12 BY THE DEEP SEA. 



of the principal occupations of civilised man may be said to 

 consist in making clean water dirty ; and one of the greatest 

 operations of Nature is to make the dirty water clean and pure 

 again. Like the man in the fairy story, the sea gives us new 

 lamps for our old battered and bruised ones ; and it is mainly 

 enabled to do this by reason of its immensity and the enor- 

 mous variety of its population, each able to turn some portion of 

 our rubbish to account. According to the most recent estimates, 

 the cubical contents of the ocean is fourteen times greater than 

 the bulk of the land, and this means that the whole of the land 

 could be lost in the oceans. Not only so, but if all the conti- 

 nents and all the islands were dumped down into the Atlantic, 

 there would still be two-thirds of that great ocean quite clear, 

 and the whole of the other oceans would be undisturbed. It is 

 calculated that the entire surface of the globe is 188 millions of 

 square miles, and of this, the small portion of 51 millions of 

 square miles represents the land surface, whilst the Pacific 

 Ocean alone has a surface area of 67 millions of square miles. 

 It is no wonder that the immensity and mystery of the sea 

 have always exercised a fascination over man. Emerson de- 

 clares that "the Scandinavians in our race still hear in every 

 age the murmurs of their mother, the ocean ; " but he need not 

 thus have limited the thought in this respect, at least, we are 

 all Vikings, and the murmurs of our mother still draw us to her 

 side. Whether we be Scandinavians or Celts, the sea has 

 power to bring us to her to-day as strong as ever it had over 

 our forefathers, who found in the seas that lap our little isles 

 the secret of national liberty, wealth, and power, such as no 

 other country has ever enjoyed. What a part the sea has 

 played in the making of the great Anglo-Saxon race ! It is but 

 meet that we should try to understand something of that great 

 heart of Nature ; and for years we have been sending expedi- 

 tions here and there to sound its depths, and collect facts that 

 shall one day enable us to know it thoroughly. We cannot 

 all undertake, or accompany, such expeditions, and must, there- 



