2 THE OCEAN FLOOR 



were altogether inadequate for measuring very far below 

 the surface. 



To our ancestors it was a source of astonishment, not 

 to say dismay, that the Creator in dividing our planet 

 between land and sea should have given an unfairly large 

 share to the barren ocean, as compared to the fruitful 

 continents on which we, his specially favored children, 

 have been allowed to dwell. This apparent dispropor- 

 tion gave rise to hopes of discovering a vast new conti- 

 nent in the southern hemisphere, a Terra Australis 

 (Figure 1), redressing the balance between land and 

 sea. A famous attempt to make this discovery was the 

 expedition to the Pacific Ocean sent out ( 1768-71 ) by 

 the British Admiralty under the command of Captain 

 James Cook, the greatest of all marine explorers.^ (In 

 setting Cook first, I pass over that remote countryman 

 of mine who during an inland voyage into North 

 America may have become responsible for the cele- 

 brated Kensington Stone, as well as that still remoter one 

 Erik Raude, who two centuries earlier happened to 

 discover "Vineland the Good.") 



Not even Captain Cook succeeded in finding the 

 vast Terra Australis in the South Seas, for the excellent 

 reason that it is not there; and geographers had to accept 

 the painful fact that the field of work reserved for 

 oceanographers is more than twice as large as their own, 

 occupying over 70 per cent of the planet's total surface. 



Viewed through a supertelescope by an extramun- 

 dane astronomer inhabiting, say, one of the outer 



