58 WALKS AND TALKS. 



point and this. But here still are some of the finest particles 

 contributed by the land slime from Louisiana, from Chau- 

 tauqua, from the Rocky Mountains, from our native town. 

 Will these far-brought and commingled atoms ever see day- 

 light again? 



We are standing on the border of the vast abyss which 

 extends over half the area of the earth. It is an undulating, 

 silent desert. No diversity of mountain and valley, cliff and 

 gorge exists. We have read of submarine cliffs and plateaus, 

 but these are known only in the shallower ocean ; they are 

 features of the continental slope. By a gentle grade the bot- 

 tom descends to a depth of five miles. Over all this dread 

 waste, no rocks rise above the bed of slime. No fragments of 

 crystalline rocks have been brought up by the dredge. A 

 thousand miles away the bottom has been burst through by 

 an internal force, and lavas have heaped themselves up to the 

 height of a mile or two, or even to the actual surface ; but 

 no upheaval has brought to light from the abysmal floor any 

 trace of those hard crystalline rocks which we recognize as 

 " metamorphic " the sort of which our bowlders are formed. 

 There is no evidence that such rocks were ever produced in 

 that situation. 



The pressure on us in this abysmal region is four or five 

 tons to every square inch. The water is ice-cold everywhere. 

 The darkness, absolute and palpable. A curdling revulsion 

 of feeling and purpose seizes us. We halt and reflect. We 

 turn our eyes upward with a painful longing for the " holy 

 light, offspring of heaven first-born." Only the black ceiling 

 appears. Two miles above us is the sunny sea, where all the 

 blue of a genial sky beams down. There float the ships in 

 summer calm upon a ''painted ocean," or tossed and rent by 

 the winter tempest which inspires the waves with madness. 

 But no summer and winter vicissitudes are here. No sun- 

 light ever penetrates this Cimmerian gloom. No sunrise, or 

 noonday, or sunset is ever known. As it was when the Gar- 

 den of Eden was first consecrated to man, so it has remained 

 and must remain. Not even the crash of thunders or the 



