THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 243 



eighteen thousand feet, the distance from the one 

 brink of this awful chasm to the other being less than 

 a hundred miles. It is impossible to imagine a cable 

 bridging so vast a gulf in air without intermediate 

 support, say from Chimborazo to Cotopaxi, since no 

 cable would bear the strain. Yet such is the sustain- 

 ing power of the water that it is most probable that 

 the cable through which our Southern messages are 

 flashed from Scilly via Gibraltar does bridge that 

 mighty gulf, and that, too, without undue strain. No 

 such sudden irregularity is encountered by the Trans- 

 atlantic cables. They lie fairly close to each other 

 over an irregular plateau, varying in depth from the 

 surface from six thousand to fifteen thousand feet, but 

 not abruptly. And the deepest soundings yet made 

 in this, the best-measured ocean in the world, reaches 

 nearly twenty-eight thousand feet, from which abysmal 

 pit rises almost sheer the mountains whose summits 

 form the Antilles. 



But what is the character of those vast depths? 

 Here comes the justification for calling the depths 

 of the ocean unexplored and unexplorable. From the 

 ships of scientific expeditions trawls have descended 

 into these inscrutable depths thousands of times, but 

 the sum-total of the spoil they have brought to the 

 surface is infinitesimal, and certainly in nowise repre- 

 sentative of the abundant mysteries beneath. If only 

 the drag-nets of the Challenger could have brought 

 to the surface some sculptured fragment of the lost 

 Atlantis, some recognizable sign of an immemorial 

 civilization submerged by some unrecorded cosmic 

 upheaval, what a discovery it would have been ! But 

 no, apart from a few eerie forms of alien life, of bizarre 



