380 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



of deep-sea soundings along tlie telegraphic plateau. By that ex- 

 cellent work Lieutenant Dayman confirmed what, in February, 

 1854, 1 had told Professor Morse concerning this plateau."^ 



When the deep-sea soundings came to be studied under the 

 microscope, it was discovered that many of these little mites of 

 shells still retained in them the fleshy parts of their inhabitants ! 



This circumstance of shells with fleshy matter in them from the 

 bottom of the deep sea is one of the most beautiful and suggestive 

 facts that this new s}' stem of deep-sea soundings has revealed. 



We roam with it through the realms of conjecture, go a step 

 farther in this direction, and fancy that the sea embalms its dead 

 — that all the corpses which, with weights attached, have been 

 committed to the deep in blue water, are now standing on the 

 bottom, their lineaments and features as perfect as they were the 

 day their comrades were called to "bury the dead."f 



The projectors of the Atlantic Telegraph, having acted upon the 

 information derived from these researches concerning the bottom 

 and bed of the ocean, formed their company, and ordered their 

 cable, sought other information from the Observatory. I received 

 in March, 1857, a letter from Cyrus W. Field, asking, in behalf of 

 the company, for the best route and time for laying the cable. 

 Considering the practical difficulties of actually steering along an 

 arc of such a great circle as that which passes through the ends 

 of the Atlantic cable. Professor Hubbard was requested to com- 

 pute the perimeter of a polygon, described in such a manner that 

 every side between Yalentia and Trinity Bay should be trisected 

 by the arc of the great circle between the two ends of the cable, 

 and that a ship in steering along this perimeter should, to j^ass 

 from one side to the next, have to change her course but the quar- 

 ter of a point. Thus a polygonal route was given by which each 

 ship, by increasing her great-circle distance only three hundred 



* Vide Plate XI., now (1859) corrected accordingly. 



t When a person dies on board of a man-of-war, and is to be buried at sea, his 

 body is sewed up in his hammock, Avith one or two cannon balls secured to his feet. 

 When it is ready for the burial, it is placed on a plank at the gangway, and all 

 hands are mustered on deck by the boatswain's call to "bury the dead." After 

 reading the burial service, the plank is tilted, and the body slides off, feet foremost, 

 into the sea. In this position the body sinks, in this position it reaches the bottom, 

 and in this position it may remain, beyond the reach of decay, a perfect human form 

 for ages. 



