he found the solution of his 
 problem. The light-house was rooted to the rocks like 
 a tree, holding the ground all around it in its powerful 
 grasp. 
 
 The first stone of the great monument for such it 
 really is was laid on the 15th of June, 1757, and the last 
 was added on the 24th of August, 1759. Arising boldly 
 from the bare rocks, famous for their terrible eddy, stand- 
 ing free and fearless among a mass of white foam that 
 continually dashes against its base, it presents the appear- 
 ance of a single solid shaft. It looks like a monolith, so 
 accurately and carefully are all the blocks joined, dove- 
 tailed, and cemented ; and when the waves rise and the 
 sea washes over it all, dashing its foamy crests high above 
 the lantern, it strikes the beholder with amazement and 
 wonder. Very different from the boastful inscriptions of 
 Wistanley are the words carved on Smeaton's work : " Ex- 
 cept the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that 
 build it," is written on the lowest course, and the key- 
 stone above the lantern bears the simple words : Laus 
 Deo ! expressive of his joy and his thankfulness. While 
 he was yet at work, a party of French Corsairs, availing 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 219 
 
 
 
 themselves of the war then going on between England 
 and France, landed near the rocks, seized the workmen 
 and threw them into a French prison. Fortunately Louis 
 XIV. heard of it, and immediately ordered their release, 
 saying : " I wage war against England, but not against 
 mankind ! " 
 
 If England has thus avowedly rendered a signal service 
 to all nations, and is justly proud of her Smeaton, through 
 whose genius and great skill this was accomplished, the 
 sister kingdom can boast of her Stevenson and his great 
 work on Bell Rock. About twenty miles south-west of 
 Red Head, in Forfarshire, there lies a reef of rocks in the 
 German ocean which has cost countless lives, and is a 
 perfect grave-yard of vessels. The reef is about 2,000 
 yards in length, and although the surface is uncovered 
 at low spring-tides, the depth of the sea at only a hun- 
 dred yards' distance from the rock exceeds three fathoms. 
 For ages seals and cormorants had been the only inhab- 
 itants, and yet so dangerous was this treacherous reef 
 that centuries ago the good monks of Arbroath, settled 
 there by William the Lion, placed a huge bell on the 
 rock, which rang by means of machinery set in motion 
 by the waves themselves. Fence the name of Bell Rock. 
 It was not until 1800 that Robert Stevenson, then as yet 
 little known, was employed to survey the reef and to re- 
 port on the feasibility of erecting a light-house on the 
 spot. The main difficulty arose from the fact that the 
 reef was covered at high t'de with several feet of water, 
 
'220 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 and the absence of any shelter for the workmen on the 
 rocks, which lay isolated amid a waste of waters and far 
 from any human habitation. To provide a home, a 
 patache a small vessel of peculiar construction was an- 
 chored near the rock and provided with a beacon, while 
 another vessel was engaged to keep open the communi- 
 cation with the shore. Workshops, in which the granite 
 for the outer coat and the sandstone intended for the in- 
 ner lining were to be prepared, were built at Arbroath, 
 and a large dwelling-house was rented for the laborers ; 
 the latter, however, were expressly bound to remain a 
 month at a time on the reef. On the 7th of August, 
 1807, Stevenson and his assistant, Peter Logan, with a 
 few workmen, proceeded to Bell Hock, chose the precise 
 spot where the light-house was to stand, and immediate- 
 ly went to work, first of all cleaning the place of seaweeds 
 and incrustations. 
 
 The work was one of extreme difficulty, as the men 
 could only labor in the intervals between the tides, and 
 had to run for their lives every two or three hours. The 
 vind and the weather furnished other interruptions, and 
 ^though the men were found willing to work on Sun- 
 iays, and even at night by torch-light, the structure 
 made naturally but very slow progress. Accidents hap- 
 pened and great dangers were incurred. Thus once the 
 sloop " Smeaton," which was used as patache, was torn 
 from its moorings and carried with it a small vessel full 
 of workmen; the tide was just receding, and to return 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 221 
 
 was impossible till the reef should be once more com- 
 pletely submerged. There were still thirty-two men on 
 the rock, and the two remaining vessels could not have 
 taken in more than half of them if the sea had suddenly 
 risen. Fortunately they were ignorant of their danger, 
 as they were almost all sitting or kneeling at their work. 
 Smeaton and one other man alone were cognizant of their 
 great peril. But when the rising tide drove them from 
 their work and they ran for the vessels, their astonish- 
 ment was great at finding only two instead of three. 
 Still, as Stevenson himself tells us, not one uttered a 
 word ; they only looked at each other, counting their 
 number in silence, and showing in their features alone 
 the uneasiness they felt. At the critical moment, how- 
 ever, a boat arrived from Arbroath with the mail, by the 
 aid of which all were embarked and went in search of 
 the run-away patache. 
 
 Another accident was even more formidable by occur- 
 ring at night. The wind rose very suddenly and a heavy 
 swell washed over the rock ; the boats were instantly 
 stranded on the wharf and threatened every moment to 
 be upset. The torches went out and the- darkness of the 
 night appeared in all its horror. The sea was over- 
 charged with electricity, and as the waves were dashed 
 into foam against the rocks, liquid flames seemed to 
 cover the reef. This gave to the ocean a terrible ma- 
 jesty, and the bravest trembled for a moment. Many 
 features of this Crusoe-like life were of great interest to 
 
222 WONDERS OF THE DEE?. 
 
 an intelligent observer like Stevenson. He was struck 
 with the elasticity of the human mind, when he saw the 
 wearied workmen, as soon as the tide put a stop to their 
 work, hasten to their varied amusements. Some loved 
 to read, and seized their books with eagerness ; others 
 preferred music, and the violin or the flute enlivened the 
 strange scene ; still others preferred fishing. Their only 
 enemy was sea-sickness, which attacked them all, and 
 hardly left them even in the course of time. Nor was it 
 less surprising to see how soon these landsmen learnt to 
 jump into the boats and to creep again out of their nar- 
 row berths, or to watch them like the Israelites of old, 
 work with a tool in one hand and a lighted torch in the 
 other, undisturbed by the roaring of the tempest and the 
 booming of the waves. During the winter the work 
 ceased altogether, but it was a great satisfaction to the 
 builder and his men, that on resuming their labors in the 
 succeeding spring they found the building perfectly 
 sound and uninjured by the terrific storms of the winter. 
 When the last stone of the twenty-second course had 
 been laid, prayers were held for the first time in the new 
 tower; all the workmen were voluntarily present, and 
 two of them joined their hands to form a pulpit, on 
 which the Bible lay during the service. At the end 
 of 1810 the authorities took possession of the com- 
 pleted structure, and on February 11, 1811, it was 
 lighted up for the first time. Those lights have never 
 yet been allowed to disappear for a night, and the 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 223 
 
 house has required no repairs for these fifty -seven 
 years. 
 
 There is something touching in the manner in which 
 the son of the great engineer, Alan Stevenson, repeated 
 a generation later the work of his father, and built upon 
 Skerryvore a similar structure in the open sea. He 
 modestly acknowledges that whatever superiority there 
 may be in his work is due to the lessons learnt from his 
 father's experience, and the effective aid of the new 
 agent, steam, which was unknown in the elder Steven- 
 son's time. It is due to these three men, Smeaton and 
 Robert and Alan Stevenson, to state that they were the 
 first who dared build such massive structures surrounded 
 by the waves, and well may we imagine the ocean saying 
 to them in the poet's words : 
 
 Great I must call them, for they conquered me. 
 
 Little that is really new and important has since been 
 added to the art of building light-houses, if we except the 
 truly American enterprise of carrying a whole building of 
 the kind from one place to the other, as we see houses in our 
 cities leaving their old foundations, wandering through 
 the streets and seeking afar off a new home. This oc- 
 curred in Sunderland, where the repairs in the harbor led 
 to the construction of a new jetty, rendering the old one 
 useless, and involving the necessity of building a new 
 light-house on the new wharf. Workmen had already pre- 
 pared the work of demolition, when a clever engineer, 
 
224: WONDERS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 John Murray, conceived the happy idea of conveying the 
 whole building as it stood to the place on which the new 
 tower was to be erected. The enterprise was far from 
 trifling. The distance was 475 feet ; the line of trans- 
 portation a broken one, so that the tower had to be entirely 
 turned round ; the old wharf was a foot and seven inches 
 higher than the new one ; and what seemed to be the most 
 serious obstacle, the octagonal towers, built of Portland 
 stone, and 76 feet high, rested on a base of only fifteen 
 feet. But the engineer provided for all these difficulties. 
 Openings were made in the foundation course, through 
 which powerful oak-joists were passed from side to side ; 
 these were bound together by equally strong timber in the 
 opposite direction, and when the small portion of the 
 base below had been knocked away, the tower virtually 
 rested on a powerful platform, fully capable of bearing 
 its weight. Next, strong stays, joined by stout cross- 
 pieces, were built up all around the light-house, surround- 
 ing it with a timber-cage. One hundred and forty-four 
 heavy cast-iron wheels were placed under the whole, to 
 run on eight iron rails, which had been laid on the brick- 
 work of the wharf and the jetty. As the colossus pro- 
 ceeded, these rails were taken up behind and laid down 
 again in front, while a number of workmen were placed 
 at the windlasses, which pulled the platform with its 
 enormous burden by means of iron chains. The whole 
 operation was so well prepared that it only required a 
 little over thirteen hours to move the immense structure 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 225 
 
 into its new position, and on the same evening the light 
 shone once more as it had done the night before, over 
 the harbor and the dark waters beyond. 
 
 The finest of all light-houses on the coasts of France is 
 strangely enough also the oldest of the whole family. 
 The Tower of Cordonan crowns a rock at the extreme 
 mouth of the Gironde, and shines upon the stormiest part 
 of the ill-famed Bay of Biscay. Far more turbulent than 
 the British Channel at the most dangerous point ; far 
 more treacherous even than the waters that struggle for- 
 ever against the basalt rocks of Brittany ; the Bay of 
 Biscay, in the line from Cordonan to Biarritz, is the most 
 pitiless of them all. Turning suddenly to the southward, 
 the sea seems to encounter an abyss below, into which 
 the waves rush furiously, only to escape from the terrible 
 pressure and to rise to a greater height than is seen any- 
 where else. Hence, from time immemorial, efforts have 
 been made to diminish the dangers which lurk under these 
 waters, and to furnish a safe entrance to the countless 
 vessels that seek the large river. A ledge of level rocks 
 fortunately offered from olden times a secure lodgement, 
 although it has always been covered and washed by the 
 tides. As early as the thirteenth century, merchants 
 who came from foreign parts in search of the warm wines 
 of Bordeaux, urged the importance of lighting up the un- 
 safe harbor entrance. It was long believed that the great 
 city of Cordova in Spain was especially interested in this 
 matter, as her wealthy traders carried to the Gironde the 
 
226 WONDBBS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 skins and the leather for which the city was renowned, 
 and that hence the locality itself obtained the name of 
 Cordonan. It is certain that the Black Prince ordered, 
 about 1364, a light-house to be erected there. It was, of 
 course, of the simplest kind a mere wooden structure of 
 46 feet height, ending in a platform, on which every night 
 a wood fire was kindled. A pious hermit was entrusted 
 with the care of the fire, and had in return the right to de- 
 mand two-pence sterling of every passing vessel. To en- 
 able him to serve his heavenly Master while performing 
 his earthly duty, a little chapel was built near-by in honor 
 of the Virgin Mary. Soon the hermit was able to hire 
 assistants ; a few fishermen joined the company, and ere 
 long a little village sprang up around the diminutive 
 light-house. In the course of time the little island was 
 literally swallowed up by the voracious ocean ; the rocks 
 on which the houses had stood disappeared one by one, 
 and with them the cottages ; the chapel also, and the very 
 ruins of the original light-house, have passed away ; and 
 now no trace of it all is left except a bare rock and a few 
 sand-bars, barely visible at low tide. 
 
 A new tower was ordered to be built in 1584, and the 
 king employed for that purpose a famous architect from 
 Paris, Louis de Foix, who subsequently built the great 
 Escurial for Philip II. The father died before the work 
 was completed, but his son finished it in 1610. The new 
 tower was, with the lantern, 70 feet high, and divided 
 into four stories, the second of which was proudly called 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 227 
 
 the king's apartment, and adorned with butts, costly 
 hangings, and elegant sculptures. Above it was a chapel 
 of fair dimensions. So far the original work of the two 
 Foix is still in existence, having braved the storms and 
 the waves for more than two centuries. The upper part, 
 however, was gradually changed, and at last entirely de- 
 stroyed, to make room for the present superb structure. 
 Already, under Louis XV., in 1727, an iron lantern was 
 substituted for the lantern in brickwork, which had long 
 answered well, but was now objected to, partly because 
 the stones had become calcined by the constant effect of 
 the fire, and partly because the solid masonry obstructed 
 largely the light. Then it was found that the insufficient 
 height did not allow the light to be seen at a greater dis- 
 tance, and the project was formed to raise the upper part 
 some sixty feet higher. This plan, which was not with- 
 out danger, was successfully carried out in 1789, by 
 Teulere, chief engineer at Bordeaux, 'and made his name 
 as famous as that of the first builder. 
 
 The present structure is perfectly plain on the outside, 
 presenting to the wind and the waves everywhere a 
 smooth surface on which they can find no corner, no open- 
 ing, no sharp edge even, on which to take hold. But 
 there is majesty in this very simplicity of the great mon- 
 ument, as it rises boldly from the bosom of the ocean. 
 It stands out grandly against the clear western horizon, 
 and yet it appears under a hundred different aspects. On 
 a bright sunny day it shines brilliantly in dazzling splen- 
 
228 WONDEKS OF THE DEE. 
 
 dor ; at other times it seems to float vaguely and dimly 
 amidst shapeless vapors. At night it breaks out all of a 
 sudden with its beautiful red light, and with its gigantic 
 eye seems to scan the wide waste of waters, to warn the 
 imprudent and to cheer the despairing. 
 
 This patriarch of light-houses has, besides, had the 
 honor of being used for trials of all the great inventions 
 that are made from time to time in the manner of light- 
 ing the beacons. Thus it was here that Tresnel estab- 
 lished one of the very first of his dioptric apparatus ; as 
 here also, ages ago, coal had first been substituted for 
 wood, and then lamps for a fire. In 1782 not less than 
 80 lamps, each accompanied by its reflector, nearly filled 
 the lantern. More recently still greater improvements 
 have been added, and even now the question is agitated 
 of introducing here also the electric light, which has al- 
 ready done such signal service in the harbor of Havre. 
 Nor must we overlook the remarkable fact that the tower 
 of Cordonan possesses the peculiar power of resistance 
 with which high light-houses are endowed, after the man- 
 ner of giant trees. It does not mind the masses of rain, 
 of hail, and of snow, which the fierce winds drive furi- 
 ously against its sides and the solid panes of its beauti- 
 ful lantern. It stands calm and undisturbed amid the 
 host of gigantic waves, which in times of tempest come 
 up in unbroken ranks and dash their heads against the 
 granite walls; they glide smoothly from the polished 
 sides, break into foam against the galleries, and, after 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 229 
 
 deluging the cupola on high, run madly off into the Bay, 
 but not without having exacted a tribute from the proud 
 granite. The tower bends imperceptibly to do homage 
 to the terrible power of its adversaries. The keepers 
 assert that during violent storms the vessels filled with 
 oil, which are kept in one of the topmost chambers, show 
 a change of level of more than an inch whicn implies, 
 that the tower must describe an arc of more than three 
 feet ! The same experience has been made in other light- 
 houses ; as soon as the structure rises to a height of 120 
 feet, these rockings become sufficiently strong to spill 
 liquids kept in shallow vessels, and to make the weights 
 of the clock-work strike against the inner sides of the 
 pipes to which they are confined. On a much larger 
 scale yet, the steeple of the Cathedral of Strasburg, 440 
 feet high, bends under the fury of storms, and rocks high 
 in the air its long ogives, its delicate columns, and the 
 gigantic cross that crowns the summit. 
 
 If the tower of Cordonan is the very oldest of the 
 French light-houses, and well known to mariners of every 
 nation by its bold position and the great benefits it has 
 bestowed upon countless vessels, little has been heard as 
 yet of the youngest of the family in far distant waters. 
 At the other end of the world, in the South Pacific 
 Ocean, there lies an island famous for its coral reefs, 
 which connect such a number of islets, rocks, and sand- 
 banks, that the navigation is rendered most intricate and 
 dangerous, and the land can be approached by two open- 
 
230 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 ings only. The French government, to protect its rap- 
 idly increasing commerce in those regions, ordered a 
 light-house to be erected on a sand-shoal far out in the 
 open sea, but sheltered against the violence of the sea by 
 coral reefs on three sides. This comparatively safe posi- 
 tion encouraged the builders to select cast-iron for the 
 structure. The tower, built in the city of Paris, consists 
 of a skeleton, covered with plates of iron and fastened 
 together with strong iron rivets, the whole building 
 being anchored as is were to the sand itself by cast-iron 
 screws. In spite of the light and graceful appearance 
 which is thus given to the building, and which attracted 
 the admiration of all beholders at the last Exposition at 
 Paris in a twin structure, the tower is so strong that the 
 rockings perceived in solid structures of stone and brick- 
 work are here hardly noticed. The height up to the 
 lantern amounts to 165 feet, and the admirable apparatus 
 for lighting sheds a fixed white light to a distance of 
 twenty-two miles. When the tower, sent out piecemeal 
 in 1865 to its far distant home, reached the island, and 
 was inaugurated, amid solemn ceremonies befitting the 
 occasion, the motley crowd of sailors, soldiers, and 
 French colonists nearly disappeared amid overwhelming 
 numbers of savage natives, whom the splendor of the 
 display had attracted from all directions. But as soon 
 as the beneficent light had begun to shine upon the dark 
 waters, the light of civilization also dawned upon the 
 hearts of the poor outcasts, and soon cannibalism ceased, 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 231 
 
 peace brought prosperity, and the blessings of our faith 
 were brought to these remote regions by zealous mis- 
 sionaries. 
 
 While light-houses shine on the coast of every civil- 
 ized country, marking every cliff and reef on the rock- 
 bound shores of Europe, and warning sailors against the 
 countless shallows and dangerous currents on our own 
 coast, smaller lights are placed at the entrance of har- 
 bors, and on places which by their nature render the 
 erection of larger structures impossible. This is done 
 by means of light-ships riding at anchor, before treach- 
 erous sand-banks, rapid currents, submarine whirlpools, 
 or reefs which the tide covers completely at certain hours 
 of the day. The invention is said to be due to a 
 remarkable barber of Lynn, in England, called Robert 
 Hamblin. His good looks brought him, with the hand 
 of a ship-owner's daughter, also the right of property in 
 a small vessel, in which he was in the habit of carrying 
 coal from place to place along the coast. Thus he 
 became personally familiar with the great danger of the 
 Goodwin Sands, which, by their shifting, changing na- 
 ture, have perhaps proved more fatal to life and prop- 
 erty than any other quicksands known in the great 
 ocean. Chance brought him in contact with a man of 
 great ingenuity but small means, David Avery, who sug- 
 gested to his new friend the expediency of putting a 
 light not on a tall tower, which was utterly beyond their 
 means, but on board an old hulk unfit for any other pur- 
 
WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 pose. The energy of one partner and the skill of the 
 other combined to erect a floating light at the Nore, 
 near the mouth of the Thames, and, to support the enter- 
 prise, they took it upon themselves to levy a small tax 
 on all passing-vessels. 
 
 The novelty created great displeasure at Trinity 
 House ; they disliked seeing outsiders originate a new 
 plan, the success of which could not be denied, and they 
 objected still more to the levying of duties by any one 
 but themselves. When therefore Avery, encouraged by 
 the approbation he had earned by all sailors, openly 
 announced his intention to place a similar light-ship 
 in the waters near the Scilly Islands, complaint was 
 made before the Lords of the Admiralty against the 
 intruder. Unable to obtain a hearing, the Corporation 
 appealed directly to the King, setting forth the lawless- 
 ness of men who ventured to tax vessels by their own 
 authority, and succeeded here so well, that Nore light- 
 ship was ordered to be removed. Avery, threatened 
 with the loss of all he had and all he had hoped still to 
 earn by his happy invention, thereupon entered into 
 negotiations with the indignant members of Trinity 
 House, and pleading the value of his idea and the heavy 
 outlay which he had incurred, induced them to agree to 
 a compromise. He surrendered all his rights to the Cor- 
 poration, and received in return a lease for sixty-one 
 years, in payment of an annual rent of a hundred pounds. 
 
 This was the origin of light-ships ; a new evidence of 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 233 
 
 the great ability which official authorities display in 
 every age to discourage useful inventions ; and, on the 
 other hand, of the unfailing success of men who combine 
 energy with perseverance. Trinity House made light of 
 Avery's suggestion ; it declared that Sir- John Clayton 
 had had the same idea fifty years before but for all that 
 Avery and Hamblin were the first to try it practically 
 and to succeed. 
 
 A light-ship is a painful sight to a sailor, as far as its 
 appearance is concerned. The hulk is, of course, like all 
 others ; but the short, thick masts have no yards nor sails, 
 and bear on the head large balls of wood. The very 
 essence of a vessel, its easy, graceful movements, its 
 readiness to yield to a slight pressure of the hand on the 
 rudder, or a gentle puff of wind on the sails, is missing. 
 The only question here is not motion, but immobility ; 
 how to remain stationary in spite of the elements this is 
 the first requisite in a light-ship. Amid the greatest 
 violence of the waves, during the highest spring tides, 
 and in the very centre of powerful currents, the stout 
 vessel must ride quietly at anchor, undisturbed by all 
 the turmoil and uproar around it. Like a galley-slave of 
 .old, it is fastened by iron chains and huge cables to the 
 spot, where henceforth it is to remain immovable. The 
 length of these chains is sometimes enormous ; the light- 
 ship at Seven Stones, riding in waters 270 feet deep, is 
 fastened to a chain a quarter of a mile long, and besides 
 secured by a number of stays and shackles. The cases 
 
234 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 of light-ships being torn from their moorings are very 
 rare ; when the elements become too strong for the 
 fastenings, and the light drifting about at random might 
 mislead ships in the neighborhood, a red signal is imme- 
 diately hoisted, a gun is fired at prescribed intervals, and 
 generally the vessel is brought back to its place in an 
 incredibly short time. But the calm courage and the 
 presence of mind required on such occasions speak highly 
 for the character of the crews of these vessels in general, 
 since none has ever been lost, nor has it been ascertained 
 that any calamity has ever occurred in consequence of 
 a light-ship being torn from its fastenings. To make 
 assurance doubly sure, however, these is generally a 
 vessel held in reserve at a short distance from the light- 
 ship, which can be telegraphed for, and may at any 
 moment be sent to occupy the vacant station for a time. 
 The light-ships of Trinity House are painted red, those 
 of Scotland black, while our own are generally adorned 
 with longitudinal stripes of different colors. On the 
 sides of the vessel the name is commonly painted in 
 gigantic letters, and a special flag is assigned them in all 
 maritime countries. 
 
