The Ocean and its Wonders | Page 3

fertilising the soil,
replenishing rivers and lakes, penetrating the earth's deep caverns;
whence it bubbles up in the shape of springs, and, after having

gladdened the heart of man by driving his mills and causing his food to
grow, it finds its way again into the sea: and thus the good work goes
on with ceaseless regularity.
Water beats upon the rocks of the sea-shore until it pounds them into
sand, or rolls them into pebbles and boulders. It also sweeps the rich
soil from the mountains into the valleys. In the form of snow it clothes
the surface of the temperate and frigid zones with a warm mantle,
which preserves vegetable life from the killing frosts of winter. In the
form of ice it splits asunder the granite hills; and in the northern regions
it forms great glaciers, or masses of solidified snow, many miles in
extent, and many hundred feet thick. These glaciers descend by slow,
imperceptible degrees, to the sea; their edges break off and fall into it,
and, floating southward, sometimes in great mountainous masses, are
seen by man in the shape of icebergs. Frequently huge rocks, that have
fallen upon these glaciers from cliffs in the arctic regions, are carried
by them to other regions, and are deposited on flat beaches, far from
their native cliffs.
The saltness of the sea rendering it more dense, necessarily renders it
more buoyant, than fresh water. This is obviously a great advantage to
man in the matter of commerce. A ship does not sink so deep in the sea
as it does in a fresh-water lake; hence it can carry more cargo with
greater facility. It is easier to swim in salt than in fresh water.
The only disadvantage to commerce in the saltness of the sea is the
consequent unfitness of its water for drinking. Many and harrowing are
the accounts of instances in which sailors have been reduced to the
most terrible extremities for want of fresh water; and many a time,
since navigation began, have men been brought to feel the dread reality
of that condition which is so forcibly expressed in the poem of the
"Ancient Mariner":--
"Water, water everywhere, And not a drop to drink."
Science, however, at length enabled us to overcome this disadvantage
of saltness. By the process of distillation, men soon managed to procure
enough water at least to save their lives. One captain of a ship, by

accident, lost all his fresh water; and, before he could put into port to
replenish, a gale of wind, which lasted three weeks, drove him far out
to sea. He had no distilling apparatus on board, and it seemed as if all
hope of the crew escaping the most horrible of deaths were utterly
taken away. In this extremity the captain's inventive genius came to his
aid. He happened to have on board an old iron pitch-pot, with a wooden
cover. Using this as a boiler, a pipe made of a pewter plate, and a
wooden cask as a receiver, he set to work, filled the pot with sea water,
put an ounce of soap therein to assist in purifying it, and placed it on
the fire. When the pot began to boil, the steam passed through the pipe
into the cask, where it was condensed into water, minus the saline
particles, which, not being evaporable, were left behind in the pitch-pot.
In less than an hour a quart of fresh water was thus obtained; which,
though not very palatable, was sufficiently good to relieve the thirst of
the ship's crew. Many ships are now regularly supplied with apparatus
for distilling sea water; and on the African coasts and other unhealthy
stations, where water is bad, the men of our navy drink no other water
than that which is distilled from the sea.
The salts of the ocean have something to do with the creating of
oceanic currents; which, in their turn, have a powerful influence on
climates. They also retard evaporation to some extent, and have some
effect in giving to the sea its beautiful blue colour.
The ocean covers about two-thirds of the entire surface of the Earth. Its
depth has never been certainly ascertained; but from the numberless
experiments and attempts that have been made, we are warranted in
coming to the conclusion that it nowhere exceeds five miles in depth,
probably does not quite equal that. Professor Wyville Thompson
estimates the average depth of the sea at about two miles.
Of the three great oceans into which the sea is naturally divided--the
Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Arctic--the Atlantic is supposed to be the
deepest. There are profundities in its bosom which have never yet been
sounded, and probably never will be.
The difficulty of sounding great depths arises from