242 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



labours of those by whose energies these ameliorations 

 of our lot are made possible. It is not as if such 

 knowledge was hard to gain, superficially at any rate. 

 There are always with us a host of willing scribes to 

 make plain to us the labours of the workers ; but, alas 

 for us, the unutterable balderdash of low fiction, the 

 impossibilities of most of the modern novels, are more 

 to our taste, and, like the foolish dog, we reject the 

 substance for the flickering shadow, to our own ex- 

 ceeding detriment. 



All this, however, is but by way of preliminary, a 

 lengthy introduction to my subject. If we glance at 

 a chart of the North Atlantic Ocean we shall see a 

 series of irregular curves drawn along the lines of 

 soundings which have been obtained, partly by the 

 indefatigable labours of the surveyors for cable-laying 

 purposes, but more, much more by the work of the 

 various scientific expeditions which have been sent out 

 to examine as far as could be possible the irregularities 

 of the ocean bed. And it will at once become evident 

 to us how rough an approximation to the truth these 

 curves represent. Of course when near the various 

 shores the lines of soundings become very accurate, 

 having been fairly easily obtained owing to their 

 shallowness, and the nature of the bottom carefully 

 noted as an all-important guide to the mariner. But 

 soon after leaving the land these easy depths suddenly 

 become abysses, descending precipice-like from five or 

 six hundred feet to as many thousands, or, as in the 

 Bay of Biscay, to three times as many. For there it 

 will be seen that the submarine cable is stretched 

 across an abyss whose sides descend abruptly from a 

 depth of less than a thousand to one of from twelve to 