 The floating lights of England and those of the Union 
 amount to the same number forty-seven. American 
 light-ships have only of late come up to the standard of 
 foreign vessels of the kind, and a considerable number 
 of them are so placed that in times of stormy weather 
 they can leave their post and seek refuge in calmer 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 235 
 
 waters. France has the smallest number, partly because 
 the coasts require less, and partly because certain posi- 
 tions, like those in the Bay of Biscay, are such as to have 
 so far defied all efforts to establish a light- ship in them 
 permanently. 
 
 The crew of larger light-ships consists in England of a 
 master, a mate, and nine men. Three of these attend to 
 the lights, while the other six, among whom there must 
 always be an able carpenter, keep the vessel clean and in 
 order. One-third of the crew is absent, being allowed to 
 live on shore during their time, since experience has 
 taught the authorities that an unbroken stay on board 
 Is- fatal to health and morality alike. The terrible mo- 
 notony of such a life, which gives no occupation to the 
 senses or to the mind, and the incessant, silent struggle 
 with the power of the elements, overwhelm the mind, in- 
 duce apathy and melancholy, and lead to crimes or to 
 suicides. Not without reason, therefore, did Dickens in- 
 clude the crews of light-ships among his curiosities of 
 mankind. Hence the master and the mate alternate by 
 months, while the crew spends two months on board and 
 one on shore. But the elements do not always permit 
 the regular change, and many a crew has been compelled 
 .to remain for months and months without any inter- 
 course with the land. In olden times, it is said, more 
 than once the men were thus doomed to death by 
 starvation. It is touching to hear how the poor fel- 
 lows, when on shore, dream incessantly of the sea, while 
 
236 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 on board ship their minds wander as faithfully back to 
 the shore. 
 
 The lanterns, in which the lamps are enclosed, are 
 placed around the top of the mast j during daytime they 
 are lowered in order to be cleaned and filled with oil ; 
 at night this crown of lights is raised again and shines 
 to a great distance. Every vessel is besides provided 
 with a gun and a gong, and thus they are enabled to be 
 of most valuable service. The famous light-ship near the 
 Scilly Islands has witnessed but two shipwrecks on the 
 reefs near which it has anchored ; in one case the crew 
 saved one man, in the other all the passengers except the 
 wife of a missionary. The Government does not encour- 
 age these humane efforts by rewards, as the sole duty of 
 the crew is to maintain the light, which the men cannot 
 be allowed to neglect for a moment, since while 
 one life may be saved, a hundred lives may be imper- 
 illed. The light-ship at Seven Stones occupies the most 
 exposed position of all such vessels ; nevertheless it has 
 never been torn from its moorings, although the waves 
 frequently wash over the deck for hours, and when the 
 sea strikes the sides, it "makes a noise like a four- 
 pounder," as the captain says. English crews are always 
 taken from the navy ; in our country the keeper is gene- 
 rally a civilian, and frequently hires his men. Hence 
 the discipline is not as strictly kept up with us as in 
 England, where a man was once on the point of losing 
 his life because he had secretly left his light-ship in order 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 237 
 
 to attend the funeral of his wife, who had died in Lon- 
 don. He was pardoned, however, and escaped with a 
 severe reprimand. 
 
 Where neither light-houses can be built nor light-ships 
 nioored in the sea, to serve as guiding stars to mariners, 
 there sailors look instinctively for landmarks to direct 
 them in their navigation. Now it is a steeple, and now 
 a windmill; in lonely countries a single tree or a promin- 
 ent rock, which serve thus as guides. Isolated mountains, 
 like the Peak of Teneriffe, volcanoes throwing off their 
 clouds of smoke, or distant glaciers shining afar off in the 
 bright light, are gigantic landmarks of this kind, wel- 
 comed by the sailor from distant seas. Among these re- 
 markable points some have acquired historic fame. The 
 most ancient of all are the Pillars of Hercules, of which 
 a French poet once sang that there was but one thing 
 wanting to their glory that they should have existed. 
 Hesychius, to be sure, mentions three or four pillars which 
 stood near the Straits of Gibraltar, and were reported to 
 have been placed there by Hercules; and the great Arab 
 Geographer, Edrisi, speaks of six, of which one was 
 placed as far east as Cadiz in Andalusia, while the western- 
 most stood amid the islands of the Dark Sea, the Cana- 
 ries, and bore the inscription : Ne plus t, Itra ! But Strabo 
 already expresses his doubts of their existence when 
 speaking of Cadiz ; and it is certain that besides the 
 allusions we have mentioned, there exists no evidence of 
 their existence. 
 
238 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Another famous monument, long known as a landmark, 
 is the beautiful pillar that stands in Alexandria, and is 
 known under the name of Pompey's Pillar. It is the 
 first object that becomes visible to those who approach 
 Egypt from the sea, and towers apparently high above 
 the obelisks and minarets of the eastern city. Its pre- 
 cise height was unknown until the French expedition 
 came to Egypt in 1798, when some of the savans at- 
 tached to Bonaparte's army undertook for the first time 
 to obtain its measure. They resorted, for this purpose, 
 to a very ingenious device. A huge kite was started, to 
 which a long rope had been fastened ; when the kite was 
 floating tranquilly in the air just above the top of the 
 column, it was suddenly pulled down by the rope, which 
 thus was stretched over the capital as upon the outside 
 of a pully. Then a larger rope was substituted for the 
 first, and fastened with stakes to the ground at the foot 
 of the pillar ; on this a child went up to the top and fas- 
 tened there, by means of a block and fall, a sufficiently 
 strong tackle by which the savans were hoisted up in a 
 chair. 
 
 The beautiful column consists of four huge blocks of 
 rose-colored granite, but the shaft alone is of undoubted 
 antiquity and in the purest style ; the capital and the 
 pedestal have evidently been added at a later period and 
 are not in proportion. Nevertheless the column gains 
 by its isolation, which makes it appear higher than it 
 really is, and by the exquisite beauty of the Corinthian 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 239 
 
 capital, more than it would have gained if the whole had 
 been completed like the shaft, in the Doric order. Ac- 
 cording to the testimony of many authors, the present 
 pillar did not always stand alone. Arabic authors speak 
 of it as being surrounded by an immense portico, whence 
 it was called in Arabic Amouad el Saouary, the Pillar 
 of Pillars, a name which was by ignorance corrupted 
 into the Pillar of Severus. Captain G. H. Smyth thinks, 
 on the contrary, that this is the column of which Aph- 
 thonius says, that " it bears the elements of all things," 
 an expression which might have referred to the great 
 copper disc of which Hipparchus makes mention. As 
 another Arabic author positively asserts that he saw, in 
 1200, a cupola on top, many have inferred that the col- 
 umn may have been intended for astronomical observa- 
 tions, and perhaps stood in the very centre of that mag- 
 nificent Serapeum, which is thought by some to have 
 held the magnificent library of Alexandria. 
 
 Others again have looked upon the column as from 
 the beginning intended only for a monument, and have 
 ascribed it to Cleopatra, who erected it in honor of 
 Pompey. Although it still bears the name of the trium- 
 vir, none of the old authors who have described Egypt 
 in their pages, Pliny, Diodorus of Sicily, or Strabo, men- 
 tions the pillar, which they would certainly have done if 
 it had existed in their days. Pocock thinks it was erected 
 in honor of Titus, or Hadrian, while Abul Feda attri- 
 butes it to the Emperor Severus. The difficulty seems 
 
240 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 only to have been increased by an inscription which was 
 discovered by Pocock. While examining the column care- 
 fully and measuring its dimensions, he had noticed in the 
 strong sunlight, between eleven o'clock and noon, traces 
 of a Greek inscription on the western side of the plinth 
 of the base. Numerous blank spaces and the vague out- 
 line of the letters prevented him from deciphering the 
 words, but at last several French and English savans 
 succeeded in unravelling the mystery. It was found to 
 read thus : 
 
 TO 
 DIOCLETIAN AUGUSTUS, 
 
 MOST ADORABLE EMPEROR, 
 TUTELARY DIVINITY OF EGYPT, 
 
 I, Po PREFECT OF EGYPT, 
 
 CONSECRATE THIS. 
 
 It is noticeable that the foundations of the column are 
 formed in the coarsest manner, stones of every kind and 
 of all dimensions being heaped up together. Efforts 
 have been made from time to time to dig under these 
 foundations in search of hidden treasures, and this has 
 been done so recklessly, that the pillar now inclines more 
 than seven inches to the west. Nor are the usual efforts 
 wanting to disfigure the beautiful monument for the bene- 
 fit of ruthless travellers, and towards its upper part, the 
 graceful shaft is defaced by the names of some English 
 tourists, written with pitch in letters of ten feet high. 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 
 
 Gradually the eminent services of such landmarks 
 were more and more appreciated, and it became custom- 
 ary to erect them on the coasts, where none had been 
 provided by Nature. The Etruscans are said to have 
 been the first to erect little pillars for the guidance of 
 mariners by day, as light-houses served by night, and in 
 our day the good old custom has been systematically re- 
 vived. Small pillars of stone or structures of timber 
 are erected on prominent positions and painted white, 
 where they appear against a dark background ; brown, 
 when they are seen against the sky. If it appears desir- 
 able to mark a submarine reef, on which vessels without 
 a good pilot might be stranded, beacons and buoys are 
 used, which have on the top a cash, or a ball, or even a 
 larger structure composed of iron bars. As these buoys, 
 however, are useful only in clear weather, when they can 
 be distinctly seen, and cease to be of service in fogs, they 
 have frequently been provided with large bells fastened 
 inside of a small open-work cage, and set in motion by 
 the agitated waves. New additions have quite recently 
 been made to these warning sentinels, which abound in 
 all navigable waters from the wide waste of the ocean up 
 to the head waters of great inland streams. In France, for 
 instance, all buoys which are to be left on the larboard in 
 coming from outside, are painted red with a white crown 
 on the summit, while those that are to be left on star- 
 board, are painted black. Others are adorned with 
 stripes, lozenges, or squares, in all possible colors ; and 
 
242 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 some actually possess mirrors, in which they reflect the 
 rays of the sun, or the light that conies from light-houses 
 at a little distance. On our own coast, where fogs are 
 very frequent and currents near shore very dangerous, 
 no expense has been spared, and almost all difficult places 
 which are frequented by vessels, are provided with large 
 bells, which are rung during fogs at fixed intervals, or 
 with enormous whistles, blown by an ingenious appara- 
 tus. Even here the Etruscans are said to have taken the 
 lead ages before our own invention, although in those 
 days the means were of the simplest. A rude conch- 
 shell, such as is still in use on West India plantations, 
 was blown from the coast by men stationed there during 
 dark weather ; and later, marine trumpets were invented 
 to take their place. 
 
 These were primitive ways certainly in comparison 
 with the ingenious contrivances by which in our day ves- 
 sels afar off are informed of all that is important for them 
 to know. At every port and harbor there are stations, 
 from which by means of flags or balls covered with rope- 
 nets, telegraphic news can be sent out to a distance of 
 many miles. The ship that comes home from its long 
 voyage, sees thus at a glance how much water there is in 
 the channel through which lies the entrance to the desired 
 haven. Every item of importance is thus signalled out 
 by a number of flags and their combinations, while at 
 night lights take their place. If we add to this, that in 
 France, as in fact in most maritime countries, the laws 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 243 
 
 prescribe that every vessel entering into port must carry 
 lights, we can readily understand how well the whole 
 coast of civilized countries is lighted up, and how brilliant 
 the scene is at the entrance of great harbors. This cus- 
 tom also was known to the ancient Greeks already, and 
 graphic descriptions are found in old authors of the bright 
 lights that shone from their beautiful vessels, the height 
 on the mast indicating the rank of the commander. The 
 common usage of our day is for every vessel, even out at 
 sea, to have a white light on the mizzenmast, a red one 
 on the larboard, and a green one on the starboard side. 
 Smaller vessels use a wick dipped in turpentine in a brass 
 vessel, which sheds a bright light, and burns all the better 
 when it is wetted by rain. Thus alone could the number 
 of dangerous meetings in dark nights be diminished, and 
 in the course of a few years thousands of human lives are 
 saved by this simple precaution. 
 
 It is sad to have to add, that light-houses and beacons 
 have not escaped the fate of all benevolent measures, but 
 have served from oldest times down to our own, in the 
 hands of wicked men, to ruin others and to drive them 
 into destruction. While in one place the welcome light 
 shone brightly, and seemed to say to despairing hearts, : 
 Come safely on, here hearts beat for you, eyes are watch- 
 ing and hands waiting to receive you ! a few miles further 
 on, other lights were kindled to draw the unwary upon 
 reefs and shallows, and to enrich the spoilers with the 
 wealth of the unfortunate shipwrecked. The annals of 
 
244 WONDBES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 antiquity are full of stories of such infamous wreckers, 
 but thinly disguised under the half fabulous guise of fair 
 sirens or one-eyed Cyclopes, of a beautiful Circe or cruel 
 Cushite priestesses on the shores of Campania. Do we 
 not all remember the stratagem of king Nauplius, who 
 ruled over the island of Euboea ? Irritated against the 
 Greeks, who had murdered his son Palamedes, he kindled 
 large fires on Mount Caphareus now Kaoo Daro to 
 attract the Greek fleet during a storm to its dangerous 
 rocks, and not a vessel escaped ! 
 
 During the whole of the Middle Ages the poor ship- 
 wrecked mariner was looked upon as a God-send by the 
 people on the coast, and his ship was plundered accord- 
 ing to law and custom. " Good are the wrecks that come 
 to the king's coast ; they are the king's." said the old 
 French law. Severe decrees, it is true, were issued 
 against those inhuman wretches who lighted up decoy- 
 fires for the purpose of leading mariners into dangerous 
 places and then profiting by their misfortune. " They 
 shall be put into the sea and plunged till they are half- 
 dead, then pulled out and stoned and knocked down like 
 dogs or wolves," say the same laws. But what was the 
 result ? As late as 1794 a formidable reef on the coast 
 of Brittany was looked upon as a gold-mine by the in- 
 habitants. " While the honest man trembles at the 
 sight of the danger," says a French author of that day, 
 " the pitiless dweller on that coast arms himself with 
 sticks and ropes, hides behind the rocks, and pounces 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 245 
 
 upon all he can seize without being caught by the police. 
 Formerly he killed the unfortunate man who stretched 
 out his arms towards him from the waters, imploring his 
 help ; now he has become more humane ; he leaves him 
 his life, but nothing else. If the police interferes, they 
 become furious ; their wives come to their assistance, and 
 united they fall upon the gendarmes ; shots are fired, 
 blood flows, and lives are lost. It is the height of in- 
 justice and of cruelty in their eyes for these men to 
 deprive them of what God has sent them in His good- 
 ness." 
 
 It is not less curious to see how the same cunning 
 devices have been used from time immemorial for the 
 purpose of misleading ships. On the coast of the Black 
 Sea, already in the days when the ancients yet called it 
 the Inhospitable Sea, barbarians had learnt to tie a lan- 
 tern between the horns of a cow, and then to lead her 
 along the edge of the water, knowing 'that the motion 
 thus given to the light closely resembled a light on 
 board ship ; and the same infamous custom prevailed in 
 the last century yet on the coast of France. Nor is 
 England exempt from such outrages. In 1825 a Greek 
 brig, the " Cimoni," was wrecked near Alderney, and so 
 completely plundered that the crew was literally left 
 without a single article of clothing by the civilization 
 of the nineteenth century! As late as 1866 the 
 " Morning Post " complained that, contrary to the gen- 
 eral impression, the barbarous custom of kindling decoy- 
 
246 WONDEKS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 fires on the coast was yet in existence in some parts of 
 Cornwall, and even in Durham. The unusually large 
 number of vessels which had at that period been lost 
 between Sunderland and Tynemouth, on rocks on which 
 lights had been seen burning, gave color to this asser- 
 tion. But worse is still behind. While England can 
 boast of her admirable life-boats, which have been the 
 means of preserving no less than eleven thousand four 
 hundred men from a watery grave, regular associations 
 of wreckers have been discovered to exist in some 
 counties. These men, instead of kindling decoy-lights 
 and plundering the crews of vessels which they have led 
 into destruction, go out to seek their spoil on the open 
 sea. As soon as a small vessel is signalled from the look- 
 outs they keep, they jump into their cutters and pull out 
 to the ship ; they board her, and without ceremony take 
 possession of her to carry her into the next English har- 
 bor. Here they swear that they have rescued her from 
 sinking, and demand the usual salvage. Instances of 
 similar atrocity, it is well known, have occurred on our 
 own coast in the neighborhood of the Florida Keys, and 
 it is to be apprehended that no nation is entirely free 
 from such disgraceful abuses. 
 
 Nor must we overlook the fact, that light-houses them- 
 selves, and the most perfect lights they can boast of, are 
 often the cause of great disasters. The latter happened 
 to be the case not long ago, when an emigrant ship, the 
 " Dunbar," went ashore on the Sidney Headlands, just 
 
LIGHT AT SEA. 247 
 
 underneath the superb dioptric light which burned on the 
 summit, but did not suffice to show the dangers immedi- 
 ately at its foot. On the other hand, it must be borne in 
 mind, that the lighted headlands and sands are the true 
 points of danger on every coast, and that if light-houses 
 sometimes are the direct cause of shipwreck, this arises 
 from the fact that the seamaii must first see the danger 
 before he can avoid it. This has led a member of Trinity 
 House to propose what he calls his Fair Way a series 
 of light-ships, of the simplest construction, all the way up 
 the Channel so that a ship making the westernmost of 
 the Lizard would be enabled to make her way up the mid 
 channel in perfect safety. For, after all, Man is a match 
 for Nature. Whilst the ocean fights against the mariner 
 and hurls him on the coast with relentless fury, Art, 
 from the land, replies by her cunning engines, and wres- 
 tles with the waves for the stake of human life. Thanks 
 be to God, the victory is not to the strongest, nor the 
 race to the swift ; and year by year the number of lives 
 lost on our coast is diminished by the noble efforts made 
 to prevent shipwreck, and Light has been found, at sea 
 as on land, the most efficient agent in securing life and 
 property alike. 
 
IX. 
 LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 
 
 " Hail, Holy Light ! Offspring of Heaven's fiwt-born." MILTON. 
 
 HHHE traveller who sails up that most delightful of all 
 -*- streams, the Rhine, sees on his right hand, when not 
 far from Bingen, a pretty toy-castle, which raises its per- 
 fect battlements high above rocks and mountains. On 
 one of its tiny turrets floats the black-and-white banner, 
 with the fierce Prussian eagle in the centre ; for the seat 
 and the occupation of the robber-knight of old have both 
 been assumed, though on a royal scale, by a prince of 
 the house of Hohenzollern. If it is the good fortune of 
 the traveller to ascend that part of the river in the sweet 
 twilight of an autumn evening, he will soon after sunset 
 see a strange reddish flame blaze up near one of the 
 smaller towers ; it hangs apparently free in the air, but 
 nearly over the bank of the river, and sheds its ruddy 
 glare up and down the dark waters. As he turns round 
 the tiny promontory, which serves as a gate to the long, 
 open stretch on which the fire shines, he discovers at 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 249 
 
 last that there is a quaint iron basket, fastened by huge 
 iron rods to the stones of the tower, and that inside the 
 grating large logs are smouldering slowly in the damp 
 night-air. As he looks down on the dark waters, with 
 their strange red glow on every wave and the wash on 
 the bank, he perceives here and there enormous blocks 
 of stone nearly rising to the surface, which threaten the 
 little skiffs with destruction, and are formidable even to 
 steamers ; and now he understands the friendly meaning 
 of the warning fire on high. 
 
 He has seen here, in the heart of Europe, in the middle 
 of the nineteenth century, the precise form and shape of 
 the most ancient light-house that is known to our annals. 
 
 So, at least, we judge from the records left us in many 
 a parchment and the designs cut on ancient medals. For 
 the light-houses of antiquity have, unfortunately, crum- 
 bled into dust and debris with the Roman Empire itself, 
 and all that we know of them we have gathered pain- 
 fully from the numerous but vague descriptions of their 
 contemporaries. As with many other things, so here 
 also we would willingly exchange the many words for a 
 few stones. The science and the ingenuity of a Rawlin- 
 son and a Layard would have read more in a handful of 
 carved rocks that once belonged to the foundation of an 
 ancient light-house than we can learn from countless 
 pages written on the subject. 
 
 The Greeks attributed the first structures of the kind, 
 almost as a matter of course, to their favorite Hercules, 
 
250 ' WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 whose greatest labor must have been to bear the burden 
 of all the wondrous things he was said to have accom- 
 plished. But even he can hardly have been thought the 
 builder of the numerous beautiful towers raised by the 
 Libyans and the Cushites, who dwelt in the provinces of 
 Lower Egypt, for the purpose of bearing great fires on 
 their summits. Guiding stars in the night, they served 
 in the day-time as points of observation ; and many are 
 the weighty facts of astronomy, on which all our knowl- 
 edge of the universe depends, that were here first ascer- 
 tained and recorded by the sages of antiquity. But as 
 knowledge was in those days not only power, as with us, 
 but worshipped as divine, these famous towers were tem- 
 ples also, and bore each the name of some great divinity, 
 while grateful sailors, rescued from danger and death, 
 enriched them with their votive offerings. Modern specu- 
 lation has added still another attraction to these mys- 
 terious buildings it looks upon them as depositories of 
 all the geographical knowledge possessed by the ancients, 
 where maps of the coast and charts of the navigation of 
 the Nile were preserved, first simply drawn upon the 
 walls of the building, and afterward transferred to 
 papyrus rolls. It was thus that those temples were 
 transformed into learned schools, and the priests changed 
 into teachers, who imparted the knowledge of hydro- 
 graphy, and taught the art of sailing vessels by the 
 guidance of the stars. These venerable towers were 
 therefore light-houses in more than one sense. Within, 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 251 
 
 the bright light of knowledge was diffused by zealous 
 priests and learned sages, to go forth to all the nations 
 that then navigated the one great sea of the civilized 
 world the Mediterranean. Without, a machine of iron 
 or bronze, consisting of three or four branches in the 
 shape of a dolphin, or some other marine animal, and 
 connected with each other by garlands of beautiful 
 foliage, contained large masses of fuel, which were faith- 
 fully watched over and renewed during the dark nights. 
 A long iron bar of great strength, moving on a hinge so 
 as to enable the priest to draw the colossal brazier to him, 
 supported the bronze basket. The seas then swarmed 
 with small vessels ; and as each one of these also bore 
 its fiery signal on the bow, to avoid disasters by night, 
 and to show by its size and its height on the vessel the 
 rank of the owner, fire greeted fire with delight, and the 
 whole scene must have been one of great beauty and 
 interest. 
 
 What these early light-houses were called is a matter 
 of great dispute among the savans of our day, but does 
 not, after all, matter much for practical purposes. Some, 
 it is said, were named Tor by the Libyans ; others, 
 which occupied the highest eminence within the walls of 
 a city, bore the name of Bosrah, a title which was after- 
 ward transferred to the citadel of Carthage. When they 
 were situated in the open country they were generally 
 built in the form of round towers, and then known as 
 Tith ; and the pretty legend was long current that the 
 
252 WONDERS or THE DEEP. 
 
 myth of the Cyclopes, killed by the shafts of the sun-god 
 Apoflo, meant nothing more than the manner in which 
 the lights that burned on the Cyclopean towers along 
 the south coast of Sicily were extinguished by the rays 
 of the rising sun. 
 
