THE OCEAN, UNEXPLORED AND 

 UNEXPLORABLE 



AT first sight the title of this chapter may raise a 

 spirit of contradiction in the mind of the thoughtful 

 reader, who may well be forgiven for saying, " What 

 part of the ocean yet remains to be explored ? Has 

 not man traversed every sea open to the passage of a 

 vessel, and surveyed it too, so that we may buy for 

 a few shillings charts of the entire surface of the 

 watery world ? " Quite true ; but I speak of that un- 

 imaginably vast portion of the earth's surface which is 

 hidden by the ocean, into which the questing eye of 

 man can never penetrate, from which he is, and must 

 be for ever excluded, the depths of the sea. There is 

 no danger of giving offence to veteran oceanographers, 

 such as Sir John Murray and Sir Wyville Thomson, 

 by such a statement as this, for they, with the true 

 modesty which always marks your real scientist, would 

 be the first to admit that, in spite of the labours of 

 themselves and others, the marvels of the ocean-bed 

 and of the vast intermediate spaces of ocean between 

 its surface and its bottom still remain as mysterious 

 as ever. 



The depths of the sea ! The very phrase savours 

 of mystery, is as full of uncanny suggestions as is the 

 world of spirits to some minds. To think that in 



