1 6 A WONDERER UNDER SEA 



Fear is still a dominant factor in most people's lives — 

 fear of sickness, of an employer, of public opinion — ^but 

 even the most ignorant member of so-called civilized so- 

 ciety has now an attitude of complacent patronage toward 

 the phenomena of the universe, quite unaffected by his 

 lack of any real knowledge. In the old days there were 

 fears worth having, reasons for an almost heroic terror. 

 Men believed in a vast, unfriendly world, filled with 

 vengeful, incomprehensible powers, and in a dark sea peo- 

 pled with insatiable Things, lurking at the edge of a horizon 

 beyond which were the sickening abysses of the unknow- 

 able. And so their ventures into that world, upon that 

 sea, were deeds of god-like bravery for which we pampered 

 moderns can furnish no comparison. The emphasis placed 

 by most historians on the fact that all the early voyages 

 were undertaken only for commercial reasons subtracts 

 nothing from their hazards. 



Oceanography may be called the most modern of sci- 

 ences, if by that word is meant the deep-sea researches of 

 biologist, chemist, and geologist. Although exploration of 

 the sea and speculation concerning it have been going 

 on for many centuries, it was literally a surface study 

 until recent times. In the interests of navigation men in- 

 vestigated currents and tides, mapped coasts and shoals, 

 and calculated the forces of the winds, but the wonders 

 and the mysteries of the deep constituted a problem that 

 was hardly approached until the eighteenth century. 

 Nevertheless, Carthaginian Hanno, urging his fearful 



