170 THE CALL OF THE SEA 



(From A Sack of Shakitigs) 



T T would be an awful country to view, this sud- 

 denly exposed floor of the sea. A barren land 

 of weird outline, of almost unimaginable com- 

 plexity of contour, but without any beauty such as 

 is bestowed upon the dry earth by the kindly sun. 

 For its beauty depends upon the sea, whose prolific 

 waters are peopled with life so abundantly that 

 even the teeming earth is barren as compared with 

 the ocean. But at its greatest depths all the re- 

 searches that man has been able to prosecute go 

 to prove that there is little life. The most that 

 goes on there is a steady accumulation of the dead 

 husks of once living organisms settling slowly down 

 to form who knows what new granites, marbles, 

 porphyries, against the time when another race of 

 a reorganised earth shall need them. Here there 

 is nothing fanciful, for if we know anything at all 

 of prehistoric times, it is that what is now high 

 land, not to say merely dry land, was once lying 

 cold and dormant at the bottom of the sea, being 

 prepared throughout who can say what unrealisable 

 periods of time for the use and enjoyment of its 

 present lords. Not until we leave the rayless 

 gloom, the incalculable pressures and universal 

 cold of those tremendous depths, do we find the 

 sea-floor beginning to abound with life. It may 

 even be doubted whether anything of man's handi- 



