ocp:an plains 



97 



explorers, what were they compared with the 

 great bulk of the Pacific leading outward to the 

 Southern Ocean ! Its expanses are unknown 

 even to this day. Sails come and go along the 

 well-traveled lanes, but in the hinter sea there 

 are lonely wastes that only the explorer, the 

 whaler, and the shipwrecked have seen. Im- 

 mense fields of water never parted by the cut- 

 water of ship or steamer lie between the Cape 

 of Good Hope and Cape Horn; and as for the 

 Polar Seas at north and south, they still keep 

 silence under the aurora and the midnight sun. 

 Perhaps half of the Pacific is as yet unex- 

 plored, uncharted; and lies in lonely isolation, 

 all unconscious and all careless of its loneliness. 

 What signifies the coming of a white-sailed 

 ship more than the passing of a gray-winged 

 albatross or the churn of a steamer more than 

 the surface lashing of a cachalot ! 



In summer days from these lofty heights you 

 cannot always see the uttermost rim of the 

 Pacific. The horizon line is lost in a lilac haze, 

 a colored mist, where sails of ships "hull 

 down " glimmer ghost-like for hours and then 

 slowly slip below the verge. The further dis- 

 tance is mystery; and so thick is the air that 

 even the nearer sea has an indefinite look. Far 

 down along the shore the white edging of foam 



The South- 

 ern Ocean. 



Vnerplcred 

 waters. 