 The first regular light-house which is even honored 
 with the supposition that it had already a revolving 
 light, is one represented in the Iliac Table and ascribed 
 to the Ninth Olympiad. Its fame, however, dimmed by 
 the remoteness of its existence, was entirely eclipsed by 
 a later one, which has given its name in French and 
 other languages to the whole class of similar buildings, 
 even as Columbus lost the glory of leaving his name to 
 our Continent. This tower stood on the island of Pharos, 
 near Alexandria, in Egypt, and became subsequently the 
 model after which all structures of the kind were built 
 for many centuries. Such was the case, we know with 
 certainty, when poor old Claudius built the famous tower 
 at Ostia, which seems to have been the most beautiful 
 among the many that lighted up the coasts of Italy. 
 And yet Rome seems to have hung out her shining bea- 
 cons with the same solid splendor that characterized 
 all her noble structures at home and in the provinces ; 
 for we read in Pliny of the superb towers of Puteoli and 
 Ravenna, and we know all about the great light-house 
 at Messina, which gave its name to the straits between 
 Italy and Sicily, where the far-famed rocks of Scylla and 
 Charybdis were still the terror of sea-faring men. The 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOKIES. 253 
 
 magnificent temple, finally, which Tiberius in one of his 
 caprices built in the very midst of his twelve magnifi- 
 cent villas on Capri, was one of almost fairy-like beauty, 
 and with its grand blazing fire lighted up the sea for 
 miles and miles, so that the poor fishermen of the islands 
 began to dread its weird splendor, as if it dared to defy the 
 gods themselves, and believed more than ever in its magic 
 nature when an earthquake levelled it to the ground, 
 a few days only before the death of the terrible tyrant. 
 
 How sadly even then already the benevolent offorts of 
 wise and sagacious men were defeated by the wicked- 
 ness of others we learn from the description of another 
 celebrated light-house, which stood on a lofty promon- 
 tory where the river Chrysorrhoas threw itself into the 
 Thracian Bosphorus. " At the top of the hill," says Dio- 
 nysius the Byzantine, " around the base of which the river 
 flows, stands the tower Timaeus, of marvellous height, 
 from whence one overlooks a vast expanse of water, and 
 which has been built for the purpose of insuring the 
 safety of those who sail on it, by kindling large fires on 
 the summit for their guidance. This was all the more 
 necessary as there were no harbors on either side, and 
 anchors could find no bottom on which to fasten their 
 flukes. But the barbarians along the coast lit other fires 
 at the highest parts of the shore, in order to deceive the 
 sailors and to profit by their shipwreck. Now the tower 
 is in ruins, and no light shines any more from its 
 summit." 
 
254: WONDERS OF THE E>EEP. 
 
 We know but little of the precise form of these an- 
 cient light-houses. Herodian, it is true, asserts that they 
 were built in the same manner as the catafalques of the 
 emperors, but the latter were square constructions, 
 adorned on four sides with paintings and sculptures, 
 while the light-houses were, at least in many cases, built 
 in the shape of round towers. As such they appear on 
 the only two ancient coins or medals on which a Roman 
 port with a Pharos is represented. In both instances 
 the latter consists of a round structure of massive stone, 
 rising in four stories, diminishing toward the top, and 
 crowned on the summit with a blazing fire. 
 
 More is known of the great Pharos itself for so it 
 soon was called universally which Ptolemseus Philadel- 
 phus is said to have built on the tiny island of that 
 name which lies in the shallow waters near Alexandria ; 
 for it became so famous in times of antiquity by its colos- 
 sal size and magnificence of ornament that it was placed 
 among the Seven Wonders of the World. A few old 
 writers, it is true, are gallant enough to ascribe the beau- 
 tiful building to the good taste and wise foresight of the 
 dusky queen, Cleopatra, the Mary Stuart of antiquity ; 
 but modern authorities are little influenced by deference 
 to the sex, and stoutly deny her claims to such a distinc- 
 tion. A good Benedictine monk, Dom Bernard of Mont- 
 faucon, adds still another romance to the famous tower, 
 and recounts how the ingenious builder of the tower, 
 Sostrates, succeeded by a clever stratagem in handing 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 255 
 
 down his own name to posterity, while that of the great 
 king, for whom he acted as architect, became dim and 
 doubtful in succeeding ages. He cut, it is said, the 
 words " Sostrates of Cnidus, son of Dexiphanes ; to the 
 gods who save sea-faring men," deep into the hard stone 
 on the face of the temple, and then covered the inscrip- 
 tion with a slight coating of perishable material, on 
 which the name of King Ptolemaeus was written in gi- 
 gantic characters. The coating and the name fell off in 
 a short time under the influence of wind and weather, 
 and nothing was seen but the legend that gave all the 
 glory to Sostrates. 
 
 The story, if not true, is well devised, as the Italians 
 say, and has found ready believers in all ages, few men 
 being willing to admit that even among sovereigns such 
 modesty could be found as would induce them voluntarily 
 to relinquish the gratitude of posterity in favor of a mere 
 servant. Other savans of our day, and among them men 
 of the highest authority, like Champollion, have tried to 
 escape from the dilemma by giving the honor to another 
 Ptolemy ; but we are disposed to agree with Edrisi's 
 quaint but solemn conviction : " God alone knows the 
 truth of the fact." 
 
 The tower itself stood upon a little island, the site of 
 which is now covered with the buildings of the modern 
 city of Alexandria. In those days, however, the island 
 and the town were nearly a quarter of a mile apart, a 
 distance which Homer poetically enlarges to a day's 
 
256 WONDERS OP THE I)EEP. 
 
 journey from Egypt. At a later period the island was 
 connected with the main land by a long causeway and a 
 magnificent bridge. According to the minute but very 
 obscure descriptions which we find here and there scat- 
 tered in the works of ancient authors, the tower consisted, 
 like Babel itself, of several vaulted stories, and, if 
 we are to believe Pliny, the cost of erecting it amounted 
 to the almost fabulous sum of eight hundred talents. 
 
 The very fact of its existence, however, has been 
 doubted ; how much more uncertain, then, must be its 
 identity ? It may have continued as late as the twelfth 
 century, since Edrisi, the famous geographer of Nubia, 
 who united in his person the rare lore of the Arabs with 
 the gentle science of the Sicilian capital, has seen it. 
 " This Pharos," he says " has not its like in the world, as 
 far as its construction and its solidity are concerned ; for, 
 independently of the fact that it is built of an excellent 
 kind of stone, the courses of these blocks are joined to 
 each other by means of molten lead, and the joints are so 
 closely adherent to each other that the whole is impervi- 
 ous, although the waves of the sea beat on the northern 
 side incessantly against the building. The ascent to the 
 top is made by a staircase built in the interior, and as 
 wide as ordinary stairs are in other towers. But the 
 steps only go half way up the monument, and there the 
 building becomes, from the four sides, narrower than 
 below. In the interior, and under the staircase, there are 
 several rooms. From the gallery upward the light house 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 257 
 
 rises straight to the summit, becoming smaller and 
 smaller, until at the top a man can span it with his arms. 
 From this same gallery you ascend by means of a second 
 staircase, but of much smaller dimensions than the lower 
 one, and lighted by means of small windows in the outer 
 wall, so as to give light to the persons who ascend, and 
 to enable them to place their feet securely on the step." 
 
 The fire was kept burning continually, appearing by 
 night like a brilliant star, visible to the enormous dis- 
 tance of nearly a hundred miles, and rising by day in the 
 shape of a dark cloud to the heavens. This resemblance 
 to a star seems to have been as fatal in those days as it 
 still is in our time ; for Edrisi says that many sailors had 
 mistaken the fire for a well-known star, and directed their 
 course accordingly, in consequence of which they had 
 wrecked their vessels on the sand-spits near the shore. 
 To avoid similar errors in our day many light-houses are 
 provided with two lights, one above the other, so that 
 neither can be mistaken for a constellation. 
 
 The credulous Benedictine, whom we have quoted be- 
 fore, has his goodly store of romances in connection with 
 this great light-house also. He had learned from Arabs and 
 sailors of other nations that, according to popular tradi- 
 tion, Sostrates built the colossal tower, for greater safety, 
 on four immense crabs of glass ! Nor is the monk alone 
 in his statement, for greater authorities also repeat the 
 same story on the faith of an ancient manuscript, which 
 pretends to give an authentic account of the Seven Won- 
 
258 WONDERS OF THE BEEP. 
 
 ders, and was actually studied by the learned Voss. 
 Another marvellous story connected with the building, 
 and long faithfully believed in, is the report that Alex- 
 ander the Great caused a mirror to be placed on top of 
 the tower, which was constructed with such wonderful 
 art that it showed on its highly polished surface every 
 object at a distance of more than a hundred miles, and 
 thus enabled him to recognize the hostile fleets that came 
 to attack Egypt days before their actual arrival. The 
 mirror, it was added, was destroyed by a daring Greek, 
 who availed himself for the purpose of an opportune mo- 
 ment when the whole garrison was asleep. The only 
 difficulty in the way is the fact that the great Pharos had 
 not yet been built in the days of Alexander, and hence 
 the good Benedictine winds up his account of this tale 
 with the words : " It is rather in the genius of Orientals 
 to invent such unreasonably marvellous things." 
 
 There is but one other light-house mentioned in the 
 annals of antiquity of equal interest with the Alexan- 
 drian tower. Roman writers of indisputable authority 
 tell us that when the mad Emperor Caligula returned 
 from his fantastic expedition into England, which never 
 went further than to the shores of the Channel, and re- 
 sulted in the picking up of a few shells, and laying these 
 spoils of the ocean at their commander's feet, he ordered 
 a light-house to be erected in honor of the fictitious vic- 
 tory, to guide vessels by night into the harbor that had 
 been the scene of the glorious exploit. The place became 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 259 
 
 subsequently more and more famous, and in the days of 
 the great Napoleon was once more the scene of a vast 
 assemblage of troops ready to invade England and to 
 conquer the kingdom. 
 
 This famous tower of Boulogne shed its light for cen- 
 turies over the stormy waves of the Channel. Already 
 in 191 it was revered for its blessed influence ; and 
 Commodus caused a medal to be struck on which the 
 light-house and the departure of a Roman fleet appear, 
 in company with his victorious title of Britannicus. Its 
 prestige continued as long as Boulogne remained the 
 favorite place of embarkation for all the Roman troops 
 that went over from Gaul to Britain. It appears next in 
 the annals of Charlemagne, whose wise policy neglected 
 no means of enlightenment, from the material fire on light- 
 house and beacon to the spiritual light which was dif- 
 fused by the countless schools he endowed in his vast 
 empire. The place grew, and became in course of time 
 a fortified place, as important by its vast works of forti- 
 fication as by its natural position, which commands the 
 Channel in front and the two banks of the little river 
 Liane, which there falls into the Channel. The good 
 people of the neighborhood were so deeply impressed 
 with the grandeur of the wonderful tower, and especially 
 with its great height, that they stood in constant fear 
 lest the lightning from heaven should destroy it, as it 
 had done with the tower of Babel. But its final destruc- 
 tion came from the carelessness of the very men who 
 
260 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 were proudest of its magnificence. Although the sea 
 beat incessantly against the foundation, and at the time 
 of high tides even against the sides of the tower, no pro- 
 tection was ever raised toward the Channel ; a number 
 of springs, besides, worked underground, and undermined 
 the structure slowly but surely ; and, as if these agencies 
 had not been threatening enough, large quarries were 
 opened in the very hill on which the light-house rested, 
 till at last the fortress, the tower, and the very cliff on 
 which the whole had been erected, fell one fine day and 
 tumbled into the sea. The catastrophe was followed by 
 a most ludicrous lawsuit between the lord of the soil and 
 the town of Boulogne, which had heretofore paid him a 
 certain rental. As the soil had disappeared, the citizens 
 considered themselves relieved of all obligations toward 
 the owner ; but the latter carried the suit up to the Royal 
 Parliament, which in 1656 condemned the city either to 
 pay, as heretofore, two thousand herrings annually, or 
 to restore the place to its former condition. As such a 
 restoration was not exactly in their power, it seems that 
 they paid the herrings down to the days of the French 
 Revolution. The tower has in recent times been re- 
 placed by an elegant light-house with several lights ; 
 and though less famous than in days of old, it still ren- 
 ders eminent service to the numerous vessels that nightly 
 pass the populous town. 
 
 Nearly opposite to the work of Caligula there rose, 
 near Dover, a sister tower, built like the former by the 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 261 
 
 hands of Romans, and like it destined to perish inglori- 
 ously by neglect and false economy. Its very place is 
 uncertain, as some antiquarians recognize it in the large, 
 heavy tower which rises almost from the centre of the 
 grim castle, while others discover its ruins in the great 
 mass of debris, of mortar and stones, which lies nearer 
 to the town, and is often called the Devil's Drop by the 
 common people. From both points the light could, no 
 doubt, have been seen far away, as the cliff is high 
 enough "to look fearfully in the confined deep," and 
 even from the lower terraces the coast of France may 
 on a clear day be seen distinctly. 
 
 Not one of the three ancient ligh-houses which we 
 have mentioned can, however, for a moment be compared 
 in magnitude and historic interest with the famous, 
 though more than half fabulous, Colossus of Rhodes. 
 Two thousand years ago Thucydides already complained 
 that men received what others said about past events, 
 even of their own country, with too great indifference, 
 and in their indolence preferred to adopt what was thus 
 presented without examination rather than to take the 
 trouble of searching for truth. This experience has 
 been amply proved by the long-credited reports about 
 the Colossus. 
 
 Tradition has it, as is well known, that at the entrance 
 to the port of Rhodes there was standing a gigantic 
 statue of Apollo, with outstretched legs, one foot resting 
 on a lower mole, and the other on a higher ; holding a 
 
262 WONDEBS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 bow in one hand, and in the other, raised high above his 
 head, an immense basin, in which a large fire was con- 
 stantly maintained. The size of the statue, report 
 added, was so colossal that the largest vessels could 
 easily pass between the legs. 
 
 The facts unfortunately are, that the Colossus of 
 Rhodes never served as a light-house, and that vessels 
 never passed beneath it into the harbor. 
 
 The whole story rests upon the highly romantic ac- 
 count found in a very indifferent compiler of the seven- 
 teenth century, who for the first time mentions the Colos- 
 sus as serving as a light-house, but carefully abstains 
 from giving his authority for the statement. Another 
 writer, of even less judgment, a translator of Philostrates, 
 added subsequently the story of the vessels passing be- 
 tween the outstretched legs of the statue. This author, 
 also, is discreetly silent as to the source from which he 
 has derived his information. 
 
 What, then, is the truth about the Colossus ? There 
 is no lack of reliable statements concerning the statue. 
 Strabo quotes a fragment of an epigram in Iambic verses, 
 in which the name of the architect, Chares, from Lindos, 
 a town on the island of Rhodes, and the dimensions of 
 his great work, seventy yards height, are both men- 
 tioned. He adds that the Colossus was, in his day, 
 lying on the ground, having been overthrown by a fear- 
 ful earthquake, which destroyed a large portion of the 
 city. "The Rhodians," he says, "dared not raise it 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 263 
 
 again, warned by an oracle," and that is literally all the 
 illustrious geographer seems to have learned about the 
 Colossus. Pliny, however, gives us additional and in- 
 teresting details. " The statue," he says, " fell fifty-six 
 years after its erection ; but although thrown down it is 
 still a marvel. Few men are able with their arms to span 
 its thumb ; its fingers are larger than most of our stat- 
 ues. Its disjointed limbs form vast caverns, and in the 
 inside are yet to be seen enormous masses of stone, by 
 means of which it had been balanced. They say it cost 
 three hundred talents a sum which the Rhodians oV 
 tained from the sale of instruments of war, left by Deme- 
 trius before their city when he abandoned the siege in 
 despair." A clever engineer of the third century before 
 Christ, Philo of Byzantium, is the third author who 
 gives, in his interesting work on the Seven Wonders of 
 the World if it really is his a still more detailed de- 
 scription of the statue ; but, as has been seen, not one 
 of these writers speaks either of a light-house, or of the 
 marvellous fact that ships could have sailed beneath the 
 Colossus. 
 
 For nine hundred years the gigantic limbs remained 
 lying near the entrance of the harbor, the pride of the 
 inhabitants and the wonder of all travellers. In 672, 
 however, the Arabs came, in the rapture of their first 
 successes, to Rhodes also ; and their general, one of Oth- 
 man's lieutenants, caused the pieces to be cut up, and 
 sold the metal to a Jew, who is said to have loaded nine 
 
264 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 hundred camels with the precious burden. Thus every 
 trace was lost of the far-famed statue, and even the name 
 of the artist was long lost, although " he had made a 
 god like unto a god, and given a second sun to the 
 world." 
 
 Far different from these works of antiquity are, of 
 course, the light-houses of our day, in which modern 
 science has achieved some of its most brilliant triumphs. 
 England stands naturally foremost in the number of such 
 buildings and their mechanical perfection ; for they are 
 of the utmost importance to her vast shipping interests, 
 upon which her great prosperity is mainly resting. It is 
 in England also that, first of all European countries, the 
 building and manner of lighting these towers were made 
 a matter of grave state interest. The care for light- 
 houses is there intrusted to a separate board in each of 
 the three great kingdoms, among which, however, the 
 Corporation of Trinity House, which controls those on 
 the English coast, is naturally by far the most important. 
 Unfortunately little is known as to the early history of 
 this remarkable body, since a disastrous fire in 1714 de- 
 stroyed the larger part of its archives. We only know 
 that it owed its existence to a charter granted by Henry 
 VHL, in which it is called the Brotherhood of the Trin- 
 ity House of Deptford, of Strand, and St. Clement. The 
 document begins with the quaint words : " According 
 to the sincere and perfect love and like devotion which 
 we bear the most glorious and invisible Holy Trinity, 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOEIES. 265 
 
 and also Saint Clement the Confessor, his Majesty grants 
 and gives license for the establishment of a corporation 
 or perpetual brotherhood, to certain subjects of his and 
 to their associates, men and women." 
 
 Originally the sole duty of these members, men and 
 women, seems to have been confined to the saying of 
 prayers for the souls of drowned seamen, and for the 
 lives of those who go down the great deep. Soon, how- 
 ever, more practical services were rendered by the Cor- 
 poration, as appears from numerous successive charters 
 granted by later sovereigns. The members were gradu- 
 ally intrusted with a general superintendence over all 
 mercantile vessels, and, to a certain extent, even over the 
 royal fleet. 
 
 The people had, however, anticipated their action in 
 erecting light-houses, and long before the Corporation 
 took the matter in hand beacons had been lighted all 
 along the coast, and were growing in number as if by 
 magic. Not that the English of those days were so 
 wondrously solicitous for the lives of their seafaring 
 brethren, or so peculiarly zealous in the love of their 
 neighbors. The erection of a light-house entitled them, 
 by a provision of ancient laws, to the right of levying a 
 heavy duty from all vessels who passed by the danger- 
 ous place and profited by the light they had provided. 
 Fortunately in this case the interest of the few became 
 the advantage of the many, and although after James I. 
 
 tjie crown claimed the exclusive right of erecting light- 
 12 
 
266 WONDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 houses and collecting taxes for their support, the num- 
 ber has never been seriously diminished. For the sove- 
 reigns found it as profitable as it was wise to grant or 
 sell the monopoly to private individuals, and soon there 
 was not a bare rock or hidden reef which was not laid 
 hold of by some speculator in order to build on it a light- 
 house and collect the dues. Thus Lord Grenville could 
 find it necessary to make this entry in his note-book : 
 " To watch the moment when the king is in good-humor, 
 to ask him for a light-house ! " 
 
 Unfortunately the system worked badly. Some of the 
 fires were insufficient, others were neglected for weeks 
 and months, and in all cases the duties levied on vessels 
 were out of all proportion to the expenses actually incur- 
 red. This led finally, under William IV., to measures 
 which resulted in a grant to Trinity House of all the royal 
 light-houses, and of the right to purchase those that be- 
 longed to private individuals. Fortunately the Corpora- 
 tion was rich and could afford the heavy outlay required, 
 especially as they continued to raise heavy tolls from all 
 vessels. 
 
 The Corporation is nowadays divided into two classes, 
 of which one, the Younger Brethren, numbering 361, are 
 virtually excluded irom all practical participation in the 
 business of the society, while the Elder Brethren, 31 in 
 number, with the exception of eleven honorary members, 
 are the true managers of the whole department. These 
 twenty working men are chosen from the great body of 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOKIES. 267 
 
 the Younger Brethren ; they must have served at least 
 four years as captains in command of large vessels, and 
 pay a small entrance-fee upon their admission. To them 
 is intrusted the whole care of keeping the coasts well 
 provided with light-houses ; besides which they examine 
 and license pilots, watch over the navigation of the 
 Thames, establish and maintain all sea-marks, admit the 
 pupils of Christ Hospital who enter the navy, collect the 
 revenues of the Corporation, and provide for the pen- 
 sioners in their numerous asylums. The corresponding 
 boards in Scotland and Ireland are simpler in their nature, 
 and more or less under the control of Trinity House. 
 England has one light-house for every fourteen sea miles, 
 Scotland one for every thirty-nine, and Ireland one for 
 every thirty-four. 
 
 France, formerly far behind Great Britain in the num- 
 ber and the character of her light-houses, has of late made 
 such rapid progress in this direction that she has now one 
 for every twelve miles, and these are nearly all of supe- 
 rior construction. The number of light-houses, which in 
 1819 amounted only to ten, has since risen to two hun- 
 dred and twenty-four, and, like our own government, the 
 French government also makes no charge for light-houses, 
 but considers the duty of preventing misfortunes on the 
 coast not as a branch of public revenue, but as a work of 
 humanity. The whole department is under the direction 
 of the three Ministers of Agriculture, Commerce, and 
 Public Works, and represented by a board consisting of 
 
268 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 navy officers, engineers, members of the Institute, and 
 other persons renowned in the sciences which bear upon 
 navigation. Of our own Light-house Board little need 
 be said here, as, like the Coast Survey, it is one of the 
 most distinguished branches of our administration, and 
 looked upon abroad as one of the best models, which has 
 been copied, as far as the difference in the form of govern- 
 ment would admit, in several foreign countries. 
 
 The light-houses of our day are as varied in their form 
 and nature as those of antiquity were simple and uni- 
 form. Each one of them has, as it were, its own language, 
 in which it addresses itself to the anxious sailor. One 
 bids him welcome to a safe harbor ; another warns him 
 against a hidden reef. This tall tower sends its light to 
 a distance of twenty-seven miles (60 to the degree) ; that 
 small one can only be seen within a circle of five miles. 
 One has a fixed light, and shines forever like a beautiful 
 star ; another, more mysterious, suddenly blazes forth 
 from utter darkness, casts its welcome light far into the 
 distance, and vanishes as unexpectedly, only, however, 
 to reappear a few moments afterward, brighter than ever, 
 on the horizon. Nor have all of them the same color. 
 Some are red, others white, green, or blue. 
 
