The Ocean and its Wonders | Page 5

course of years the inventions founded on the truth then discovered would result in the systematic driving of a fleet of floating palaces all round the world at the rate of from twelve to fifteen or twenty miles an hour! Instances of a similar kind might be multiplied without end. In like manner, deep-sea sounding may lead to great, as yet unimagined, results. Although yet in its infancy, it has already resulted in the discovery of a comparatively shallow plateau or ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, rising between Ireland and Newfoundland; a discovery which has been turned to practical account, inasmuch as the plateau has been chosen to be the bed of our electric telegraph between Europe and America. The first Atlantic cable was laid on it; and although that cable suffered many vicissitudes at first, as most contrivances do in their beginnings, communication between the two continents was successfully established. Soundings taken elsewhere showed that somewhat similar plateaus existed in other parts of the Atlantic, and now the whole of Western Europe is being bound more firmly, by additional cables, to the eastern seaboard of America.
This great and glorious achievement has been the result of the discovery of two truths,--of a truth in science on the one hand, and a truth in regard to the structure of the bed of the sea on the other. The study of electricity and of deep-sea soundings was begun and carried on for the sake of the discovery of truth alone, and without the most distant reference to the Atlantic Telegraph,--yet that telegraph has been one of the results of that study. Who can tell how many more shall follow? And even were no other result ever to follow, this one may prove to be of the most stupendous importance to the human race.
Another discovery that has been made by deep-sea sounding is, that the lowest depths of the ocean are always in a state of profound calm. Oceanic storms do not extend to the bottom. When the tempest is lashing the surface of the sea into a state of the most violent and tremendous agitation, the caverns of the deep are wrapped in perfect repose. This has been ascertained from the fact that in many places the bottom of the sea, as shown by the specimens brought up by Brooke's apparatus, and more recently by Professor Thompson's deep-sea dredge, is composed of exceedingly minute shells of marine insects. These shells, when examined by the microscope, are found to be unbroken and perfect, though so fragile that they must certainly have been broken to pieces had they ever been subjected to the influence of currents, or to the pulverising violence of waves. Hence the conclusion that the bottom of the sea is in a state of perpetual rest and placidity.
Indeed, when we think of it, we are led to conclude that this must necessarily be the case. There are, as we shall presently show, currents of vast size and enormous power constantly flowing through the ocean; and when we think of the tremendous power of running water to cut through the solid rock, as exemplified in the case of Niagara, and many other rivers, what would be the result of the action of currents in the sea, compared with which Niagara is but a tiny rivulet? Ocean currents, then, flow on a bed of still water, that protects the bottom of the sea from forces which, by calculation, we know would long ago have torn up the foundations of the deep, and would probably have destroyed the whole economy of nature, had not this beautiful arrangement been provided by the all-wise Creator.
CHAPTER THREE.
WAVES--SYSTEM IN ALL THINGS--VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE--ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTE--HEIGHT OF WAVES--DR. SCORESBY--SIZE, VELOCITY, AND AWFUL POWER OF WAVES--ANECDOTES REGARDING THEM--TIDES.
When a man stands on the deck of some tight-built ship, holding on to the weather bulwarks, and gazing with unphilosophic eye through the blinding spray at the fury of the tempest--by which the billows are made to roll around him like liquid mountains, and the ship is tossed beneath him like a mere chip, the sport and plaything of the raging waters--he is apt to think, should his thoughts turn in that direction at all, that all is unmitigated confusion; that the winds, which blew west yesterday and blow east to-day,--shifting, it may be, with gusty squalls, now here, now there, in chaotic fury,--are actuated by no laws, governed by no directing power.
Yet no thought could be more unphilosophical than this. Apart altogether from divine revelation, by which we are informed that "all deeps, fire, and hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are "fulfilling God's word" (which information we are bound to receive as a matter of faith if we be Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we