72 HIDDEN BEAUTIES OF NATURE 



they hoped would establish a common bond of com- 

 mercial and friendly union between two great 

 countries ? 



These and many similar questions were easier 

 asked than answered. Still, such queries were the 

 natural outcome of a curiosity aroused in every one 

 interested in this colossal enterprise. Even one of 

 the comic papers of those days fed our imagination 

 by issuing an illustration representing Neptune driving 

 away from the cable the mermaids or other fanciful 

 denizens of the deep Atlantic waters. Reference to 

 the poet gave us a crystallised summary of all that 

 we knew of ocean floors, and what we should expect 

 to see scattered upon them ; but of 'the mysteries 

 shrined in the cells of the sea,' the poet could not tell 

 us anything new : ' Shipwrecks and their spoils, the 

 wealth of merchants, the artillery of war, the chains 

 of captives, and the gems that gleamed upon the brow 

 of beauty, crowns of monarchs, swords of heroes, 

 anchors lost, that had never let go their hold in 

 storms ; helms sunk in ports, that steered adventurous 

 barges round the wide world. Bones of dead men, 

 that made a hidden Golgotha where they had fallen 

 unseen, unsepulchred, but not unwept by lover, friend, 

 relative far away, long waiting their return to home 

 and country, and going down into their fathers' graves, 

 with their grey hairs or youthful locks in sorrow, to 

 meet no more till seas give up their dead.' 



Thus the floor of the Atlantic remained an enigma, 

 until the scientist overcame in part the difficulties 