 In spite of this great variety among them all, there is 
 nevertheless a general principle which governs their dis- 
 tribution. Almost all more enlightened governments 
 have found it necessary to surround the coast with a 
 triple circle of lights. The first of these consists of light- 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 269 
 
 houses of the largest class, and simply serves to define 
 the outline of the main land, so that the sailor arriving 
 from the high seas may at once be made aware of the 
 vicinity of land, and thus be enabled to avoid the dangers 
 which thicken as he comes nearer in shore. Hence all 
 the great capes which stretch out more or less far into 
 the ocean, the low islands, reefs or sunken rocks* which 
 threaten vessels with destruction, are chosen, and on these 
 promontories or rocks light-houses are erected at such 
 easy distances from each other that no vessel can well 
 approach the land, unless it be in a thick fog, without 
 seeing one or the other. When the first circle is passed 
 the sailor encounters a second and a third range of lights, 
 of inferior size and shorter range, which warn him against 
 smaller reefs or sand-bars, or point out to him the often 
 very narrow entrance to the harbor into which he wishes 
 to enter. Thus the Thames is literally brilliantly lighted 
 up from Gravesend to the London docks, and the mouth 
 of the Gironde presents not less than thirteen light-houses 
 of the three classes. Finally, when the vessel has ac- 
 tually entered into the narrow channel, a fourth class of 
 still smaller beacon-lights greets it and guides it safely 
 to its precise landing-place in the " desired haven." 
 
 Difficulties, however, seemed to multiply in proportion 
 to the increased number of lights, for it became more 
 and more troublesome to distinguish one from the other ; 
 and yet a slight mistake of this kind might lead, and 
 often did lead, to total destruction. Formerly this dan- 
 
270 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 ger was guarded against by having three kinds of light 
 fixed lights burning steadily, and revolving lights with 
 intervals of a minute or half a minute. But this differ- 
 ence soon ceased to be of practical value, partly because 
 the number of light-houses increased too rapidly, and 
 partly because merchantmen were too careless in notic- 
 ing the small distinction in point of time. It was in this 
 embarrassment that Fresnel came to the rescue, and 
 made his name famous by the great improvements he in- 
 troduced. Now there are seven different kinds of light 
 in use : permanent lights ; lights with a blaze, which 
 show alternatively five blazes and five eclipses, or more, 
 in a minute ; varied lights, which show a fixed light 
 succeeded by a white or red blaze at intervals varying 
 from one and two to three or four minutes ; revolving 
 lights, intermittent, alternating, and scintillating lights. 
 Revolving lights increase gradually until they show to 
 their full power, and then diminish into utter darkness, 
 after which they grow once more in brilliancy, and thus 
 they continue at regular intervals. In intermittent 
 lights, on the other hand, the light appears all of a sud- 
 den out of perfect darkness, and disappears as suddenly 
 again. The alternating light appears first white and 
 then red, without any pause between the changes ; while 
 scintillating light, the most recent invention, and due to 
 French engineers, appears and disappears by seconds, and 
 thus produces upon the eye the peculiar effects from 
 which it derives its name. 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 271 
 
 There is, of course, no small skill and judgment re- 
 quired, first to determine the most important, prominent 
 points which have to be lighted up in order to prevent 
 vessels from incurring great risks ; and when that is de- 
 cided, to vary their lights in such a manner as to avoid 
 one being taken for the other. The number of light- 
 houses along a coast is necessarily limited, not by any 
 regard to expense, as the saving of human lives cannot 
 be estimated in money, but by the difficulties which would 
 arise if they were so crowded as to present to the eye, 
 at a distance, nothing but one confused line of beacon- 
 lights. By reducing the number to the lowest possible 
 demand, and by skilfully varying the appearance of the 
 light in each, distinction is made both easy and sure ; 
 and in accomplishing this more ingenuity and labor is 
 displayed than is commonly suspected. 
 
 Thus when the light-house has been properly placed, 
 the great question arises, how it is to tie lighted. The 
 ancients, we have seen, had very simple means a mass 
 of burning wood on top of a large tower. Their light- 
 houses were magnificent structures beautiful monuments 
 of their skill and their energy ; but they accomplished 
 little. The Middle Ages made hardly any progress in 
 the whole question of light, and it was reserved to com- 
 paratively recent days to replace in our houses sorry tal- 
 low-candles by bright and cheap gas, and the costly 
 masses of wood or coal on the open summit of light- 
 houses by artificial lights covered in with skilfully con- 
 
272 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 structed glass lanterns. How imperfect the methods 
 even of the last century still were may be judged of by 
 the fact that the light-house of Cordouan, at the mouth 
 of the Gironde, and the finest in France, diffused with 
 its eighty lamps, each burning before a reflector of highly 
 polished metal, so feeble a light that the mariners in 1782 
 unanimously petitioned for a return to the barbarous 
 system of former centuries. The trouble was, that the 
 lamps were half the time in the condition of those of the 
 Foolish Virgins, and even when well provided with oil 
 their flat wicks gave but little light, but, on the other 
 hand, an immense quantity of smoke. It was then that 
 Dr. Argand, a distinguished physician, who had given 
 much time and labor to the question of light, invented 
 the burner still known by his name. A cylindrical wiok, 
 inclosed in a chimney of like shape, with a double cur- 
 rent of air, gave all of a sudden a light such as had never 
 been seen before. The original system was soon per- 
 fected in many details, and Carcel, especially, added the 
 method of overfeeding the lamps with oil, by which the 
 combustion was hastened, and the vitality of the wick 
 very largely extended. Next came the turn of the re- 
 flectors, which received not only a better shape, but also 
 a higher polish, and increased their efficacy a hundred- 
 fold, when a method was invented by which they could 
 be kept constantly moving around the lamp, and thus 
 project the rays in every direction. This beautiful in- 
 vention, first employed in the obscure port of Marstrand, 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOKIES. 273 
 
 in Sweden, was simultaneously published in France by 
 Teulere, and at once very generally applied to all light- 
 houses. The larger number of European maritime pow- 
 ers adopted it eagerly, and until within a few years it 
 was the only one used on the coasts of Great Britain. 
 In France this so-called " catoptric " apparatus is less 
 generally employed, and almost entirely confined to nar- 
 row passes or specific purposes. 
 
 Science, however, is as apt and as quick to find out 
 defects in new methods as she is slow to admit them at 
 their first appearance. It was soon found that these 
 beautiful mirrors not only were easily and speedily tarn- 
 ished by the corrosive influence of the sea air, but that 
 they also absorbed and thus exhausted a large portion 
 of the light which they ought to have reflected. A 
 Commission was appointed by the French government 
 for the special purpose of suggesting a remedy for these 
 defects, and fortunately the right man presented himself 
 at once, who possessed all the requisite knowledge and 
 genius. This was Augustin Fresnel, who had distin- 
 guished himself from childhood up by his successful 
 studies of the great question of light, and had earned 
 the admiration of the great Arago, whom he aided as 
 his secretary. He discovered the lenses now employed 
 in the so : called dioptric apparatus, and found in an opti- 
 cian of high merit, who bore the significant name of 
 Soleil (Sun), an efficient assistant for all the practical 
 
 purposes of his invention. The man of the great mind 
 12* 
 
274: WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 and the man of the skilful hand put. their united powers 
 to the task, and the result was one of the most beautiful 
 contrivances ever achieved. It is true that a name of 
 great renown, that of Brewster, is mentioned in serious 
 competition with that of Fresnel, the English claiming 
 both the priority of invention and the superiority of con- 
 struction for their own countryman ; but, fortunately, the 
 merits of both these illustrious men are great enough to 
 be appreciated by all the world, even independently of the 
 question connected with light-house lenses. Moreover, 
 the improvements patented by Thomas Stevenson, the 
 great engineer and builder of light-houses, a few years 
 ago, and generally adopted by the British authorities, 
 under the name of the holophotal apparatus, surpass all 
 that Fresnel and Brewster have ever accomplished, so 
 far as to threaten their names with comparative obli- 
 vion. 
 
 The lenses can, however, be truly efficient only when 
 the light which they reflect is strong and steady. It 
 has been well said that as the light which shines in front 
 of the building is the soul of the light-house, so the lamp 
 is the soul of the apparatus. Men like Arago and Fres- 
 nel did not overlook its importance, and introduced here 
 also great improvements. The different light-houses are, 
 however, provided with different lamps also. One may 
 have a Carcel lamp, in which the wick is regularly pro- 
 vided with oil by means of a clock-work in the lower 
 part; another one may be content with a moderator 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOEIES. 275 
 
 lamp, where a heavy weight, moving a wheel, produces 
 the same effect ; still others, of more moderate preten- 
 sions, preserve to this day the old lamp with an oil vessel 
 on the same level as the wick. The famous savant, 
 Rumford, who has given his name to so many inventions, 
 from a soup to a chimney, first suggested the idea of 
 increasing the illuminating power of common lamps by 
 providing the burner with several concentric wicks ; but 
 he was unable to carry out his plan. Arago and Fresnel 
 fell heirs to his idea, and by dint of hard labor succeeded 
 at last in carrying it out ; it is to them we owe the pres- 
 ent improved lamp, which gives out an intensely strong 
 white light, and yet continues to work for more than 
 twelve hours without requiring any attention. The 
 great advantage of this feature can only be fully appre- 
 ciated when we bear in mind that these lamps have to 
 remain burning during the whole time of the longest 
 winter nights. Since this system was inaugurated, light- 
 houses of the third class have lamps with two concentric 
 wicks'; those of the second class have three, and the 
 largest even four such wicks. It would be an error to 
 imagine that the flame itself is larger than ordinarily, 
 although the larger apparatus produces a light equal to 
 that of twenty-three Carcel lamps ; the flame is only 
 moderate, but of perfect whiteness and dazzling inten- 
 sity. 
 
 The material used for illuminating purposes is oil of 
 various kinds in England and our own country ; in 
 
276 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 France rape-seed oil is almost exclusively used, though 
 petroleum is beginning to supersede it in many districts. 
 In one instance only an electric light has been tried ; it 
 is far superior to all others in brilliancy ; but the ex- 
 pense is serious, and the danger connected with the 
 process of production so great as to make it as yet un- 
 profitable and inexpedient. There is no doubt, however, 
 that it will ere long be made both cheaper and safer, as 
 the electric light used on board large vessels, and first 
 introduced by Prince Napoleon, has already proved 
 itself of the very greatest usefulness. 
 
 If the light is the soul of the light-house, and as such 
 all-important, it has, after all, to be clothed in a body, 
 and the house requires for its part hardly less considera- 
 tion. It has been shown that in ancient times the form 
 was apt to be more or less fantastic ; in our day it mat- 
 ters little whether the tower rises on a lofty promontory 
 overlooking land and sea, or on an isolated rock sur- 
 rounded by turbulent waters ; its construction is subject 
 to certain laws and rules which the engineer dare not 
 neglect. He must provide for them a suitable form, great 
 strength and stability, and perfection in all details. 
 
 The height of light-houses varies, of course, according 
 to the place which they occupy ; as a rule it has to be 
 very great in order to enable mariners to perceive the 
 friendly light from afar. Hence they are not unfre- 
 quently placed on top of a mountain or the summit of a 
 cliff, and then the tower need only be sufficiently high to 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOEIES. 277 
 
 rise with its lantern above trees and buildings, and to 
 be secure from wanton injury and the contact with small 
 stones raised by the tempest. If, on the other hand, the 
 light-house must necessarily be on the coast, or even out 
 in the open sea on rocks nearly level with the surface, 
 then towers are required of at least 120 feet, and there 
 are structures of this kind on the English and French 
 coasts which exceed even 200 feet. 
 
 The towers are now almost always cylindrical, and of 
 small diameter. On land they are surrounded by build- 
 ings intended for the keeper and his family, the visiting 
 engineer, and at times even for farming purposes. Those 
 out at sea present, of course, a very different appearance. 
 A strange ladder affords the only means of access. It 
 consists of strong bars of copper let into the rock of 
 which it is built, and carefully cemented. As we as- 
 cend we come to folding-doors of bronze, heavy enough 
 to require the full strength of a man to move them, and 
 hermetically closed so as to protect the entrance against 
 the heaviest swell. A long narrow passage, looking as 
 if it were cut in the live rock, receives us as we enter the 
 lower story of the light-house. Here are large quantities 
 of wood, ropes, and timber stowed away. A story higher 
 we see the enormous tanks of zinc in which the oil is 
 kept which feeds the lamp above, and the water on which 
 the life of the inmates depends. In the third story is the 
 kitchen and a store-room, on a level with the first gallery 
 which runs around the tower. We pass the doors of 
 
278 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 three small rooms in which the keepers live, and continue 
 to ascend till we come to the seventh story, where we are 
 invited to rest for a moment in a snug little parlor of oc- 
 tagonal shape. This is the room reserved for the engineer, 
 who comes from time to time to inspect the light-house. 
 It is comfortably furnished, and displays in the arrange- 
 ment of the furniture, which includes a large bedstead, all 
 the ingenuity familiar to men on board large vessels. 
 A few more steps on the spiral staircase lead us to the 
 more important parts of the tower. The eighth story 
 contains vessels for oil, spare lenses, reserve lamps, and a 
 few delicate instruments for meteorological observations. 
 Here the staircase ends, and we see a low vaulted ceiling 
 supported on a slight pillar. A slender ladder of cast- 
 iron leads us into the room in which every night one of 
 the keepers is on watch. It is strangely ornamented 
 with slabs of marble of various colors, which cover the 
 ceiling, the walls, and even the floor. We are told, in 
 explanation of this apparent extravagance, that it is the 
 result of necessity ; for the illuminating apparatus hangs 
 down from above into this room through a circular open- 
 ing in the ceiling, and makes it necessary that the room 
 should be kept in a state of scrupulous tidiness. This it 
 has been found can only be permanently obtained by lin- 
 ing it throughout with highly polished surfaces. We as- 
 cend one more flight of steps, the tenth and last, and find 
 ourselves in the cupola itself, in the centre of which is 
 suspended one of those marvellous lamps which make the 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STOKIES. 279 
 
 boast and the glory of modern science. The room is 
 inclosed in a huge lantern of glass, and covered with a 
 dome of copper, surmounted by a lightning-rod. The 
 panes are extremely thick, and yet they are not unfre- 
 quently too weak to resist the wings of sea-fowl, whom 
 the brilliancy of the light attracts. Even land -birds, 
 traversing the sea by night, are occasionally overtaken 
 by hard weather and dashed against the rigging of ships 
 at sea or the sides of light-houses, and in the morning 
 found dead on deck or among the rocks. It has been 
 conjectured that, disliking the uproar in which they are 
 enveloped by the storm, they make voluntarily toward 
 the strong beacon-light in search of an asylum ; but it is 
 quite as probable that amidst the fury of the winds they 
 lose the power of directing their own flight, and are 
 dashed accidentally against the lofty tower. It was by 
 flocks of such distracted birds that once all the nine 
 windows of a massive lantern were broken in the same 
 night ; and in another instance a wild-goose, after having 
 broken a pane, flew in between the costly mirrors and 
 fell into the flame itself, finding there a miserable death. 
 How numerous these strange visitors are may be seen 
 from the fact that one thousand sea-fowl were once taken 
 in one night by the crew of a floating light-house, and 
 converted by them, into a goodly number of gigantic pies. 
 Fortunately not all sea-birds are equally dangerous, and 
 in one instance at least they have actually been taught 
 to render mankind an eminent service. There is a superb 
 
280 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 light-house on the South Stack, a huge rock connected 
 with Holyhead by a suspension bridge, and abounding 
 with sea-fowl, who build their nests in countless caves. 
 These gulls settle in flocks on the walls of the light-house, 
 and warn by their piercing cries the mariners who might 
 approach within a dangerous distance. Formerly the 
 tower was provided for this purpose with a gun and a 
 large bell, but the natural guardians were found to be so 
 much more efficient that the cannon was removed to some 
 distance, in order not to disturb and frighten the birds. 
 On the rock itself the young gulls are seen playing with 
 the white rabbits, who seem to look upon them as merry 
 companions, and both are most pleasant society for the 
 lonely keepers, shut up as they are in their tower, against 
 which the winds and the waves are continually trying 
 their strength. 
 
 For in speaking of the soul and the body of these 
 light-houses we must not forget the poor fellows who 
 are shut up within, and who often have not only their 
 little joys and their long sufferings, but even their start- 
 ling adventures, which have more than once furnished 
 the material for soul-stirring recitals. 
 
 It is the custom of almost all countries possessed of a 
 navy and large mercantile fleets to take the keepers 
 from the vast number of disabled seamen. There are 
 generally three of them in larger light-houses, and as a 
 matter of course never less than two, even in the small- 
 est. Their duty is simple, but exceedingly rigorous. It 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 281 
 
 matters not whether their lonely home rise from the 
 waters of the ocean, miles and miles from every human 
 habitation, or whether it stand at the entrance to a 
 large harbor, crowded at all seasons with a host of ves- 
 sels ; the waves may dash furiously against the sides of 
 the tower, and try to send their spray into the very lan- 
 tern above, or they may never do more than gently kiss 
 the foot of the building ; the sea around may be crowded 
 with ships of all sizes, from the vast ocean steamer to the 
 lumbering sloop, or the eye of the keeper may be strained 
 in vain to perceive even the low sail of a fishing smack 
 as soon as the sun sets he must light his lamp, and as 
 day breaks he must put it out again. During the day 
 his time is taken up in cleaning the apparatus and mak- 
 ing all ready for the hour of darkness. In the larger 
 light-houses, where the number of keepers is greater, 
 they can enjoy each other's company, have their houses 
 and little gardens, and a certain amount of liberty, and 
 even enjoyment. In the smaller towers, on the contrary, 
 where the position is such as to make the erection of 
 buildings impossible, and where only two keepers, or 
 even a single one with his family, are left to their own 
 resources, life is necessarily sad and monotonous, almost 
 beyond endurance. In summer they may amuse them- 
 selves by fishing ; and ingenuity has taught them a 
 novel method, invented by some unlucky man, whose 
 tower stood so completely isolated amidst the waters 
 that he had not standing-place enough on the rocks to 
 
282 WONDERS OF THE BEEP. 
 
 cast a line. This led him to fasten a line at a certain 
 height, but just below the entrance door, around the 
 whole tower, and to this line he tied fifty or more smaller 
 lines with baited, hooks. When the tide rose the fish 
 were seen swimming all around the tower, they were 
 tempted by the bait and hooked, and when the tide fell 
 there was seen hanging around the light-house a rich 
 garland of all kinds of fish. On the other hand, the poor 
 keepers have their trials also. At times the wind blows 
 with such force that they are hardly able to breathe, or 
 the weather is so bad that they are obliged to keep the 
 tower hermetically shut for days and days, and see from 
 their darkened cell nothing but impenetrable fog without, 
 and the foaming crested waves like dim and dismal shad- 
 ows. It is but rarely that light-houses become the 
 scenes of great and startling events, as was the case in 
 the well-known instance when brave Grace Darling 
 rescued the shipwrecked passengers of the steamer 
 " Forfarshire," and made her name a household word 
 with all who admire heroic devotion and true Christian 
 courage. 
 
 In spite of the monotony of this life, it is yet not with- 
 out its admirers, and Mr. Smeaton tells us of a shoe- 
 maker who applied for a place as keeper in the Eddy- 
 stone Light-house, because he was tired of the loneliness 
 of his shop ! He found that he was less alone on his 
 rock than he had been in his narrow alley, and replied 
 to those who expressed their astonishment at his choice : 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 283 
 
 " Every body has his taste, and I have always liked inde- 
 pendence ! " 
 
 Another keeper, at the same forlorn place, seems to 
 have had by nature a clear vocation for his profession ; 
 at least he had conceived such an attachment for his 
 strange home that he would never leave it, and even 
 refused the short leave of absence to which he was enti- 
 tled every year. At last he was prevailed upon to give 
 the outside world one more trial ; but he had no sooner 
 mingled with other men than he felt quite forlorn ; he 
 lost his self-control, and after having been for long years 
 the most regular and correct keeper of a light-house, he 
 suddenly became a drunkard, and committed all kinds 
 of excesses. He had to be carried back to his tower, 
 where he died after a few days' sickness and suffering. 
 Others, on the contrary, have been attacked with in- 
 sanity from constantly beholding the same scenes and 
 receiving for years the same impressions. At the dis- 
 tance of about a mile and a quarter from Land's End, 
 and on a group of granite rocks surrounded on all sides 
 by water, there rises an old tower called Longship's 
 Light-house. It is built upon a rock of conic shape, 
 which raises its narrow summit nearly forty-five feet 
 above the level of the sea. In the winter the waves 
 often rise to such an enormous height on this stormy 
 coast that they completely hide the rock and the tower 
 for a few seconds behind an impenetrable veil of foam 
 and spray, and not unfrequently great injury is done to 
 
284: WONDERS OF THE 'DEEP. 
 
 the building. Thus the sea once carried away the top 
 of the lantern bodily, entered into the tower, extin- 
 guished the lamps, and could only be mastered by great 
 exertions and remarkable presence of mind. Another" 
 circumstance contributes not a little to the horror of 
 the place. TTnder the rock on which the tower stands 
 the waters have washed out a deep cavern, which 
 communicates by a narrow crevice with the open sea ; 
 when the weather is stormy and the waves are high the 
 compressed air in the cavern produces such a fearful 
 roaring that the men cannot sleep, and a new-comer was 
 once so terribly frightened by the unexpected noise that 
 his hair turned gray in a single night. Six years ago 
 the people on shore noticed two black flags fluttering 
 from the flag-staff of the light-house. They surmised at 
 once that some great calamity must have occurred. A 
 boat tried to go over, but the weather was so bad that 
 the brave men who ventured their lives in order to reply 
 to the sad signal of distress, had to wait for some time, 
 and then only reached the rock at imminent peril. The 
 scene which presented itself to their eyes was horrible. 
 One of the three men who lived in the light-house had, 
 when his turn came to go on duty, in a lit of despair 
 cut open his breast with a large knife. His companions 
 had endeavored to staunch the blood by stuffing pieces of 
 tow into the wound, and three days had passed without 
 their being able to obtain assistance. Even now the sea 
 was so rough, and the difficulty of getting into the boat 
 
LIGHT-HOUSE STORIES. 285 
 
 so great, that the wounded man had to be let down in a 
 rope chair. In spite of every care and attention the 
 poor fellow died a few days afterward, and the jury ren- 
 dered a verdict ascribing his death to temporary in- 
 sanity, caused by his long-continued isolation on the 
 rock. 
 
 Nor is it the least of the evils connected with light- 
 houses that frequently men of most uncongenial temper 
 are forced into unbroken intimacy by their common 
 imprisonment on a lonely rock. A curious traveller who 
 visited the famous Eddystone Light-house once asked 
 one of the keepers if he was not, after all, quite happy in 
 his tower ? " Oh yes," replied the keeper, " we might be 
 very happy here if we could only have a chat with each 
 other. But here is my chum, he and I have not exchanged 
 a word with each other for a month ! " 
 
 Such are some of the marvels connected with light- 
 houses, and such some of the features of their inner life. 
 We may hereafter endeavor to state what noble efforts 
 have been made in our day to improve these interesting 
 structures and to surround them with varied auxiliaries. 
 For, to the honor of our age be it said, the nations most 
 interested in the subject England, France, and the 
 Union have all well understood the duty resting upon 
 them in this respect, and given to it all the attention it 
 deserved. 
 
