ITS IMMENSITY. 131 



leaving New Zealand on the right and Australia on 

 the left, over that coral sea, where the isles, though 

 they look thickly studded on our maps, are widely 

 enough separated by vast horizons, over the still 

 more desert North Pacific, in the meridian of 170 

 W., across the scattered Aleutian chain, through 

 Behring's Strait, and over the Arctic pole, giving 

 as wide a berth to Spitzbergen on the one hand, as to 

 Iceland on the other, till she folded her wings on 

 our own fair land once more, having performed her 

 weary stretch of ocean almost in a straight line. 



But even this uninterrupted length, vast as it is, 

 will give us but an inadequate notion of the world of 

 waters, unless we consider its area also. By what 

 comparisons shall we grasp an idea of this ? It will 

 take a diligent traveller several years of almost con- 

 stant railway journeying, to form a tolerabty adequate 

 notion of the extent of England. Then let him essay 

 to cover the expanse of ocean with Englands ; and he 

 will have to lay down two thousand five hundred, side 

 by side, and end to end, before the watery plain is 

 covered. Or let a vigorous pedestrian set out on a 

 journey to follow the windings of the coast-line, 

 whithersoever its indentations may lead him: he 

 may omit the shores of the smaller islands ; and yet 

 a quarter of a century will have elapsed before he 

 have finished his task, allowing him fifteen miles 

 every day. 



But the "depths of the sea!" What is in that 

 quiet bosom, that placid, unfathomable heart, far 



