ASPECT OF WRECKED VESSELS II3 



timber, and all the forms of its crew will probably disappear 

 before they are entombed in the slowly gathered strata. The 

 geological reniainder will perhaps be the coal of her fuel 

 store, the gold of the watches and trinkets, and the massive 

 glass objects which abound in such a ship ; in all but a small, 

 and little indicative, part of what went to the bottom of the 

 sea when the vessel foundered. 



It has, to many persons, been an interesting speculation as 

 to the aspect of the countless wrecks which have been swal- 

 lowed up by the North Atlantic since that churn of waters has 

 been ploughed by the keels of ships. Their number is prob- 

 ably to be reckoned by the tens of thousands, and the greater 

 part of them lie in a comparatively small part of that field. 

 If we count this portion of the Atlantic which is most peopled 

 with wrecks as having an area of 3,000,000 square miles, and 

 estimate the total number of such ruins within this space as 

 30.000, we would have an average of one sunken ship for each 

 hundred square miles of surface. If all these crafts were at 

 once sailing over the surface of the sea, we should, from the 

 deck of any one of them, be likely to note the masts of several 

 others. But as they lie on the tloor of the ocean the greater 

 part of them are probably reduced to low mounds of rubbish, 

 so that if the ocean-floor were converted into dry ground, and 

 we crossed it in a railway, seeing the fields as we do the 

 prairies, it would require an attentive eye to discern the exist- 

 ence of many of these remains. 



It is a singular, and perhaps somewhat humiliating fact, 

 that the most conspicuous and indelible record which man is 

 making in the strata now forming on the sea-tloor is written 

 in the bits of coal and ash which are cast from our steamships 

 as they pursue their way over the ocean. The quantity of 