 For surely no expense ought to be spared, no amount 
 of mental labor counted lost, which may contribute to 
 
286 WONDEBS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 the perfection of light-houses, when we remember that on 
 the coasts of Great Britain alone, in a single year, nearly 
 one thousand vessels were wrecked, of which half were 
 totally lost, the rest stranded and seriously damaged. 
 But the loss of treasure was insignificant in comparison 
 with the far greater loss of one thousand and five hundred 
 lives 1 Surely, then, nothing ought to be omitted by a 
 great maritime people that could reduce the annual loss 
 of lives, and thus render good service to humanity ; and 
 leaving out of consideration for the present the admira- 
 ble life-boats of our day, no other means are more efli- 
 cient for this noble purpose than the erection and judi- 
 cious management of well-appointed light-houses. 
 
A GKAIN" OF SAND. 
 
 "As children gathering pebbles on the shore." MILTOK. 
 
 TT is a common error to suppose that only the lives of 
 * the great and the noble are full of exciting adven- 
 tures and remarkable incidents. Even among men the 
 lowliest often experience the strangest fate, and the event- 
 ful career of the English blacksmith's son, who ended 
 his days as a great commander, and lies by the side of a 
 Dante in a Florentine church, is far more attractive than 
 the life of many a renowned general or brilliant states- 
 man. The same is true in nature. The king of animals 
 grows and mates and dies in his desert lair, and the bat- 
 tles he has fought with grim rivals, and the number of 
 sheep he has stolen, or antelopes which he has killed, are 
 all that can be told of the terrible lion. The little bird, 
 on the other hand, that flew frightened and fluttering 
 to the topmost branch of the Mimosa, when his deep 
 roar made the earth tremble for miles, may be carried a 
 captive over wide seas to distant lands, and pass through 
 
288 WONDERS or THE -DEEP. 
 
 scenes and trials which would fill volumes and excite our 
 wonder. The lofty mountain stands for ages unmoved 
 on its firm foundation, and generation after generation 
 passes away at its foot without noticing a change in its 
 form or nature. But the little grain of sand, which the 
 waters of a mighty river roll sportively toward the great 
 sea has a history full of events, and might tell us, if we 
 could hear its low voice, a tale of strange import. We 
 will try to follow it from its birth to the place where we 
 saw it first on the banks of the Rhine. Like one of the 
 fabled heroes of old, its birth-place is wrapt in mysteri- 
 ous doubt. Some say that Neptune sent it forth into the 
 world and bade the obedient waves to give it form and 
 shape, while others insist that Yulcan fashioned it in a 
 fiery furnace. Perhaps both divinities helped to create 
 it, for we find it in the shape of a quartz crystal of goodly 
 size, lying snugly ensconced in the heart of a sharp- 
 edged cliff of gneiss, and gneiss is said to owe its origin to 
 the repeated action of fire and water in rapid succession. 
 For thousands of years the crag has been standing on 
 high, reaching boldly up into the blue ether, and crown- 
 ing an Alpine mountain with its clear outline, distinctly 
 visible from afar in the pure, transparent air of mountain 
 regions. Many an avalanche has come down from still 
 greater heights, and passed harmless to the right or the 
 left of the sharp tooth, or, falling headlong upon the 
 pointed rock, has broken its force there, and filled the 
 air far and near with clouds of powdered snow. But at 
 
A GKAIN OP SAND. 289 
 
 last one greater than all before came down from the 
 highest of those inexhaustible deserts. For years the 
 white, treacherous field had moved slowly and imper- 
 ceptibly toward the precipice, until it was cunningly 
 poised on the edge. A sudden current of air, the foot- 
 fall of a child below, or the merry song of a shepherdess 
 broke the charm that held it suspended on high, and in 
 an instant the whole mass, but just now so silent and 
 motionless, leaps forth with the swiftness of lightning and 
 wakes the echoes for miles and miles with its terrible 
 thunder. As if endowed with a very rapture of motion, 
 the huge white mountain rushes forward, darkens the 
 air with its portentous shadow, and aiming straight at 
 the bold crag, wrests it with irresistible force from its 
 ancient foundation. Other crags and cliffs that had 
 once formed part of the great Alpine .mountains, and 
 protected them against the terrible enemy, had probably 
 fallen one by one in fruitless struggle, and now the last 
 of old landmarks was to be effaced. 
 
 A few seconds more and the sky is serene as before, 
 the scene as silent as ever. Now and then only a little 
 white cloud rises lightly in the clear air, as a small mass 
 of snow that had been caught by a tree or a jutting rock 
 crumbles to pieces, or a low, rumbling noise tells of a 
 block of stone that rolls downward after having halted 
 awhile against a gigantic pine-tree or a rock by the way- 
 side. Soon, however, this also ceases, and all around is 
 
 once more still as the grave. 
 13 
 
290 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 The old crag still rises heavenward, and stands out 
 black and bold amid the desert of fresh fallen snow 
 that surrounds it on all sides. But its crown is gone ; 
 huge masses of rock have been broken off and are bu- 
 ried far below, and among them is hid the quartz crystal 
 with our little grain of sand. 
 
 Loosened and driven away from its ancient birthplace, 
 it lies buried beneath towering masses of snow in the 
 bed of an Alpine torrent, that. comes raging and roaring 
 from the higher hills. The avalanche has laid itself inso- 
 lently across its bed, and the poor little rivulet frets and 
 foams as it tries to pursue its course toward the valley 
 beneath. But in vain it attempts to scale the half-frozen 
 mass and to send its water over the back of the giant ; 
 it has to learn patience, and slowly begins to overcome 
 the oppressor, not by might, but by perseverance. By 
 day and by night, in sunshine and under dark clouds, it 
 gnaws at the foot of the gigantic walls till an opening is 
 made, and it runs once more merrily under the high 
 arches of a snow-built bridge. As spring changes into 
 summer its fury subsides ; the foam clears off, the roar 
 is subdued, and the brook resumes its wonderful rise and 
 fall, being full to overflowing in the early afternoon, and 
 low and silent in the morning, as the melting and the 
 nightly rest of the glacier command it, from which it 
 draws its unceasing supplies. At the very bottom of the 
 rock-covered bed of the torrent lies the block of gneiss 
 that holds our little grain of sand, and busily does the 
 
A GRAIN or SAOT>. 291 
 
 water play around it, year after year, washing it with its 
 milk-white waters, that are full of the glacier sand, and 
 continually beating it with larger pieces of stone which 
 it brings down from on high, and rubs and pushes 
 against the patient wanderer. 
 
 Years pass by, and the stone, growing smaller by de- 
 grees, makes slow and almost imperceptible progress to- 
 ward the plains, till at last it finds itself lying at the 
 edge of a rocky precipice, over which the brook sends its 
 waters in savage joy. They fall between the perpendicu- 
 lar walls, which they have smoothed and polished with 
 incessant labor, down into a dark abyss, from which they 
 rise immediately again as airy vapors, reflecting the rays 
 of the sun in ever-varying colors, and every now and 
 then mocking the rainbow on high in all its gorgeous 
 hues. One fine day a warm wind, coming all the way 
 from the dread desert of Africa, fills the torrent with 
 floods of molten snow and ice from the glacier above ; it 
 begins to rage as of old, and in fiery tumult it carries 
 along with it all that fills its narrow bed ; trees and 
 stones and debris of every kind must follow its mad 
 career ; and as the swollen waters throw themselves 
 headlong in a huge arch from the edge into the boiling 
 turmoil below, our block also is forced to take the fear- 
 ful leap, and falling upon a long-tried rock of unwonted 
 hardness at the foot of the cataract, it breaks into nu- 
 merous pieces. 
 
 The good results of the old policy, Divide et impera, 
 
292 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 are immediately visible ; the stone is reduced to the size 
 of a man's hand, and now rolls readily enough before the 
 pressing, pushing waves that continue to come tumbling 
 from on high. Further and further it travels from its 
 first home, and at every step and every leap it knocks 
 against its travelling companions, taking from their sub- 
 stance and losing more and more of its own, till the parts 
 that have been united for centuries are divided forever, 
 and each has to go on its own path through the world. 
 
 Our little grain of sand, however, is not yet independ- 
 ent ; it still lies concealed in its diminished rocky home, 
 and has silently and patiently to await the hours when 
 it also shall have to fight the battle of life by itself. 
 
 All of a sudden, however, it is exposed to a new and 
 terrible danger. After its long quiet rest in its airy 
 home, and the slow and measured progress it has been 
 making of late, as the waters of the brook roll it leisurely 
 along, comes unexpectedly a time of fearful excitement. 
 On one side of the brook lies a huge block of granite, al- 
 most level on the top, and so high that the waters play 
 Over it only when the river is at its fullest. The stones 
 and pebbles which they carry have gradually worn a 
 slight indentation on the surface, and now every stone is 
 forced to turn round and round in the little hole, until 
 the water subsides once more. The dance looks merry 
 enough to the beholder, but it is full of sadness for the 
 performer, who is ground down day by day by the inces- 
 sant friction, and must perish, being reduced to powder, 
 
A GEAIN OF SAND. 293 
 
 unless a sudden rise or a lucky accident releases him from 
 the bondage and sends him back into the bed of the tor- 
 rent. 
 
 Our block also has been forced to dance madly around, 
 until it has lost more than half of its size ; but at last the 
 brook is reduced, the heat of the sun dries up the water 
 in the little pan, and the pebble lies weary and exhausted 
 amid the dust and dead insects which line the bottom. 
 But ere long the torrent resumes its mad career ; the rock 
 is covered with water once more, and the furious dance 
 recommences. Thus the poor little grain of sand alter- 
 nates between perfect peace and restless excitement, 
 wearing away steadily all the time, till at last a fellow- 
 sufferer comes, and pushing it over the edge, takes its 
 place in the strange ball-room.. 
 
 The grain, still hid in its cradle, now continues its slow 
 journey. But a furious rain sets in for days and nights ; 
 all the mountain streams swell and rise, till their bed is 
 too narrow, and the brook, filled to overflowing, spreads 
 its dimmed waters over a vast meadow. The pebble, 
 born amid ice and snow, and restlessly rolled along among 
 rocks, now for the first time is surrounded by bright 
 flowers and waving grasses, but it is still pushed along 
 by the restless waters of its torrent, and crushed beneath 
 larger stones and boulders, while the brook has been 
 borne on high, when it aped the great river, and now 
 slowly rolls in the icy lava-like mass of debris over the 
 blooming Alpine meadow. 
 
294: WONDEBS OF THE BEEP. 
 
 Behold the little grain of sand now on its new stage 
 of life, shrunk and shriveled without, with corners 
 abrased and edges dulled down, but still dwelling safely 
 within its old stone prison. The increasing pressure from 
 above, as the burden, borne lightly by the swollen waters, 
 becomes too heavy for their diminished strength, and 
 gently sinks to the ground, continues to break and crush 
 the gneiss, till at last there remains but a stone of the 
 size of a hazelnut, which serves as a dark, dismal dwell- 
 ing for the tiny grain. 
 
 It has not long to wait for the day of liberation. A 
 new tempest pours overwhelming floods of rain into the 
 same deep channel, from which years ago the mountain 
 torrent rolled its waters over the fair meadow. They 
 rack and rend the stony bed to its foundation, and our 
 luckless adventurer is tossed and torn about in all direc- 
 tions. A heavy block comes thundering down from on 
 high, and falls with loud clatter upon the diminutive 
 piece of gneiss ; the little plates of mica give way, the 
 outer shell falls to pieces, and for the first time in its life 
 the grain of sand lies open to the air and beholds the 
 bright light of heaven. It is washed by cool waters, and 
 when the sun once more breaks forth from behind the 
 dark clouds, its rays are reflected in playful glitter from 
 the sides of the tiny grain. 
 
 As a person leaving a public assembly is borne along 
 for a time by the crowd, and at last escapes from the rush 
 and the press to pursue his own way at leisure, so the 
 

 A GRAIN OF SAOT). 295 
 
 "... 
 
 grain of sand also at first was carried onward in a new, 
 narrow channel, which the swollen brook had furrowed 
 out across a meadow, staying now in this bend and now 
 in that for a while. Finally, however, the little branch 
 falls into the main channel once more, and the still im- 
 petuous waters carry all its contents with a sudden splash 
 and splutter into a small Alpine lake. There the little 
 grain of sand sinks at once to the bottom, where it meets 
 a numerous company of other unfortunate grains, and 
 seems to be doomed to remain there forever, for what 
 power is likely to take the helpless pebble -from the silent, 
 motionless deep ? The lake has no outlet through which 
 the additions made by avalanches, rain, and snow could 
 be carried off; and yet the marvel is, what becomes of 
 all the vast masses of water by which its little basin is 
 filled to overflowing? For nine or ten months in the 
 year the lake is frozen, and can, therefore, lose nothing 
 by evaporation ; and no river or outlet ever finds its way 
 out of the deep, circular loch in which it is confined. 
 
 It rids itself, nevertheless, of all it cannot hold, though 
 the eye of man cannot watch its proceedings. For the 
 pressure of the heavy mass of water which it contains in 
 a narrow basin is powerful enough to force some of it, 
 drop by drop, through fissures, cracks, and crevices in 
 the rocky bottom, and these minute rivulets carry natu- 
 rally with them all that can pass through the narrow 
 passages, which are their only outlet. Eye of man, we 
 said, cannot watch this process, and yet it is not unseen, 
 
296 WONDEKS OF THE 'DEEP. 
 
 for a slow, scarcely perceptible motion on the surface, by 
 which wide circles are continually formed, proves to the 
 experienced observer, that the whole lake is a gigantic 
 funnel, from which water is continually though slowly 
 escaping. 
 
 One of these minute trickling currents sucks up our 
 little grain of sand, and so bears it downward through 
 the dark, hidden channels of the rock. How sad seems 
 its fate, to be torn from its lofty home high in the free 
 air, and now buried far under ground in eternal night ! 
 Enemies, moreover, surround it on all sides ; now larger 
 stones come and try their strength against the little pebble, 
 and now subterranean waters meet and attack it with 
 the acids they contain. But its nature is strong ; quartz 
 is hard to overcome, and, though it may lose here a little 
 of its rough outline, and there a particle of its substance, 
 the grain still preserves its identity and continues its 
 strange pilgrimage. 
 
 Far down in a low valley, on the nethermost terrace 
 of the Alps, there lies a meadow rich in beautiful flowers 
 and fragrant grasses. On the shady sides beneath noble 
 beech-trees and maples dwells a whole host of graceful 
 ferns and tiny mosses, while out on the sunny plain the 
 green carpet is thick and deep, and shines in the bright 
 light with velvety richness. In the centre of the sunny 
 slope, right amidst flowers and ferns, a powerful spring 
 bubbles forth. Its crystal-pure waters flow gently down- 
 ward over a bed strewn with white pebbles, and never 
 
A GRAIN OF SAND. 297 
 
 fails in the saddest drought of summer or the bitterest 
 frosts of winter. Here is one of the secret outlets of the 
 upper lake. A few hundred feet further on, the waters 
 are gathered in a little basin, as if they wished to rest 
 after their painful creeping through dark crevices, and 
 gather new strength for the weary journey that is 
 finally to carry them to the great ocean. 
 
 Very different, however, is the miniature basin here 
 below from the little lake on the heights, from which it 
 receives its supplies. Here animals of all kinds creep 
 and crawl busily on the bottom, and a wreath of reeds 
 and aquatic plants surrounds its low, marshy banks. 
 Only on one side there is a break in the fringe ; it is the 
 place where the waters of the spring come forth to con- 
 tinue, often a short rest, their long journey through the 
 valley. 
 
 Once more the little grain of sand greets here the 
 light of day, welcomed by a thousand fair flowers upon 
 its return to life. The spring has brought it forth from 
 its wanderings in the dark; it lies snugly ensconced 
 among sheltering grasses by the side of the opening, and 
 the rays of the sun lighting up its transparent edges 
 make it flash for a moment like an eye beaming with joy. 
 
 Soon it becomes a toy of the merry waters, now being 
 tossed on high in playful sport, and now left unnoticed 
 by the side of the channel, till at last it drops wearied 
 and worn into the little basin below. In the upper lake, 
 
 large as it was, there was no fish whose swift and easy 
 13* 
 
298 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 movements ever stirred the quiet waters and threatened 
 to dislodge the tiny grain ; there was no bird there to 
 seek its prey by the bank, and, in the search, to tread 
 upon it with its broad web-foot. But here below, in the 
 diminutive basin, dangers at once surround it on all 
 sides, and before it is well at home in its new resting- 
 place, it is carried once more to distant lands. A beau- 
 tiful duck comes with loud whirring flight ; it plunges 
 headlong into the water to dip up with its broad bill a 
 whole mouthful of worms, and then, rising to the surface 
 again, it enjoys for a moment the play of the sunlight on 
 its bright green neck, and lets the water-beads glide 
 harmless from its brilliant plumage. Now it flies off, 
 and with it the grain of sand goes to a new home. For, 
 as the duck gobbled up a little leech, the animal had 
 just sought safety by fastening itself with its suckers to 
 our tiny wanderer, and thus the stone was swallowed 
 with the food. The bird, far from complaining of the un- 
 welcome visitor, enjoys it hugely, for it needs the sand 
 for digestion, and the little grain finds there neither a 
 grave nor a resting-place, but is called upon to work, 
 and to work hard in its strange aerial ship. It has 
 become a diminutive millstone, and in company with 
 others who have preceded him in the strange mill, it has 
 to go round and round in its dark cell, a lifeless but 
 useful help to organic life. 
 
 How the grain of sand now wandered with the duck 
 from lake to lake, to-day through long, lonely regions in 
 
A GEAIN OF SAND. 299 
 
 the pure air, to-morrow through dark rushes alid dismal 
 swamps ! After a few weeks it is left by the bird on the 
 banks of a distant lake, where busy laborers are forming 
 bricks from the red clay of the soil. All of a sudden 
 the little grain of sand finds itself seized by human 
 hands ; it is worked and kneaded, and finally finds 
 itself lying incorporated in a hollow tile, on a drying- 
 frame. The warm air has soon dried up all the water 
 that was in the clay, and the tiles and bricks are placed 
 in long rows in the kiln. Here new horrors await the 
 unlucky grain ; fearful flames break forth all around, and 
 hungry tongues find their way into every crack and open- 
 ing, till the fiery breath enters deep into the core of the 
 bricks. They blush with indignation, and are drawn out to 
 be carted away to a new house on the banks of the Rhine. 
 
 A few days more and the grain of sand hangs once 
 more high in the pure air, on the surface of a tile on the 
 roof. The waters have reduced it in size till the care- 
 less eye would hardly observe it ; the fire has cracked it, 
 and a ray of the evening sun plays merrily on the small, 
 sparkling eye. Once njore banished and bound, it 
 remains there at rest for many a year ; little birds sing 
 by its side in bright summer days, and in winter the 
 snow covers it up with sheltering care. 
 
 But it is not at rest forever yet. The hidden powers 
 of the air come to their silent work, and gnaw and nib- 
 ble at the hard clay. They call in the aid of wind and 
 weather, of rain and snow, of light and heat and frost, 
 
300 WONDERS OF THE 'DEEP. 
 
 and ere long the hard tile is changed into fertile soil. In 
 visible germs come on the wings of the wind, and minute 
 mosses begin to cover it with their green velvet. They 
 grow to tiny bolsters, and one of them .covers up the grain 
 of sand, condemning it once more to .dismal darkness. 
 
 Thus it cannot see the black cloud that rises in stern 
 threatening from the east, to summon it to a new pilgrim- 
 age. For a moment man and beast are filled with 
 strange fear, and then the tempest breaks ; a fierce storm 
 of hail-stones falls far and near, and in the next minute 
 the tile with its grain of sand lies broken on the ground 
 by the side of a hundred companions. 
 
 The day after a cart comes and the useless fragments 
 are carried to the banks of the river, where familiar 
 voices greet the grain of sand and tell it many a tale of 
 the world above, where the waters were born, and where 
 its own childhood was spent. " Come along," they whis- 
 per and shout ; " come with us ; we'll carry you to the 
 great ocean." 
 
 And again a fearful tempest breaks down upon the 
 glaciers in the high Alps, and again fills to overflowing 
 the countless rivulets that form the great Rhine. The 
 rain comes in floods, the glaciers slide downwards, and 
 the masses of snow on the lower peaks melt under the 
 hot breath of the African wind. Down into the valleys 
 they all rush, now singly and now united, till the bed of 
 the great river cannot hold the vast abundance, and the 
 waters rise high above the banks on both sides. "With 
 
A GKAIN OF SAND. 301 
 
 irresistible force they carry away whatever is not strong 
 enough to cling to the soil, and thus the broken tile also 
 is seized by the enraged giant and borne on to the falls 
 that are not far distant. A second time the grain of 
 sand must follow a master, who holds it in his strong 
 grasp, in a fearful leap over a precipice, and down in the 
 abyss the poor wanderer is again whirled round and 
 round in the seething maelstrom, till, sadly shorn of its 
 proportions, it is at last pushed forward, a tiny grain in 
 truth, into the wide plains where the waters are quiet and 
 flow on in peace. 
 
 The adventures of the little wanderer are over now. 
 For the rest of its life the grain of sand is to be gently 
 pushed along who can tell how much or how little every 
 year ? by the waters of the mighty river. It has been 
 freed from its bondage to the fire-burnt tile, and lies now, 
 the high-born son of a lofty Alpine peak, on the dark 
 bottom of the river. A freshet may now and then throw 
 it for a time on the sunny bank; and accident may bury 
 it for years under some great rock, but, after all, it moves 
 on steadily, though slowly, on its heaven-appointed way 
 to the sea, and whatever may befall it, whether it be 
 ground to dust or dissolved by acids, so much is certain 
 it will never be lost ! For there is nothing lost in the 
 great household of nature ; and the glory of the Most 
 High is not more strikingly displayed in the rising and 
 setting of the great orb on high than in the varied fate 
 and the unseen adventures of a little grain of sand. 
 
XL 
 MEECUET. 
 
 " Swift, subtle Mercury." KOGER BACON. 
 
 OD said to man, whom he had made in his own im- 
 age : " Let him have dominion over all the earth ! " 
 and man, from the day of creation to our own, has 
 labored hard to make himself master of the world. For 
 like all other gifts from on high, that power also has to 
 be earned in the sweat of his face, and the ground that 
 was cursed for Adam's sake yields no longer willing obedi- 
 ence to its sinful master. Nevertheless, there is no man 
 so poor but he can control all that he sees, no race so 
 brutal but it makes all Nature serve and work for its 
 benefit. Even on the confines of the habitable world, 
 where the blessed light of day shines but for a short time, 
 and ice and snow sit a barrier to all life and enjoyment, 
 even there man still succeeds in ruling the elements, and 
 employing the scanty supplies that the earth can yet 
 furnish. The low-creeping moss and tiny sweet berries 
 preserve his health, while the grossest food gives him 
 support and warmth ; the monster of the seas gives him 
 
MERCURY. 303 
 
 x 
 
 bones for his arrow-tips and timber for his fragile boat ; 
 the sea-lion furnishes oil for his lamp, and the very ocean 
 supplies him with a house which he rears by the aid of 
 huge masses of ice. 
 
