8 National Geographic Magazine. 



through Stanley, have discovered a new world in the old, for 

 them. 



Much has been done on land — little on the other three-quar- 

 ters of the earth's surface. But here America has laid the foun- 

 dations of a new science, — the Geography of the Sea. 



Our explorers have mapped out the surface of the ocean and 

 discovered the great movements of the waters. They have traced 

 the southward flow of the Arctic waters to temper the climate of 

 the torrid zone. They have followed the northward set of the 

 heated waters of the equator and have shown how they form 

 those wonderful rivers of warm water that flow, without walls, 

 through the colder waters of the sea, till they strike the western 

 shores of Europe and America, and how they render habitable the 

 almost Arctic countries of Great Britian and Alaska. They have 

 even followed these warm currents further and shown how they 

 penetrate the Arctic Ocean to lessen the rigors of the Arctic cold. 

 Bravely, but vainly, have they sought for that ignis fatuus of 

 explorers — the open polar sea — produced by the action of the 

 warm waters from the south. 



American explorers have sounded the depths of the ocean and 

 discovered mountains and valleys beneath the waves. They have 

 found the great plateaus on which the cables rest that bring us 

 into instantaneous communication with the rest of the world. 

 They have shown the probable existence of a vast submarine range 

 of mountains, extending nearly the whole length of the Pacific 

 Ocean— mountains so high that their summits rise above the sur- 

 face to form islands and archipelagoes in the Pacific. And all 

 this vast region of the earth, which, a few years ago, was con- 

 sidered uninhabitable on account of the great pressure, they have 

 discovered to be teeming with life. From the depths of the ocean 

 they have brought living things, whose lives Avere spent under 

 conditions of such pressure that the elastic force of their own 

 bodies burst them open before they could be brought to the sur 

 face ; living creatures whose self-luminous spots supplied them 

 with the light denied them in the deep abyss from which they 

 sprang— abysses so deep that the powerful rays of the sun could 

 only feebly penetrate to illuminate or warm. 



The exploring vessels of our Fish Commission have discovered 

 in the deep sea, in one single season, more forms of life than were 

 found by the Challenger Expedition in a three years' cruise. 

 Through their agency, we have studied the geographical distribu- 



