Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/24

8 through Stanley, have discovered a new world in the old, for them.

Much has been done on land—little on the other three-quarters of the earth's surface. But here America has laid the foundations of a new science,—the Geography of the Sea.

Our explorers have mapped out the surface of the ocean and discovered the great movements of the waters. They have traced the southward flow of the Arctic waters to temper the climate of the torrid zone. They have followed the northward set of the heated waters of the equator and have shown how they form those wonderful rivers of warm water that flow, without walls, through the colder waters of the sea, till they strike the western shores of Europe and America, and how they render habitable the almost Arctic countries of Great BritianGreat Britain [sic] and Alaska. They have even followed these warm currents further and shown how they penetrate the Arctic Ocean to lessen the rigors of the Arctic cold. Bravely, but vainly, have they sought for that ignis fatuus of explorers—the open polar sea—produced by the action of the warm waters from the south.

American explorers have sounded the depths of the ocean and discovered mountains and valleys beneath the waves. They have found the great plateaus on which the cables rest that bring us into instantaneous communication with the rest of the world. They have shown the probable existence of a vast submarine range of mountains, extending nearly the whole length of the Pacific Ocean—mountains so high that their summits rise above the surface to form islands and archipelagoes in the Pacific. And all this vast region of the earth, which, a few years ago, was considered uninhabitable on account of the great pressure, they have discovered to be teeming with life. From the depths of the ocean they have brought living things, whose lives were spent under conditions of such pressure that the elastic force of their own bodies burst them open before they could be brought to the surface; living creatures whose self-luminous spots supplied them with the light denied them in the deep abyss from which they sprang—abysses so deep that the powerful rays of the sun could only feebly penetrate to illuminate or warm.

The exploring vessels of our Fish Commission have discovered in the deep sea, in one single season, more forms of life than were found by the Challenger Expedition in a three years' cruise. Through their agency, we have studied the geographical