 Among all the vassals, however, the goodly crowd of 
 metals are his most useful servants, his best friends. 
 Buried deep down in the bosom of the earth, hiding 
 themselves in darkest corners and remotest chambers, 
 they seemed to have fled from his all-absorbing rule. 
 As if anxious to avoid the slavery that awaited them in 
 his service, they had run into tiny veins, split into thin 
 leaves, scattered into minute grains, to escape his atten- 
 tion : here they covered their bright splendor with un- 
 sightly clay; there they mixed with worthless earths, 
 and often they allowed the merry waters of mountain- 
 streams to roll over them and make them invisible. All 
 in vain ! For man seized upon the last of the fugitives, 
 whose bright faces he caught here and there on the sur- 
 face; he followed them on lonely paths through the 
 mountains ; he pursued them with spade and pickaxe into 
 the very bowels of the earth ; he sank shafts and filled 
 them with monstrous machines, that forced them to come 
 forth from their hidden recesses, and seized them where- 
 ever his knowledge revealed to him their retreat. Then 
 he carried them triumphantly up to the surface of the 
 earth, beat and stamped, ground and crushed them, 
 threw them into furious fire, until they yielded to his 
 stern will, and assumed the form which it pleased him 
 
304: WONDEKS OF THE t>EEP. 
 
 to give them ; he chilled them, and hardened them, and 
 at last took them into his service, forcing them to do his 
 bidding, and to aid him in becoming truly the master of 
 all the earth. For man had dominion given him over the 
 inert materials as well as over the living creatures of the 
 earth. Hence the true poetry of mechanics, attractive in 
 all its marvellous doings, and more charming in its daily 
 results than the wildest dreams of creative fancy. Let 
 those who will, see nothing but masses of clanking iron 
 and huge incessant fires, nothing but tall chimneys and 
 clouds of black smoke ; to the imaginative, even smoke 
 and the vapor we call steam becomes an embodied genie, 
 who raises man to the clouds and at whose feet the earth 
 opens at command ; and those who yield themselves to 
 the spell are led through subterranean ways to the secret 
 chambers of the treasures of Nature. Or, led by the 
 same obedient slave, they find themselves in gardens 
 more enchanting than any Aladdin ever saw gardens of 
 vast extent and varied beauty, covered with transparent 
 crystal, containing all beauteous things that Nature 
 produces or the immortal mind of man creates, with the 
 flowers of all zones and the fruits of every land, with liv- 
 ing marvels all around, and fountains throwing out liquid 
 gems, with a night as dazzling as the days are brilliant. 
 And this is the romance of reality. 
 
 For man has dominion over all the earth for some good 
 purpose ; he is the steward only, and, far from indulging 
 in wanton destruction, he makes his vassals his faithful 
 
MEKCUBY. 305 
 
 servants, his attached friends. Even the humblest of 
 Nature's children becomes useful, when he names it, and 
 by his heaven-born instinct assigns it its duty. The air 
 has to fill his bellows, and the fire to work like a slave by 
 night and by day ; the water must fertilize his gardens, 
 and the stones afford him dry paths ; the falcon hunts 
 for him, the fir-tree carries him across the ocean, the very 
 worm serves him as bait, and the lowly herb restores him 
 to health. 
 
 But of all his servants, the metals, those kings of the 
 old alchemists, which were so nearly related to the great 
 heavenly bodies that they bore their names, have ever 
 been his most useful vassals, his best friends. As he 
 learnt to know them and to employ them, they changed 
 his whole manner of life, and he counts ^his own history 
 from the age of bronze and of iron. He subjected them, 
 one by one, to the manifold evolutions of the great work- 
 shop in his brain, and gave to each a life of its own. 
 
 Thus he saw at a glance the stubborn strength and the 
 enduring power of iron, and called it up from its dark 
 hiding-places to become his workman, to subject the 
 whole world to him by its strength, and to embellish it 
 by its numberless uses. He summoned it to check and 
 control the beasts of the earth, and iron changed into a 
 supple, cunningly-woven chain to fetter the wild bull ; 
 it became a bit and a spur to master the proud, prancing 
 horse, a sharp-pointed staff to strike even the huge ele- 
 phant with terror, a solid cage to hold the lion, the king 
 
306 WONDERS or THE DEEP. 
 
 of the beasts, and a slender hook to catch the fish in his 
 subtle element. Man ordered it to conquer the earth it- 
 self, and as plough it drew cruel furrow in its bosom to 
 bear abundant fruit for his support ; it became an axe to 
 fell the loftiest trees, a saw to divide the gigantic trunks ; 
 and then it assumed a thousand varied forms to build 
 him his house, to hold it together against wind and 
 weather, and to protect it with lock and latch. The very 
 Proteus of the metals, it took a new shape, and con- 
 quered even the hard rock, smoothed it and shaped it 
 into beauteous forms, or piled it up higher and higher in 
 majestic temples and lofty cathedrals ; or it took the tall- 
 est of pines on high mountain-chains and bound them 
 with clamp and clasp to form a vessel, and held it as an- 
 chor to the bottom of the mighty deep. Soon there was 
 no work done in kitchen or parlor, in workshop or lab- 
 oratory, in which iron did not show itself an ever-ready, 
 ever-handy assistant, yielding with willing obedience to 
 man's will, and obediently assuming every shape he de- 
 sired, 
 
 Man rejoiced in the skilful laborer, and devised new 
 and harder tasks ; he lent the whole power of his mind to 
 make new inventions, which iron had to help him in 
 carrying out, and, ever hand in hand, the master and the 
 servant went onward on their path of improvement. 
 The more docile the metal showed itself, the more rap- 
 idly man's progress made itself felt on the earth ; and 
 with the labor he performed by the aid of iron, his own 
 
MERCURY. 307 
 
 spiritual power increased by degrees. Whatever had 
 appeared impossible before, iron had to achieve. Long 
 had the great streams of the earth impeded the commerce 
 of men ; for they defied the structures of fragile wood, 
 and of massive stone, when high floods gave them un- 
 usual power, or huge drifting blocks of ice made play- 
 things of pier and bridge. At last, here also iron came 
 to the aid of man, and once more obeying his ingenious 
 command, it stretched out into long rods and slender 
 beams, chained them one to the other, and lo and behold ! 
 the gossamer chain-bridge hung high and safe above the 
 furious waters, and man could defy now, on his part, the 
 power of the conquered element. And when he had 
 thus overcome the last obstacle that impeded his free 
 control of space, he became impatient of the swiftness of 
 the horse even, and bending his mind to devise some 
 more rapid mode of overcoming space, he invented a 
 new service for his trusty servant. Iron was tortured 
 and twisted anew, until it assumed the form of colossal 
 wheels, huge levers, caldron, and pipes and the engine 
 was ready to bring with its own amazing uses the power 
 of steam into the service of man. The new servant be- 
 came the most powerful and the most delicate of instru- 
 ments ; here moving machinery of gigantic proportions, 
 and there printing the tiniest characters on silk and on cot- 
 ton. It carried man with amazing rapidity from land to 
 land, from continent to continent ; and as the cunning 
 web of the spider holds the strongest of her enemies 
 
308 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 helpless in its meshes, so the iron net of railroads and 
 steamers held the very earth captive at the will of man. 
 
 Even greater things, however, he demanded of the 
 faithful metal, which he had discovered possessed a mar- 
 vellous gift appearing in many ways not inferior even to 
 the instinct of living creatures. You must show me the 
 way, he told the willing servant, across the pathless 
 ocean! and iron changed into a small needle, and as 
 compass and sextant it became his unfailing guide over 
 the broad ocean and around the whole globe. But when 
 man rose against man, and fierce war raged through the 
 land, even then he bethought himself of his faithful friend, 
 and iron came to his aid, now as a sharp sword, and now 
 as a gun or a cannon. Thus, in peace and in war. on 
 land and at sea, the useful metal is by his side, ready to 
 do his bidding, to assume any shape, and to serve him 
 in small matters and in greatest. In like manner man 
 has taken them all, from the precious gold to the worth- 
 less lead, and made them his servants. But there is one 
 among them, more highly gifted than all the others, of 
 fairest form, of strangest shape, and of rarest usefulness. 
 
 This is the metal which takes its name from the 
 winged messenger of the gods, and is known among us 
 as mercury, though its bright face and wondrous quick- 
 ness make it perhaps more generally familiar as quick- 
 silver. These features were so striking and so exclu- 
 sively peculiar to the ever-changing metal, that already 
 the ancients bestowed upon it like admiring names. To 
 
MEECUKT. 309 
 
 the Greeks it was liquid silver ; to the Romans, with a 
 poetry rare among the stern, matter-of-fact people even, 
 living silver ; the latter name, however, seems in classic 
 writers to have been confined to the pure mercury found 
 in its brilliant beauty, whilst the former was reserved for 
 the metal when artificially produced. For the ancients 
 were already fully acquainted with the " Changeful 
 Damsel " among the stern metals, as an old alchemist 
 quaintly called it on account of its slippery, coquettish 
 nature, now alluring by its "lovely beauty, now deriding 
 by its swift escape. Among its many forms, which it 
 assumes, is one called cinnabar, of a resplendent red, 
 which was well known more than four hundred years 
 before Christ, and found abundantly in Spain, where, by 
 one of those strange combinations produced by the uni- 
 versal rule of the Roman, Athenian philosophers acted as 
 officials in imperial mines. That able- but disorderly 
 writer, Vitruvius, confounds this cinnabar on account 
 of its red color, in all probability with the more famil- 
 iar minium, an entirely different product, used to mark 
 certain passages in manuscripts and almanacs, and thus 
 become the ancestor of our miniature. He states, how- 
 ever, correctly the picturesque manner in which it pre- 
 sented itself to the eye of the astonished miner; for he 
 Says, " When they dig minium, and iron tools wound 
 the rock, big drops of living silver flow from the place." 
 Pliny, in his more prosy manner, simply states that there 
 in the mines of Spain there is " a rock which continu- 
 
310 WONDEUS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 ally sweats mercury, and which the Greeks call cinna- 
 bar ;" so that there can be no doubt as to the identity 
 of this curious metal in Roman mines and our quicksilver. 
 The question has, however, been raised more than once, 
 because of its being so frequently mistaken for minium, 
 and even called by that name. Pliny himself designates 
 it thus wrongly in his interesting description of the 
 locality, from which, in his day, the most valuable cinna- 
 bar was sent to the capital. " Rome," he says, " obtains 
 its minium almost exclusively from Spain. The most 
 famous comes from the region of Sisapo in Boetica. The 
 mines belong to the Roman republic, and no other prop- 
 erty is so jealously guarded as this. The cinnabar is not 
 allowed to be prepared on the spot ; but it is stamped as 
 brute ore and sent to Rome, about ten thousand pounds 
 a-year. In Rome it is washed and prepared, and a spe- 
 cial law fixes the maximum price at which it may be sold 
 by the merchants." Now Pliny's Boetica is the Andalu- 
 sia of our day, with a part of Granada ; and in this same 
 district are still the famous mines of Almaden, the one 
 great support of the Spanish crown, without which Spain 
 would have long since been utterly bankrupt. 
 
 The subject was one of no slight importance to the 
 Romans, for cinnabar was used largely for the purpose of 
 painting. Its bright red adorned the statues of the gods 
 as they were carried in solemn procession through the 
 wards of the capital ; and even the great generals, who 
 entered the city in all the pomp and circumstance of a 
 
MERCURY. 311 
 
 full triumph, did not disdain its use. Sir Humphrey Davy 
 recognized its use even in some paintings of disentombed 
 Pompeii, and probably it served still higher purposes in 
 the mysteries of unholy worship. Mercury, as such, was 
 also well known already as useful for purposes of gild- 
 ing, although the modern art of using it in the shape of 
 an amalgam was not familiar to the ancients. They con- 
 tented themselves with putting the mercury in a layer 
 on vessels and ornaments of silver and copper, and then 
 pressing thick plates of gold upon it, cementing the whole 
 together. Whilst our gilding, therefore, wears off even 
 by mere daily use, and when not exposed to the baneful 
 effects of wind and weather, we are told by the great art- 
 critic, Winkelmann, that antique gildings look now as 
 fresh and as beautiful as if they had just come from the 
 
 hands of the gilder. Hence they had also learned al- 
 
 i 
 ready to burn their magnificent dresses, embroidered 
 
 heavily with pure gold, and, by the aid of quicksilver, to 
 rescue the gold from the ashes. 
 
 How far it was used, even then, for medicinal purposes, 
 we can hardly decide ; for while some authors mention it 
 as an element in certain salves which were oddly enough 
 employed at festive meals, Pliny represents it correctly 
 as a poison, and objects to its use in medicine, even for 
 external application, as fraught with too much danger. 
 The confusion in the mind of these authors, when they 
 come to speak of the mysterious metal, is often amusing : 
 Pliny thinks it so poisonous that no vessel can hold it, 
 
312 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 aware as he was, probably, that it cannot be kept in 
 metal vessels, because it would at once form an amalgam 
 with the metal; while, on the other hand, Dioscorides 
 states that it was generally stored up in glass vessels, but 
 that he has seen it also in boxes of lead, tin, and silver, 
 which is simply impossible. Its fluidity, however, seems 
 to have puzzled the ancients sorely ; and the amazement 
 of Vitruvius is comic in the extreme, when he describes 
 how a stone, weighing a hundred pounds, put on a vessel 
 filled with living silver, floated on it, without making an 
 impression on the surface ! This, also, is of course errone- 
 ous, for the stone does make an indentation, more or less 
 deep according to its specific gravity, as mercury is only 
 about thirteen times heavier than water; but it is cu- 
 rious that the same experiment, which so astonished the 
 learned Roman, is in our day repeated daily for the visi- 
 tors of the mines of Idria, whe're huge stones are placed 
 in the enormous iron kettles filled with newly-obtained 
 mercury. It is strange that we find no trace in ancient 
 writers of the preparation of artificial cinnabar, highly 
 valued as this costly material was by the men of those 
 days ; but there is only one allusion found to what is 
 called making mercury solid by the aid of sulphur, and 
 that occurs unfortunately in the pages of the false De- 
 mocritus. 
 
 This secret, like many others connected with our 
 strange metal, was known only to the great race who 
 kept all the valuable knowledge of the world in the days 
 
MERCURY. 313 
 
 of universal war, and through the well-named Dark Ages 
 the Arabs, who also were well acquainted with the 
 deadliest form that mercury ever assumes, the so-called 
 corrosive sublimate, and described it as a violent and 
 acrid poison. 
 
 The alchemists, those noble searchers after truth, who 
 paved with their errors and bitter disappointments the 
 roads on which Modern Chemistry steps safely to the 
 great goal of Truth, surrounded mercury with a poetic 
 crown of glory. In their labors to wring from Nature 
 the secret of the philosopher's stone, and of changing 
 all viler metals into noble gold ; in their efforts to realize 
 the existence of an elixir of life ; in all their mad pursuits, 
 which blend the sublime with the ridiculous as no other 
 work of man has ever done, and contain, amid much that 
 is absurd, numerous traits of touching self-denial and 
 unsurpassed perseverance in all of these, mercury was 
 the one great master among metals, without whose aid 
 nothing could be obtained. How these poor, ignorant, 
 but earnest and devoted workers worshipped the mysteri- 
 ous metal, and tried, by all the means known to their bud- 
 ding science, to force it into their service ! Its change- 
 ableness was their despair. Not in vain had they named 
 it mercury, when they expressed the sympathetic relation 
 which they fancied to exist between the seven known 
 metals and the seven planets ; whilst gold remained to 
 them the image of the bright sun, and silver the repre- 
 sentative of the pale moon, quicksilver bore the likeness 
 
314 WONDEES OP THE DEEP. 
 
 of the messenger of the gods with his winged foot and 
 mobile mind. So they fasted and prayed, and chastised 
 themselves into a proper frame of mind, to become mas- 
 ters of the volatile servant ; and then with exalted hopes 
 and a glance to the Master of all things, they heated and 
 cooled, digested and distilled, analyzed and amalga- 
 mated the unlucky metal, in order to find the animated 
 mercury, as they called the future substance, which was 
 to make the philosopher's stone, and the more mystic 
 philosopher's mercury, from which they expected still 
 greater but unknown wonders. They believed even in 
 predestination as required for the happy issue of their 
 work. Alas ! they were predestined only to work out 
 all the errors of human knowledge, and to clear the way 
 for their successors in ages long to come. Their success 
 was limited to chasing the metal from one shape to 
 the other ; now changing from living silver into the red 
 lion, then into cinnabar, the dragon's blood, and back to 
 the milk of the black cow. Even Geber, the acknowl- 
 edged master of many a science, became, as the unfortu- 
 nate author of the first book on chemistry ever written, 
 a byword among men. Dr. Johnson tell us how, on 
 account of his uncouth language in this work, his name 
 has been transmuted into Gibberish for the use of indig- 
 nant English tongues. To him mercury was the dearest 
 among the rare and aristocratic substances with which 
 he loved to deal, and, with sulphur and arsenic, one of 
 his three elemental chemicals, of which all metals on 
 
MEECTJBY. 315 
 
 earth were made. He dwelt with intense pleasure upon 
 the fact that even gold, the sovereign of them all, with 
 its superior weight, its passing beauty, and its triumph 
 over fire, was dissolved by mercury, and swallowed up 
 by its bright globules as easily as sugar in water. 
 
 The alchemists failed in their end, but they have 
 taught us much about quicksilver. For we would err 
 sadly, if we were to look upon them as lost in error 
 altogether. If Wisdom in their days wore the fool's 
 cap, there were wise things said and done even in her 
 wildest vagaries; her secretary, as he has been called, 
 Common Sense, made notes of the good, and all was put 
 down in a kind of short-hand, strange and odd to our 
 ear, but intelligible to the initiated. The vocabulary 
 was made awful and hideous on purpose, to keep off the 
 profane ; but fair Science came out at last unscathed, 
 for Truth cannot be destroyed nor concealed ; and thus 
 it appeared, that philosophy, like the toad, ugly and 
 venomous at first sight, bore " a precious jewel in its 
 head." It was not for such triumphs, it is true, that the 
 great Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, was enrolled among 
 the saints of the Church ; but it is a fair question among 
 men of science, whether this canonized alchemist achieved 
 any greater triumph on earth than his discovery of the 
 word amalgam, and its meaning. Now we all know 
 that mercury bears such marvellously strong affinity to 
 certain metals like tin, lead, and silver, that it opens 
 them up, so to say, and forms with them a homogeneous 
 
316 WONDERS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 liquid or paste ; but Aquinas was the first to ascertain 
 and state this fact in a manner which made it useful to 
 science, and to call the compound, that resulted from the 
 fixture, by the name which it still bears. 
 
 Quicksilver is not a common metal, but found only in 
 a few portions of our globe, and then in various forms. 
 Here, it surprises the miner by suddenly leaping forth in 
 bright, silvery globules, and running fast to hide in 
 dark corners, now scattering into almost invisible atoms, 
 now running together and forming large, lustrous balls. 
 Then, it appears as cinnabar in fibrous or ill-shapen 
 masses, sometimes crystallized and sometimes hid under 
 a dark, unseemly covering, but occasionally shining forth 
 in brilliant red, with the splendor of the diamond. Then 
 again it conceals itself carefully under the form of some 
 other metal, as native amalgam, or, in rare cases, is found 
 as ready-made medicine in the form of calomel. 
 
 China and Japan produce some quicksilver, for they 
 send to the markets of the world the best cinnabar which 
 there appears ; but to this day little is known about these 
 mines and some others in Thibet. The so-called virgin 
 cinnabar, which is mainly imported from Asia, is made 
 from the rare specimens of native cinnabar found there 
 and ground fine ; it is by far the most superb in color, and 
 the most highly prized by artists and manufacturers ; the 
 larger portion is probably made artificially in China as 
 in Europe, and for that purpose large quantities of mer- 
 cury are actually carried back to the Celestial Empire. 
 
MERCURY. 317 
 
 Mercury is found in the Venetian Alps, where new 
 mines have quite recently been opened with a promise 
 of great gain ; in Bavaria and Bohemia, and a few other 
 localities, which have, however, been abandoned of late 
 on account of their small yield, with the exception of 
 here and there a small mine. There is a curious theory 
 about this decline of formerly productive mines enter- 
 tained by older authors. They state that mobile quick- 
 silver cannot rest, even when rockbound, but ceaselessly 
 works its way upward, and from great depths penetrates, 
 by the process of sublimation, into the veins and crevices 
 of overlying formations. This theory is supported by the 
 fact, that in almost all the formerly rich mines, mercury 
 was actually found close to the surface, often immedi- 
 ately under the turf; whilst no ore has of late been dis- 
 covered at a lower depth. 
 
 On the whole, there are only four important points on 
 our globe where mercury is mined to advantage : in Peru, 
 in Austria, in Spain, and in California. Of these, the 
 smallest production is that of Huancavelica, in Peru, 
 where cinnabar appears impregnated in layers of sand- 
 stone and limestone. It is curious how the vanity of man 
 here, as in Spain, first led to the discovery of the precious 
 metal. . For as the great Triumphator Camillus painted 
 himself red with minium, so the Indians of Peru used to 
 adorn themselves on festive occasions with the same 
 color, obtained from the same metal. The first regular 
 mining dates only back as far as the year 1566, when the 
 
318 WONDERS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 Spanish Government caused the province to be examined, 
 and mercury was found in numerous places. When Peru 
 became independent, the mine of Huancavelica became, 
 of course, national property, and was farmed out by the 
 Government. It is the highest mine on earth, being fif- 
 teen hundred feet above the Peak of Teneriffe ; but it 
 produced a rich harvest, until the madness of an official 
 nearly destroyed it forever. The development of the 
 silver mines of the republic, and the wasteful manner of 
 using mercury in them, had led to an increased demand 
 for the metal. This induced an unlucky superintendent, 
 goaded on by his superiors, and anxious to distinguish 
 himself, perhaps also to add to his riches, to order the 
 massive pillars of valuable ore to be pulled down, which 
 had been left standing in order to support the enormous 
 weight of the upper surface. The haste to be rich had 
 its unvarying effect : the rock came down, the mines were 
 destroyed, and owner and agent alike were severely pun- 
 ished for their insane cupidity. 
 
 Far away in the heart of Europe and the centre of the 
 Julian Alps, there lies a valley of wondrous beauty ; 
 huge walls of bare rock rise to vast height all around, 
 and shut off the secluded plain below from the rest of 
 the world. The upper parts of the mountains are again 
 crowned with grand old pine-forests ; below the rocks, 
 spreads a beautiful carpet of green meadows and mag- 
 nificent woods, while here and there tall masses of rock 
 jut out into the valley, looking defiantly down upon the 
 
MEKCURY. 319 
 
 peaceful scene below, and crowned with chapel and 
 church. A poor peasant so goes the legend once came 
 here to select some timber for the wooden-ware he was 
 making, and placed a few tubs into a well to be seasoned 
 over night. What was his surprise, when he poured the 
 water off next morning, to find at the bottom a glittering 
 mass of silvery metal ! Soon skilful miners and cunning 
 goldsmiths came from Italy, and the place became known ; 
 but only to be made the scene of strife and bloodshed. 
 Now the Venetians would fall with an armed force upon 
 the German miners, and now the great Maximilian would 
 send troops to drive out and destroy the covetous invad- 
 ers. For centuries the mines have produced most abun- 
 dantly, but of late they have become less profitable, and 
 the Austrian Government, always wanting money, is 
 anxious to sell them. The ore is here roasted in exten- 
 sive works, and the smoke, which contains the volatile 
 metal, is carried into enormous iron retorts. The cast- 
 iron pipes are forty feet long and three feet wide, sus- 
 pended in the air, and resting only upon a few slight sup- 
 ports. As the constant smoke keeps them too warm for 
 condensation, a little aqueduct, following above, trickles 
 continually cooling showers upon them ; once a year only 
 the fires are allowed to go out, to clean and repair the 
 whole apparatus. The soot in the cylinders, a loose, 
 black, fatty substance, contains the mercury in countless 
 tiny globules, some of which run out in beautiful silvery 
 whiteness; others have to be whipped from their un- 
 
320 WONDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 sightly retreat ; the soot is beaten with small brooms, and 
 soon the silver snakes are seen to glide out of the dark 
 mass, as if anxious to escape in all directions. Then the 
 glittering mass is gathered in sheepskins, tanned with 
 alum, or in cast-iron bottles of enormous size, to be sent 
 all over the world. 
 
