18 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



only an imaginary line to separate its waters from that great 

 southern waste in which the tides are cradled. 



52. The young tidal wave, rising in the circumpolar seas of 

 Its tides. the south, rolls thence into the Atlantic, and in 12 

 hours after passing the parallel of Cape Horn, it is found pouring 

 its flood into the Bay of Fundy. 



63. The Atlantic is a deep ocean, and the middle its deepest 

 Its depths. part, therefore the more favorable (§ 13) to the 

 propagation of this wave. 



54. The Atlantic Ocean contrasts very strikingly with the Pa- 

 contrasted with the cific The grcatcst length of one lies east and west ; 

 ^*"^^- of the other, north and south. The currents of the 



Pacific are broad and sluggish, those of the Atlantic swift and 

 contracted. The Mozambique current, as it is called, has been 

 found by navigators in the South Pacific to be upward of 1600 

 miles wide — nearly as broad as the Gulf Stream is long. The 

 principal currents in the Atlantic run to and fro between the 

 equator and the Northern Ocean. In the Pacific they run be- 

 tween the equator and the southern seas. In the Atlantic the 

 tides are high, in the Pacific th'ey are low. The Pacific feeds the 

 clouds with vapors, and the rains feed the Atlantic with rivers. 

 If the volume of rain which is discharged into the Pacific and on 

 its slopes be represented by 1, that discharged upon the hydro- 

 graphical basin of the Atlantic would be represented by 5. The 

 Atlantic is crossed daily by steamers, the Pacific not once a year. 

 The Atlantic washes the shores of the- most powerful, intelligent, 

 and Christian nations ; but a pagan or a heathen people in the 

 countries to which the Pacific gives drainage are like the sands 

 upon its shores for multitude. The Atlantic is the most stormy 

 sea in the world, the Pacific the most tranquil. 



55. Among the many valuable discoveries to which these re- 

 The Telegraphic pia- scarchcs touchiug the physics of the sea have led, 

 *®*"' none perhaps is more interesting than the Tele- 



graphic Plateau of the Atlantic, and the fact that the bottom of 

 the deep sea is lined with its own dead, whose microscopic re- 

 mains are protected from the abrading action of its currents and 

 the violence of its waves by cushions of still water. 



