Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/334

308 met would become detached, and the hook would bring up the specimen.

566. A plan of deep-sea sounding devised for the American navy.—The sea, with its myths, has suggested attractive themes to all people in all ages. Like the heavens, it affords an almost endless variety of subjects for pleasing and profitable contemplation, and there has remained in the human mind a longing to learn more of its wonders and to understand its mysteries. The Bible often alludes to them. Are they past finding out? How deep is it? and what is at the bottom of it? Could not the ingenuity and appliances of the age throw some light upon these questions? The government was liberal and enlightened; times seemed propitious; but when or how to begin, after all these failures, with this interesting problem, was one of the difficulties first to be overcome. It was a common opinion, derived chiefly from a supposed physical relation, that the depths of the sea are about equal to the heights of the mountains. But this conjecture was, at best, only a speculation. Though plausible, it did not satisfy. There were, in the depths of the sea, untold wonders and inexplicable mysteries. Therefore the contemplative mariner, as in mid-ocean he looked down upon its gentle bosom, continued to experience sentiments akin to those which fill the mind of the devout astronomer when, in the stillness of the night, he looks out upon the stars, and wonders. Nevertheless, the depths of the sea still remained as fathomless and as mysterious as the firmament above. Indeed, telescopes of huge proportions and of vast space-penetrating powers had been erected here and there by the munificence of individuals, and attempts made with them to gauge the heavens and sound out the regions of space. Could it be more difficult to sound out the sea than to gauge the blue ether and fathom the vaults of the sky? The result of the astronomical undertakings lies in the discovery that what, through other instruments of less power, appeared as clusters of stars, were, by these of larger powers, separated into groups, and what had been reported as nebulae, could now be resolved into clusters; that in certain directions, the abyss beyond these faint objects is decked with other nebulæ, which these great instruments may bring to light but cannot resolve; and that there are still regions and realms beyond which the rays of the brightest sun in the sky have neither the intensity nor the force to reach, much less to