 Sad, however, is the penalty which the vicious metal 
 exacts from those who thus force it to the light of day. 
 Quicksilver evaporates at a temperature lower than that 
 which we maintain in our houses, and its vapors are 
 poisonous. Hence all miners pay with their health ; they 
 become feeble and nervous, their whole system becomes 
 deranged, perpetual trembling seizes their limbs, and 
 they die at an early age. When murcury escapes by 
 chance, it murders like an assassin in the dark. Thus it 
 happened in a vessel which in 1820 came to the Spanish 
 coast with some mercury in its hold. By an accident 
 the quicksilver ran out of a few rotten bags, and found 
 its way into the hold j soon every piece of metal in the 
 ship was covered with a mercurial coating,, and every 
 man on board was salivated violently, and sick unto 
 death. The same tragedy occurred in Idria on a larger 
 scale. In the year 1803 foul air set the mines on fire, and 
 the mercurial vapors developed on that occasion poisoned 
 thirteen hundred workmen, the larger part of whom never 
 recovered. The water, by which the fire had been 
 quenched, was pumped into the river Idria, and was still 
 so laden with deadly fumes that all the fish were killed, 
 
MEECUEY. 321 
 
 except the eels, who, being proverbially used to being 
 roasted alive, defied even the poisonous metal. 
 
 On a similar occasion, in Spain, a pious Franciscan 
 monk seized a crucifix, and bidding the frightened work- 
 men to follow him into the burning mine, went in to put 
 out the fire : neither he nor any of his devoted men were 
 ever seen again. This occurred in the famous mines of 
 Almaden, which lie amid the Black Mountains of La 
 Mancha, so dear to all lovers of Cervantes as the scene 
 of the inimitable exploits of Don Quixote. It has its 
 name the mine from its first masters, the Arabs, who, 
 in the course of time, fell heirs to the Roman State prop- 
 erty, and worked it with brilliant success. One of their 
 Caliphs had in his gardens at Cordova a gigantic shell 
 of porphyry, filled with glittering quicksilver, which was 
 evermore flowing out and in. It stood in a pavilion, the 
 sides of which were lined with ebony and ivory of such 
 exquisite polish that, when the rays of the sun fell upon 
 them, their splendor dazzled and blinded the eye. But 
 when great guests were to be shown the marvels of the 
 palace, an Arabic manuscript says, the Caliph ordered 
 all the doors around to be opened ; the full sunlight then 
 shone upon the ever-flowing mass of silver, and the re- 
 flection fell on the eye of the beholder like living flashes 
 of lightning, and the pavilion seemed to toss like a ves- 
 sel on the stormy waves. 
 
 The indolent Spaniards have rarely attempted to work 
 
 their magnificent mines themselves, but farmed them 
 14> 
 
 ^ 
 
 or XHB 
 
322 WCKNDEKS OP THE DEEP. 
 
 out to bankers and companies, mostly of foreign race. 
 Among these was the great house of Fugger, those 
 grandest of merchant-princes in the small town of Augs- 
 burg, one of whom could haughtily warm the Emperor 
 Charles Y. by a fire made of his own obligations and 
 evidences of debt to the great banker ! They held the 
 mines for more than a hundred years, and brought large 
 numbers of German workmen there, whose industry and 
 skill soon raised the production immensely. In 1835 
 they were pawned, in like manner, to the Rothschilds ; 
 but at present they are worked with great energy and 
 by means of the best scientific aid, at the expense of the 
 Government, which derives by far the largest portion of 
 its income from this locality. The town itself, with its 
 clean, straight streets, and tidy, well-kept houses, pre- 
 sents a very different aspect from the other miserable 
 villages of La Mancha, and the surrounding country ; 
 though sterile and stern like that of most mining districts, 
 is not devoid of beautiful mountain scenery and extended 
 views. Even the entrance to the mines differs altogether 
 from that of similar works elsewhere. From the level 
 valley a long tunnel-like shaft leads to the very heart of 
 the mine ; it is built of massive hewn rock, wide enough 
 for carts with two horses abreast, and has granite side- 
 walks ; at the end you come to steps and stairs, which 
 lead to the lower parts, where you find yourself imme- 
 diately beneath the town of Almaden. The working 
 was formerly done by criminals condemned to hard labor 
 
MERCURY. 323 
 
 for life. From their prison, which still stands there, a 
 relic of former barbarism, they were led in the morning 
 by a subterranean passage to the mines, and back again 
 at night. Thus they literally never saw the light of 
 day ; after a few years their health failed, the poisonous 
 vapors nestled in their system, and they died, hailing 
 the King of Terrors as a welcome friend. This cruelty 
 drove them at last to despair : in the beginning of the 
 last century they set the wood-work, which then lined 
 the mines throughout, on fire, and thus made them inac- 
 cessible for years. Now, none but skilled laborers are 
 employed, who work only six hours a day, and are well 
 paid. Yet they also soon succumb, for the air is so 
 deadly that no animals live down there, not even spiders ; 
 and the rats, who alone were able to resist the vapors, 
 have disappeared since the last fire. 
 
 The scene below is beautiful. Where the work is 
 going on, vast masses of cinnabar, dark-red and spark- 
 ling with unearthly splendor, hang on the walls ; here 
 and there crystals of marvellous beauty shine from 
 between the dark rocks, and in many places cavities and 
 crevices are filled with the pure metal ; so that, under 
 the miner's tool, as the rock breaks asunder, silvery 
 drops as large as a pigeon's egg suddenly roll forth, and, 
 leaping on the ground, fall into a shower of resplendent 
 beauty. The ore is subsequently distilled by means of 
 enormous fires, for which prodigal Nature furnishes 
 bountifully the material ; for all the mountains around, 
 
324. WONDEKS or THE DEEP. 
 
 for miles and miles, are covered with a cistus, an ever- 
 green shrub, which, at the proper season, covers the 
 country with a carpet of white, and whose resinous 
 branches burn with a heat equal to that of the best coal. 
 
 The richest of all regions, however, is the youngest 
 California. Here, where Nature seems to have scattered 
 with unlimited liberality her greatest treasures broadcast 
 over the land, vast stores of mercury are found, the most 
 important, if not the most valuable of the mineral pro- 
 ducts of this wonderful country. To the four mines, 
 which already produced more quicksilver than all other 
 countries together, there have quite recently been added 
 two new ones, in Chapman Valley and Pope Valley, 
 which give promise of a vast increase of the wealth of 
 California, and have completely changed the commerce 
 of the world. Formerly, mercury was exported from 
 Europe ; now, America is not only independent, but actu- 
 ally sends it back to the Old World, and enables men 
 there, as well as in Peru, to work even the poorest of 
 silver ores. Thus silver, which had remained behind 
 gold, since the great discoveries in California, Australia, 
 and Asiatic Russia, can now be obtained again in larger 
 quantities, and, thanks to the new supplies from the Pa- 
 cificj the balance is likely to be restored. 
 
 If we ask, finally, what use man makes of the wonder- 
 ful metal, so beautiful in appearance, so deadly in its 
 effects, and so highly valued for its services, we find it 
 nowhere employed for itself, like the more precious met- 
 
MEECUEY. 325 
 
 als, but an invaluable aid to man in various ways. Its 
 very dangers are converted into healing powers, and, as 
 calomel, it is used with surpassing effect, either directly, 
 mixed as in bitter irony with tender roseleaves, or in 
 numerous combinations with other substances. As cor- 
 rosive sublimate, it enters into countless salves of more 
 doubtful usefulness ; and as mercury itself, it is infused 
 into anatomical preparations, to preserve them for pur- 
 poses of study. No chemical laboratory can, of course, 
 dispense with its valuable services, were it only in the 
 form of a bath, to catch gases. The manufacturer 
 employs it largely for dyeing and similar purposes, and 
 the man of science learns to value it as a friend above 
 all others in the thermometer and barometer. He 
 wanted to measure that imponderable and yet univer- 
 sally present substance, heat ; and quicksilver willingly 
 helped him, because of its exquisite susceptibility, and 
 the readiness of expansion which it alone could show, as 
 the only fluid-metal on earth. Man wanted to weigh the 
 very air he breathes, and quicksilver again offered to do 
 it, as no other fluid is so heavy, and a column of twenty- 
 eight inches of mercury suffices to show what water 
 could have done only in a tube of thirty-two feet. By 
 the aid of these instruments, man can now measure the 
 warmth of his room as well as that of whole zones ; he 
 can adapt the temperature of his bath to his wants, and 
 of vast buildings to purposes of brewing and distilling. 
 The mercury aids him in measuring the height of moun- 
 
326 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 tains, and warns him of approaching storms ; it counsels 
 him in his work in the fields, and on his voyages over 
 the oceans ; it aids the engineer in his levelling, and the 
 philosopher in his subtlest researches. 
 
 In other cases it is mixed with sulphur to make artifi- 
 cial cinnabar, and immense quantities of mercury are an- 
 nually consumed for this purpose. It is ground to ex- 
 treme fineness, and then comes into the market as ver- 
 million, which is highly valued in the arts as a pigment 
 for the purity and permanency of its tint. But by far 
 the largest proportion of all the mercury found on our 
 globe is sent by man in search of the precious metals, 
 which force cannot bring forth from their hidden recesses, 
 and which now, with the aid of the alluring powers of 
 quicksilver, are tempted to the light by its gentle per- 
 suasive power. For it possesses a truly wondrous power 
 to compel gold and silver to leave their natural form, 
 and to combine with itself; and hence the poorest ores, 
 which by no process of beating and heating can be made 
 to surrender the treasures they hold, are covered with 
 mercury, and behold, the insidious friend winds its way 
 into every chink and crevice, and licks up the precious 
 metal wherever it can be found. Then the whole mass 
 is exposed to a fierce heat, the volatile mercury is forced 
 to surrender its prey ; it rises in vapor and smoke, and 
 leaves the glittering gold and silver in almost perfect pu- 
 rity behind. The same process of amalgamation leads to 
 gilding, for here also a mixture of gold and mercury is 
 
MERCURY. 327 
 
 put on silver, copper, or brass, and the metal is then 
 heated ; the mercury again escapes, and the gold remains 
 firmly fastened to the inferior metal, which is said to be 
 " fire-gilt." The process is obnoxious on account of the 
 injurious vapors which it devolves, and largely superseded 
 by the galvanic method, which is safer and cheaper ; but 
 the gilding wears off sooner. Not less beautiful is the 
 method by which mercury serves to make mirrors. Tin- 
 foil is spread on a hot slate-plate, the quicksilver poured 
 on it, and then the plate of glass pressed carefully under 
 the surface of the mercury, so as to avoid the particles 
 of dust which always settle there. The glass is then 
 heavily weighted, the quicksilver runs off in glittering 
 rills, and the mirror is perfect. But here also the danger 
 has driven man's ingenuity to rid himself of the beauti- 
 ful vassal, with the fair face and the fatal poison behind 
 it, and nowadays mirrors are simply silvered. 
 
xn. 
 THE EAETH IN TEOUBLE. 
 
 ** Thou sure and finest earth." SHAKESPKAKB. 
 
 HHHERE is no mistake about it ; our mother Earth is in 
 serious trouble, and her wisest children are at a loss 
 how to account for her sudden restlessness. There are 
 all the signs of feverish excitement great heat, strange 
 utterances, and violent convulsions. A summer so hot 
 as to become unusually destructive to human life has 
 been followed by an unnaturally mild winter all through 
 the temperate zone of the globe, and even the instincts 
 of the brute creation seem to have been at fault for once. 
 Terrific upheavings have terrified man, now breaking 
 forth through the craters of active volcanoes, and now 
 raising huge portions of firm land by fearful earthquakes. 
 Is it a wonder that when our mother Earth is so evidently 
 in trouble, her children also should be sorely troubled, 
 and thoughtful minds should look once more for the 
 speedy coming of the end of all things ? When the 
 Apostles themselves expected to witness the coming of 
 
THE EAKTH m TROUBLE. 329 
 
 the Lord, and a Luther could firmly believe in the near 
 approach of the Last Judgment, we may well bear pa- 
 tiently with credulous Millerites, sitting in their white 
 robes high up on broad branching trees to ascend the 
 more promptly to heaven, and with all the sorrowful 
 minds who in our day yearn, with the whole groaning 
 creation, for speedy redemption ! 
 
 Nor can we withhold our sympathy from those who 
 describe, with feelings of indelible awe, what they suf- 
 fered at the time of their first experience of an earth- 
 quake. While a bright sky and brilliant sunshine are 
 flooding the exuberant beauty of a tropical landscape 
 with gorgeous lights, and all Nature seems to enjoy in 
 perfect peace the luxury of happy existence, they sud- 
 denly feel rather than hear a low, rumbling noise, which 
 seems to rise from the very lowest depths of the earth. 
 And all living beings, men as well as animals, are of a 
 sudden filled with a strange anticipation of evil coming, 
 vague, but sickening, and unconquerable by any effort of 
 will. Before the mind can well judge of the strange and 
 unwonted sensation, there comes long, subterranean 
 thundering, clap upon clap, rolling nearer and nearer, 
 and at each successive shock the heavens and the earth 
 seem alike to shudder at the fearful approach of an un- 
 known power. Everything is shaken to the foundation ; 
 glasses and crockery-ware sound as if frolicking spirits 
 were playing with them ; bells are set ringing by invisi- 
 ble hands, doors open by themselves, and no one enters, 
 
330 WOKDEES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 the houses begin to groan and to crack in all their joints, 
 and lean, like drunken men, first to one, and then to the 
 other side. Tall steeples sway giddily to and fro, and 
 lofty arches in cathedrals and churches press out the key- 
 stone and come crashing down, burying thousands of ter- 
 rified men, who had come to the sacred building to in- 
 voke help from on high, when all upon earth had left 
 them helpless. All who can escape rush forth from be- 
 neath treacherous roofs, but out there it feels as if even 
 " heaven's vault should crack ; " the danger is not over, 
 for the very soil beneath their feet swells and sinks like 
 the waves of the sea, huge chasms open here and there, 
 and dark abysses swallow old and young, rich and poor, 
 without distinction and without mercy. 
 
 At last the soil begins to subside into the wonted quiet, 
 and at the same moment, a tall, conical mountain some- 
 times in sight of the panic-struck multitude, and some- 
 times at a distance of hundreds of miles opens a wide, 
 gaping mouth near the summit, and a power, which hu- 
 man ingenuity has as yet found no standard to measure, 
 sends forth a magnificent bunch of bright flames, mingled 
 in strange anomaly with streaming vapors, rocks ground 
 to atoms till they resemble ashes, and vast masses of a 
 glowing substance, which are flung, jet after jet, till they 
 seem to reach the welkin. And, high up in the air, the 
 fiery bouquet, grandly beautiful in spite of its terrific na- 
 ture, spreads out into an immense canopy, an ocean of 
 clouds dark above, but shining in incomparable splendor 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 331 
 
 below, where the fire from the crater illumines it in rich- 
 est glory, while flashes of lightning play unceasingly to 
 and fro, and the half molten rocks rain down upon the 
 earth, bursting and breaking like masses of brittle dusky 
 glass. At the same time a torrent of ashes falls like a 
 burning rain of withering fire upon the wretched land- 
 scape, and in an instant the whole region, for miles and 
 miles all around, is covered with a weird shroud and 
 sinks for ages into death-like stillness ! 
 
 But troubled Nature has not exhausted the efforts yet, 
 by which she seeks relief from the mysterious suffering 
 which she seems to undergo in the dark recesses of the 
 earth. From the crater's brink, or from a sudden open- 
 ing in the sides of the mountain, there comes gushing 
 forth a broad stream of fiery lava, and hurries, as in 
 furious madness, down the steep sides, carrying the 
 torch of destruction to the forests, which in a moment 
 flare up in a bright blaze, to fertile fields, changing 
 them instantly from lovely pictures of peace and promise 
 into desolate deserts, to lofty walls and solid mansions, 
 which crumble and fall at the magic touch, never to 
 rise again, and finally to the silent sea, into which it rolls 
 its fiery waves with a fearful hissing and screeching, 
 bringing even here death and destruction to all that lives 
 and moves in the life-teeming waters. 
 
 And, as if the measure of horrors was not full yet, and 
 overburdened Nature must give vent in new forms to 
 its unbearable burden, the heavens darken, till night 
 
332 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 covers the earth, and a deluge of waters descend in vast 
 sheets, flooding the fields that had barely begun to 
 breathe once more freely, and mingling in horrible friend- 
 ship with the masses of black ashes, so that the dark 
 hideous slime rolls in slow, but irresistible waves, over 
 town and village, and fills cellars and rooms and streets 
 and the very temples of the gods with its death-bringing 
 horror. And not unfrequently the sea rushes up to meet 
 in fatal embrace the waters from the clouds ; trembling 
 under the weird excitement and coming up in fierce, 
 spasmodic jerks as the convulsions of the volcano near- 
 by shake it with sympathetic violence, it breaks down 
 the ancient landmarks that have held it in bounds for 
 countless ages, and retreating after a while with over- 
 whelming violence, it bears the few survivors from the 
 fury of fire into the fatal abyss of the ocean. 
 
 Amid such horrors the bravest of men loses heart, and 
 with all his heaven-appointed powers he feels like a 
 helpless infant. The brutes of the forest, the lion and the 
 panther, forget their nature, and come from their dark 
 dens to join in strange, new-born friendship, the flocks 
 of peaceful cattle, and to seek with them, driven by an 
 irresistible instinct, the shelter of human habitations 
 and the protection of man. Eagles and vultures come 
 down from their unseen paths in the clouds and their 
 lofty eyries, and sit, marvelling and trembling, by the 
 side of pigeons and common fowls in paradisaical peace. 
 
 It is this uniq'Ue and uncontrollable sensation, felt 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 333 
 
 when the material world makes for a moment its full 
 dominion known, and claims our earth-born nature as its 
 own, which has, no doubt, led, from of old, to the almost 
 unvarying creed of men, that the world will come to an 
 end by fire. The Chaldaeans, it is true, coupled the 
 power of water with that of the burning element, and 
 believed that the world would be destroyed by fire, when 
 all the stars should meet in the constellation of Cancer, 
 and once more by water when they meet in the con- 
 stellation of Capricorn. The Parsees, worshippers of fire, 
 have a similar doctrine, according to which the world will 
 last twelve thousand years, after which Ahriman, the Evil 
 Spirit, will set it on fire by means of a comet, and, after 
 a thorough purification, re-create it with Ormuzd, the 
 Spirit of Good. Even the Orphic poems, of which noth- 
 ing is left beyond a few quotations and allusions, are said 
 to have sung of the end of winter in a great deluge, and 
 of the end of the world's summer in a great conflagra- 
 tion. It is well known, on the other hand, that the Mo- 
 saic Genesis, based, perhaps, largely upon the impression 
 produced by the annual inundations of the Nile, admits 
 of only one creative principle, that of water, which 
 " brought forth " all things living but man, and hence 
 laid the foundation of that system which is still warmly 
 defended by the Neptunists of our day. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how, in a similar manner, 
 the Greek Ileraclitus drew his views from his observation 
 of volcanic symptoms, and based upon them his theory, 
 
334: WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 that the world not only owed its origin to fire, but was 
 to be periodically purified and renewed by vast conflagra- 
 tions. Fire was, to him, the only unchanging and 
 everlasting element, and to its benign influences he was 
 disposed to ascribe all that befalls our globe under the 
 direction of relentless Fate. 
 
 Nor can it be doubted that the same impression led 
 originally to the almost sublime conceptions of the lower 
 regions, which we find in Hellenic legends. It is well 
 known that they placed their Tartarus far down in the 
 bowels of the earth, and represented it as an enormous 
 abyss filled with eternal fire. The very position of the 
 entrance to this lower world, in Southern Italy, points to 
 that connection, as the active volcanoes of that region 
 had, no doubt, originally suggested the whole concep- 
 tion. Far down, below those favored plains, they im- 
 agined the realm of Pluto, and looked upon Mount 
 Vesuvius and Mount Etna as the colossal chimneys, 
 giving vent to the smoke of the fire at which the Cyclops 
 were forever busy forging the lightnings of Jupiter. 
 How deeply rooted these fantastic and yet beautiful no- 
 tions were in the minds of nations, we may judge from 
 the fact that two hundred years after the rise of our 
 faith the Roman historian, Dion Cassius, could still 
 soberly speak of enormous giants rising from Mount 
 Vesuvius, and scattering, amid the appalling sound of 
 infernal trumpets, ashes and rocks over the blooming 
 fields of Campania and the fair cities of Pompeii and 
 
THE EAETH ra TROUBLE. 335 
 
 Herculaneum ! Our own Christian faith, finally, teaches 
 us of the final destruction of our globe by the same ter- 
 rible agent, when " the heavens shall pass away with a 
 great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent 
 heat ; the earth also, and all the works therein, shall be 
 burned up." 
 
 If it is strange to see how universal this fire worship 
 is, which ascribes to this element, above all others, the 
 power to create and to destroy our world, it is not less 
 striking to observe to what eccentric views the same 
 conviction has led both ancient and modern inquirers. 
 Thus Aristotle even was fond of imagining that the earth 
 might be a living being, which changed like man on the 
 surface, only at much longer intervals. He knew per- 
 fectly well that certain portions of land would gradually 
 be covered with water, while parts of the sea would be 
 laid bare and change into fertile lands ; he knew equally 
 well the origin of volcanic islands, and describes correctly 
 the sudden rise of Hiera, in the Pontus, which was born 
 amid a fearful upheaving of the earth, its bursting open 
 in the shape of a great crater, and the subsequent lifting 
 up of a high mountain. All these phenomena were, to 
 him, evidence of the inner life of the earth, which, he 
 thought, manifested itself mainly by fire. Strabo went 
 even beyond him, and while ascribing, with his illustrious 
 predecessor, all earthquakes to the efforts made by 
 masses of heated air within te break through the crust 
 of the earth, he discerned the correct origin of the great 
 
336 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 changes on the surface, and, for instance, saw in Sicily 
 only a portion of the main land, which had been detached 
 from it by a violent volcanic upheaving. 
 
