42 ADDRESS. 



from an immense depth, and presenting, in every part, the germs 

 of a new world, "or the magnificent fragments of an old one." 



There the amplest fields for commercial activity have been 

 opened, and are every day extending yet more widely, in the 

 search after numerous productions of those remote regions, many 

 of which have become articles of great value in the interchange of 

 commerce ; yet, there the madrepore, or coral insect, is very busy 

 in rearing its vast superstructure to the surface; and the dark 

 volcano, bursting from the depths of the sea, pours its broken 

 fragments and molten lava above the level of the waters, and, by 

 the decomposition of its surface, is rapidly converted into an island. 



Over this vast sweep of ocean, speckled with more than a thou- 

 sand islands, whose position requires to be marked more accurately 

 on the charts, and one-half of that number not to be found on the 

 charts at all, there are many groups inhabited by every variety of 

 savage man. Around these, we have at this moment two hundred 

 ships engaged in the whale fishery alone, measuring more than 

 eighty thousand tons, whose cargoes, without taking into calcula- 

 tion the cost of the vessels and outfits, are at least two hundred 

 thousand barrels of sperm oil, worth not less than six millions of 

 dollars. I mean not, in this statement, to include the vessels on 

 the way out with those at home, nor the tonnage dependant on the 

 trade ; but those known at this moment to be afloat in those distant 

 seas. 



But this statement gives only a defective view of our inter- 

 ests connected with the fisheries in those seas. Let us for a 

 moment take a concise but comprehensive view of what those 

 interests are. In doing this, we shall not speak of the capital 

 and tonnage employed, and profitably employed too, among the 

 islands, in that multifarious traffic, grown up within a few years 

 past, and constantly extending. In the first place, the vessels 

 employed: they are from various ports of the United States, as 

 follows: 





