io INDEX TO I HE PACIFIC ISLANDS. 



depths of the ocean were studied in this long voyage and at the same time (1873-76) 

 the United States sent the Tuscdrora in command of Belknap, Erben and Miller, to 

 take soundings for a submarine cable across the Pacific. The British ship Gazelle 

 took many soundings in the South Pacific, and the British ship Penguin under Com- 

 mander Balfour has the distinction of reaching the greatest depth in this ocean in 

 1895, when in latitude 30° 28' S. and longitude 176° 39'W. 5107 fathoms were meas- 

 ured. The United States surveying vessel Albatross has made no slight contribution 

 to the knowledge of this ocean and its inhabitants of the lower forms of animal life. 

 Before we leave the story of the discoveries in this ocean tribute should be paid to the 

 hardy American whalers who discovered many islands and have left the name of their 

 ship, sometimes indeed their whole ship on the islands they discovered. 



The activity at the present time in the examination of the oceanic depths due 

 to the various schemes for laying telegraphic cables will no doubt result in considera- 

 ble increase of our knowledge of the bottom, and it seems probable that in the next 

 few years the map will be something more than a mere outline. 



The story of the great discoverers is a tragic one, as nearly all met a violent 

 death, from Balboa to Dumont D'Urville, and every islet has its romance although 

 often untold by mortal tongue: Defoe did not tell of all the Robinson Crusoes, nor 

 Melville all about Typee. Islands have been found and lost again, men and ships 

 have been lost and newer found again ; and from the time when the early whalers were 

 said to have hung their consciences upon Cape Horn as the}- entered the Pacific 

 Ocean, to the later days when the labor pirates disposed of theirs in some equally con- 

 venient way, there has been great crime and great cruelty through the islands of this fair 

 ocean. Those usually considered of a higher race who have v03'aged through the 

 Pacific have not always been missionaries, nor have they always been true to the tra- 

 ditions of their race. How often have they expressed the utmost horror of the poor 

 untaught cannibals while themselves devouring the souls and lives of those they pre- 

 tended to detest ! 



Glancing but briefly at the results of all these discoveries in the province of 

 Natural History we find certain facts that will be a foundation for many theories as to 

 the origin of both animal and vegetable life on the land found here and there amid the 

 waste of waters. First of the great earth cup that contains this greatest of oceans, an 

 expanse of water extending 10,000 miles from Quito to the Moluccas and covering 

 nearly 70,000,000 square miles of the earth's surface. 



Depth of the Ocean. — Modern deep-sea soundings have established the fact 

 that the average depth of the Pacific Ocean is greater than that of the Atlantic, and 

 that in it are found the greatest depths yet reached in any ocean. The average height 

 of the continents bounding this ocean is 800 feet, while the average depth of the Pacific 



is ?soo fathoms, or about three miles below the average continental level. 



[94] 