 The Romans did nothing for the better knowledge of 
 Nature; their thoughts were exclusively given to the 
 Empire, and social problems monopolized their attention. 
 For centuries, therefore, natural science made no progress, 
 and earthquakes were readily ascribed to rebellions in 
 the demon world below, and volcanic eruptions to the 
 impatience of chained spirits. Then came the rule of 
 Neptune, when Vulcan was dethroned for a time, and 
 all the great symptoms of life, which our mother Earth 
 gives forth from time to time, were explained by the 
 agency of water. Descartes was the first philosopher 
 bold enough to leave the beaten track, and to plead once 
 more the cause of fire ; he openly declared his conviction, 
 that the earth had once been a fiery meteor, like so many 
 others, fragments of that original solid matter which had 
 been set in furious motion by an Almighty hand, and 
 when heated by the terrible velocity with which it re- 
 volved in infinite space, divided into suns and stars. 
 His doctrine was, that the crust of the earth had after- 
 wards gradually cooled off, but that in the interior there 
 was still a vast central fire, which every now and then 
 spontaneously bursts forth in eruptions and earthquakes. 
 
 The greater philosophers of later ages followed in the 
 wake of Descartes, without adding strength to his argu- 
 ments or facts to support his theory ; it was only when 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 337 
 
 the three great naturalists, Pallas, Saussure, and Wer- 
 ner, collected a number of carefully-made observations, 
 that speculation was changed into conviction, and bril- 
 liant suggestions were tried and proved in the alembic 
 of stern logic. 
 
 They did not change the original theory, but established 
 it on a solid basis. They found, what we still believe, 
 that the sea of liquid fire beneath the thin crust of the 
 earth, on which we dwell with fancied security, is in a 
 state of perpetual excitements, and hence continually 
 presses or rises against the surface. When it touches it, 
 we have an earthquake ; when it is sufficiently excited 
 to break through the crust, it forms a volcano. 
 
 According to the most recent theories, however, an- 
 other new element has been added to these explanations 
 of the inner life of our earth. We have learnt that it is 
 not fire simply, which produces the agitations, but the 
 same power which raises the waters of the ocean at regu- 
 lar intervals. It is well known that the tides are the ef- 
 fect of the attraction exercised by sun and moon, and that 
 they are highest in the form of spring tides, when sun and 
 moon combine to attract the waters. It is believed, now, 
 that the liquid matter in the interior of the earth obeys the 
 same laws of attraction, and rises and falls with the outer 
 liquid, as the crust of the earth is, relatively speaking, a 
 mere thin covering, unable seriously to diminish, much 
 less to check, the powers of attraction exercised by the 
 two great heavenly bodies. This view is confirmed by 
 
338 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 the fact that earthquakes are most frequent when the 
 tides are highest. Volcanic eruptions are, of course, 
 effects of the same commotion below; they only save 
 vast regions of land and water from being thus con- 
 vulsed, by offering an open vent to the gases developed 
 below. 
 
 All this newly acquired knowledge, however, does not 
 yet help us to avert the fearful destruction which generally 
 follows the outbreaks of the hidden power within the 
 earth. In vain do we. pee vast plains laid waste forever 
 by the death-bringing substances ejected from hideous 
 mud-volcanoes ; in vain do towering mountains rise where 
 formerly the eye swept over level lands as far as it could 
 reach ; in vain, even, do we descend to towns which once 
 overflowed with life and exulted in their splendor, and 
 which now are sad and silent, buried for ages and ages 
 below the surface of the earth. At each new return of 
 the terrible calamities attendant on such convulsions, we 
 stand anew aghast, and feel how utterly helpless we are, 
 how -utterly ignorant even of Him who " laid the foun- 
 dations of the earth," and who alone knows " whereupon 
 are the foundations thereof fastened, or who 1-aid the cor- 
 ner-stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, 
 and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
 So we have felt again during the present year. For 
 our mother Earth has been in great trouble during the 
 last twelve months, and perhaps it may not be amiss 
 briefly to record here the symptoms which make us aware 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 339 
 
 of the terrible commotion which has apparently destroyed 
 the peace ordinarily reigning within our globe. 
 
 Earthquakes have taken place in the West Indies and 
 in South America, such as belong to the most terrific 
 catastrophes recorded in the annals of the earth's his- 
 tory. Since the day on which Lisbon was swallowed up 
 with thousands of helpless victims, and the calamity at 
 Lima in 1746, since the South American coasts were de- 
 vastated in 1797, and Caracas was utterly destroyed in 
 1812, no such overwhelming misfortune has befallen that 
 doomed locality. 
 
 The air, we are told, had been for several days so hot 
 and oppressive that experienced natives foretold a vol- 
 canic eruption. On the 16th of August (1868) news was 
 received in Valparaiso, that in several ports of Chili the 
 sea had risen and overwhelmed the coast for fifteen miles, 
 so as to wash away houses and magazines, and to land ves- 
 sels high and dry far inland. Three days before the earth 
 had begun to heave, and regular earthquakes had taken 
 place at Callao, returning at intervals of five minutes. 
 Enormous crevices opened, houses fell, churches crum- 
 bled to pieces, and men and brutes alike were frightened 
 by the unseen enemy. The whole West coast, as far as 
 high up in Peru, was thus shaken, and at various places 
 the sea had made inroads upon the firm land. At the 
 very first shock a number of towns in the interior were 
 levelled with the ground, and ancient cathedrals, that had 
 stood like unchangeable landmarks for hundreds of years, 
 
340 WONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 were changed into heaps of ruins and rubbish. More 
 than thirty thousand human beings perished in a day, 
 and the loss in material and merchandise is beyond all 
 calculation. An enormous spring tide followed the earth- 
 quake, and overwhelming the frail bulwarks of a low 
 coast, flooded the land far into the interior. Large ves- 
 sels were thrown from their anchorage, and landed far 
 up the country. A second gigantic wave, stretching a 
 hundred miles north and south, rose from the ocean, and 
 fell with crushing power upon the ill-fated coast. Three 
 war steamers were thus destroyed at Arica alone ; among 
 these our own ships, the " Wateree" and the "Fredonia," 
 the latter with nearly every soul on board. An English 
 steamer, the " Santiago," escaped by a marvel. She was 
 apparently secure, riding on two powerful anchors ; but 
 suddenly a concussion was felt, which made the large 
 ship twist and turn as if she were made of India rubber. 
 All the passengers were tossed up to the height of two 
 feet, and then fell flat down ; at the same moment the 
 heavy cables snapped as if they were thin wires, and the 
 vessel was swept by a receding wave into the sea. For- 
 tunately, they had steam up, and tried to gain the offing ; 
 but the next moment a second wave came, and drove her 
 irresistibly towards the rocky shore. All faces were 
 deadly pale, and the captain gave up all hope. But oh, 
 wonder ! the wave lifted the ship high up, and safely car- 
 ried her on her gigantic shoulders across the rocky bar- 
 rier, letting her gently down into an adjoining bay, from 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 341 
 
 which she could subsequently escape into the open sea ! 
 Where the town of Chala stood, the ocean now floats 
 heavy vessels, and Iquique was destroyed first by an 
 earthquake, which lasted uninterruptedly for four minutes, 
 and then by a wave of sixty feet height, which suddenly 
 approached the land like a solid wall, and then fell, 
 crushing all that it found in its way, together with more 
 than a hundred men. Arica was so utterly destroyed, 
 that even the places where certain prominent houses had 
 stood could no more be found ; and the unfettered fury 
 of the waves had lifted up heavy guns, and borne them 
 scornfully from an island battery, far out at sea, to distant 
 inland hills. But the concussion itself extended far be- 
 yond the usual limits. Most powerful, as was natural, 
 in the centre of the commotion, the volcanic region near 
 Arequipas, where the famous group of snow-covered vol- 
 canoes form so striking a feature of the landscape, it was 
 felt for a distance of six hundred miles, both of latitude 
 and of longitude. Electric lights were seen in the air at 
 different places an entirely new phenomenon, not hither- 
 to observed in connection with such events and even 
 the famous Tambo d'Apo, a house of refuge on the very 
 summit of the Cordilleras, was so violently shaken as to 
 crumble into dust. 
 
 It appears, however, upon a careful sifting of the evi- 
 dence, that, after all, the earthquake itself did less harm 
 than the sea. The enormous waves, which disobeyed the 
 command, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and 
 
342 "VVONDEKS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 here shall thy proud waves be stayed ! " carried utter 
 destruction wherever they touched man, or the work of 
 man. Houses and churches, fields and forests, all were 
 literally swept away, islands disappeared, mountains were 
 levelled, and dire desolation imprinted on the scene of 
 abundant prosperity. But the worst was, as ever, the 
 passion of man, unchained at a moment when the fury 
 of the elements seemed likewise to be unfettered. Acci- 
 dent in some cases, fell purpose in many more, set fire to 
 buildings, and soon large portions of the doomed towns 
 were ravaged by fire and water alike ! The excited pop- 
 ulace fell with savage eagerness upon the stores of liquor 
 exposed in cellars and warehouses, and soon hell itself 
 seemed to be let loose. The scenes enacted in some of 
 the unfortunate towns are beyond the powers of descrip- 
 tion ; men beastly drunk lay by the side of those they 
 had murdered, and the demoniac powers of the earth, 
 set free by an unknown hand for a moment, seemed to 
 have roused with fearful success the demoniac instincts 
 in the heart of man. 
 
 These terrible occurrences were soon followed by simi- 
 lar calamities in the northern part of our Continent. An 
 enormous spring tide, on the 15th of August, terrified 
 the people on the Californian coast, rising to a height of 
 over sixty feet, and washing away fields and gardens for 
 miles. The earthquakes of Peru seemed gradually to 
 have worked their way northward ; for in the middle of 
 October heavy commotions were felt, and on the twenty- 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 343 
 
 first a violent earthquake shook San Francisco. The 
 eastern part of the city was sorely tried ; many houses 
 fell, others cracked from the foundation to the roof, and 
 hardly one could be found that had not suffered some in- 
 jury. As the shocks continued, all business was sus- 
 pended, and a few cases of death soon caused universal 
 consternation. Half of the population ran into the 
 streets, but here also danger and death even lay in 
 waiting ; for in several districts the earth opened, and 
 jets of water leaped up to a height of several feet, while 
 in other places the ground suddenly sank several inches. 
 All the clocks stopped at the moment of the first shock, 
 and the telegraphic wires were so much injured that no 
 communication could be had for some time. The City 
 Hall was a complete ruin ; the courts could not sit, and 
 the prisoners were sent to the county jail ; the patients 
 at the navy hospitals had to be removed, and the Mint 
 was closed, until it could be fully repaired. Here, also, the 
 shocks extended to a very unusual distance far inland ; 
 and as they were felt at sea by sailors, who for a moment 
 thought the vessel had touched a submarine rock, so they 
 amazed miners in the interior, who expressed naively 
 their indignation at such ' ; indecent behavior of the old 
 Earth." 
 
 The Pacific Ocean had a large share of the fearful 
 commotion which caused such sad destruction on the 
 adjoining Continent. Already in March a hundred 
 earthquake shocks had been felt in the volcanic island of 
 
344 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Hawaii, connected with an unusually violent eruption of 
 the far-famed Mauna Loa. Here also the earth opened 
 in many places, and a tidal wave, sixty feet high, rose 
 over the tops of lofty cocoa trees, and swept houses and 
 gardens, cattle and human beings before it with irresisti- 
 ble violence. A terrible shock prostrated houses and 
 churches, while the crater of the great volcano was 
 vomiting fire, rocks, and lava, and a river of red-hot lava 
 flowed for nearly six- miles to the sea, destroying every- 
 thing before it, and forming a new island far out in the 
 ocean. In April, still more violent shocks occurred, 
 during which the swinging motion of the earth was so 
 dreadful that no person could stand, and old and young 
 were made deadly sick. At the same time tall hills 
 were upheaved, and the tops detached, being thrown 
 down into the valleys below, while out at sea new islands 
 arose, several hundred feet high, and emitted for days a 
 column of steam and smoke. 
 
 A few months before similar phenomena had been 
 noticed in British East India. Earthquakes were felt, 
 though only slightly, in various districts of the northern 
 provinces, and what was most curious, they seemed to be 
 strictly limited to a narrow line running northeastward. 
 In one region, near Chindwana, an entirely new feature 
 was superadded to the more familiar horrors of such 
 catastrophes. Each shock was preceded by a heavy 
 detonation, as if a whole park of artillery had been prac- 
 ticing in the neighborhood. Special agents were de- 
 
THE EAETH ra TROUBLE. 345 
 
 spatched to observe the phenomenon, which the natives 
 had reported for several months already, and they heard 
 the same noise, and felt immediately afterwards the usual 
 vertigo produced by slighter earthquakes. 
 
 Europe has escaped these disasters, with the exception 
 of such slight shocks as were felt, at intervals, in the 
 United States also, but without producing any other 
 impression than that of a very unusual state of commo- 
 tion in the interior of the earth. Premonitory symp- 
 toms had shown themselves already in the preceding 
 year (1866) in the Azores, when violent earthquakes 
 shook the islands, and the sea rose, between Terceira 
 and Graicoas, amid terrific detonations, and cast up jets 
 of water to an enormous height. In June, stones began 
 to be mingled with the vapors, and the amazed specta- 
 tors beheld the ocean in commotion, throwing up enor- 
 mous blocks of stone amid dense vapors, and emitting so 
 strong a sulphurous odor that it could be borne only 
 with great difficulty near the shore. It is probable that 
 the old world was saved the fatal effects of violent 
 earthquakes by the readiness of Mt. Vesuvius to give 
 egress to the rebellious powers from below. The an- 
 cient volcano had, early in the year 1868, already given 
 signs of increased activity, and whilst the flow of lava 
 had ceased, the last-formed cone began to give out thick 
 black clouds of smoke, in which brilliantly glowing 
 masses of rock were occasionally seen. On the first day 
 
 of October the marvellously ingenious instruments de- 
 15* 
 
346 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 vised by Lament, began to indicate a disturbance below 
 the soil, and a displacement of the surface, and the vol- 
 cano became noisier than before. A small cone opened 
 next, at the side, from the summit to the base, and lava 
 issued forth, covering the former summit of Vesuvius. 
 It was here, for the first time, that the renowned director 
 of the Seis observatory, Palmieri, observed the periodic 
 nature of these volcanic eruptions. Each day the lava 
 would cease to flow at certain hours, and begin anew 
 after a short interval ; twice a day, also, the active cone 
 would make an increased noise, and throw out its pro- 
 jectiles with greater violence. The correspondence thus 
 shown between the volcanic ebb and tide and that of the 
 sea was still further illustrated by other changes in the 
 flow of lava, by certain phenomena occurring at greater 
 intervals, which careful observation proved to take place 
 in unfailing sympathy with the motions of the moon. 
 
 In November, the mountain became highly excited. 
 The streams of lava grew to larger dimensions. It was 
 not, as is commonly imagined, a glowing, fluid mass, but 
 appeared like a stone wall, from twenty to thirty feet 
 high, consisting of vast blocks of stone, which were 
 partly black and partly glowing deep red, and this wall 
 was borne on high by the liquid, burning lava under- 
 neath, and pushed continually forward by the immense 
 weight of the fiery mass that issued forth from the cone. 
 Aided by the slope of the mountain side, it advanced 
 visibly some two or three feet a minute, threatening 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 347 
 
 death and destruction to all that stood in the way. A 
 traveller, Mr. Boernstein, gives an animated description 
 of a characteristic scene in its fearful progress. He had 
 ascended the mountain as far as the Casa del prete, the 
 priest's house, which was on the point of being over- 
 whelmed by the stream of lava, now nearly four hundred 
 feet wide, 
 
 It stood in the centre of a noble vineyard. The fur- 
 niture, and all that could be saved, had been carried 
 away ; the old priest, in a roundabout and shorts, with 
 nothing but his velvet skull-cap to designate him as a 
 priest, was hard at work, with the help of a few men, to 
 pull up the stakes to which the vines were fastened, in 
 order to save them at least for fuel. His black dog was 
 continually running towards the house, barking anxiously, 
 and then returning to his master, barking at him and 
 pulling at him, as if he wished to warn him against the 
 impending danger. For the terrible wall of hidden fire 
 was within a foot of the parsonage. It was empty and 
 deserted ; only a pet cat was sitting comfortably on the 
 sill of the upper story, to which an outer staircase gave 
 access. The priest had just cast a last sorrowful look at 
 his house, against the thick stone wall of which the lava 
 was slowly rising higher and higher, and in his heart was 
 bidding farewell to his home, where he had lived ever 
 since he had been a priest. His eye fell upon the cat. 
 " Save the poor creature ! " he cried, and one of the 
 men hastened up the steps ; but the cat, frightened by 
 
348 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 the strange face, ran swiftly into the house, and at the 
 same moment the stream of lava, overtopping the house 
 by several feet, fell over forward and poured a sea of 
 flames upon the flat roof. The man on the steps leaped 
 with a desperate effort to the ground ; the priest and the 
 by-standers crossed themselves ; thick, black clouds of 
 smoke poured forth from the windows ; and a few min- 
 utes later the whole stately building had vanished, and a 
 huge mass of glowing blocks of lava was steadily flow- 
 ing over the place, that knew it no more. 
 
 At night the stream presents a glorious sight. Dark 
 in broad daylight, it now appears an ocean of fire, slowly 
 advancing with irresistible power ; and from its waves, 
 as high as tall houses, there fall continually huge glow- 
 ing blocks with a fearful crash, and roll down the preci- 
 pices with terrific thunder. If it approaches a tree, 
 there is a moment's delay, and immediately the leaves, 
 dried by the fearful heat, blaze up like a thousand lights 
 on a huge Christmas tree ; then the trunk flares up in a 
 pillar of fire, and the crown sinks into the fiery sea. 
 From time to time the glowing mass of the lava stream 
 heaves and rises ; suddenly a loud explosion is heard, 
 and an immense column of bright fire shoots high up to 
 the heavens pent-up gases have freed themselves and 
 exploded in the fiery heat. Or the stream falls into a 
 well ; the water is instantly converted into steam, and a 
 white pillar of hissing vapor rises on high. 
 
 While Mount Vesuvius was thus relieving the Earth 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 349 
 
 in trouble, certain phenomena of smaller dimensions, but 
 perhaps of greater interest even, were engaging the 
 attention of the learned world. In the first days of the 
 year 1866 the inhabitants of Santorin, an island in the 
 Grecian Archipelago, had seen with amazement a part 
 of their bay converted into a sea of fire. It was not that 
 they had not witnessed the like before. Their own home 
 is the result of a sudden upheaving of the bottom of the 
 sea, and from time immemorial their bay has been the 
 scene of fantastic transformations. The ancients spoke 
 with awe of the strange changes that took place there 
 the island of Anaphi, now called Nanfi, rose at the bid- 
 ding of Apollo from the lowest deep ; Pliny mentions 
 fearful convulsions, which marked the year 19 of our era, 
 and ever since new islets have appeared and vanished 
 again in the adjoining waters. NOW, for nearly a year, 
 subterranean thunders had been heard, and at the time 
 mentioned tremendous explosions took place, red flames 
 rose to the height of ten and twenty feet from the sea 
 itself, and a few days later a new island ascended 
 slowly, and grew visibly from hour to hour. The sum- 
 mit had the shape of a cone, and threw out an unceasing 
 supply of stones, slime, and fire. During the following 
 days, more islets presented themselves, and finally joined 
 together, by means of the vast masses of half-fluid mate- 
 rial that continued to flow from the crater. These new 
 lands were nothing else but the summit of an immense 
 volcano, which rested with its base on the bottom of the 
 
c 
 
 350 WONDERS OF THE DEEP. 
 
 sea, while the summit, now for the first time, saw the 
 light of day. 
 
 The power of man to accustom himself to any and 
 every condition in which he finds himself placed, is 
 strikingly illustrated by the ten or twelve thousand in- 
 habitants of Santorin. For three years now they have 
 been living amid a continuous cannonade, surrounded 
 by a sea on fire, and a volcano before their eyes, which 
 does not cease day and night to throw out fiery projec- 
 tiles amid heavy detonations. Jets of vapor are sent up 
 to a height of five thousand feet, and a perpetual fire illu- 
 mines the top of Mount George I., as the new island has 
 since been called. Italian and Austrian engineers and 
 savans from other countries, have been sent there to 
 watch the extraordinary scene, and they report that the 
 new island has risen already to a height of nearly five 
 hundred feet, while it is still steadily increasing towards 
 Santorin. If the work continues at the same rate, the 
 little kingdom of Greece has found out a cheaper means 
 to increase its territory than the costly and dangerous 
 process of annexation. On the other hand, the appre- 
 hension has been expressed that in the bay of Santorin 
 the waters of the sea may be deep enough to come in 
 actual contact with the sea of fire in the interior of the 
 earth, and that a fearful catastrophe may yet prove the 
 old Greek doctrine of Hades and its horrors. 
 
 Whatever may be the true explanation of all these 
 grave disturbances on our planet, whether we ascribe 
 
THE EARTH IN TROUBLE. 351 
 
 them, with the Neptunists, to the ebullition of heated 
 waters, which seek an outlet, or with the Vulcanists, to 
 the efforts of a sea of fire to break through the thin crust, 
 arid to hasten the day of final destruction, we cannot 
 close our eyes to the fact that our mother Earth is evi- 
 dently in trouble. But let us not blame her if blooming 
 landscapes are laid waste, towns overthrown, and human 
 lives sacrificed by hecatombs. The loss is great, the 
 calamity appalling, but it is the price paid by a few for 
 the security of the race. If the craters of volcanoes did 
 not offer an opening to the pent-up vapors in the interior 
 of the earth, and allow the terrific power of confined 
 steam, with which we have of late become familiar in 
 making steam our servant, we would not be able to live 
 on the earth. They are, as already Alexander von Hum- 
 boldt asserted, the safety valves, which allow the steam 
 to escape, and the heated vapors within to regain their 
 equilibrium with the pressure of the atmosphere ; and it 
 is thanks to- them only, perhaps, we owe, that we are 
 enabled, by God's mercy, to enjoy our life on earth, 
 although we dwell on a thin, frail crust, over an ocean 
 of molten fire ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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First Volume Now Ready of the New Revised Edition of 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
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 EDITED BY PIERRE M. IRVING. 
 
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 " Nobody tells a story or an anecdote better than IRVING ; he 
 tells them here in great plenty, and they give a continual zest to the 
 curiosity which the prince of narrators excites and gratifies. The 
 work often reminds the English reader of BOSWELL, LOCKHART, 
 and MOORE spinning the threads of great men's lives by that happy 
 mixture of what they did with what they said. The noble writer, 
 whose generous hand has prepared for all succeeding ages the memo- 
 rials of COLUMBUS and GEORGE WASHINGTON, has found in his 
 nephew, Mr. PIERRE M. IRVING, a competent BOSWELL to embalm 
 his own fame. Second to no author of his time, in America or out 
 of it, and only to be named with that small band of leading spirits 
 who are the surviving symbols of a generation descending into history, 
 WASHINGTON IRVING, the great and amiable wit, has now taken his 
 place forever in the front line with SCOTT, BYRON, COOPER, MOORE, 
 and CHATEAUBRIAND. If after-times shall ever again produce his 
 match, it must be by studying such books as the witching ones he has 
 left for the amusement and instruction of his fellow-men." 
 
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