UNIFORMITY OF THE OCEAN BED 29 



If we could for a moment run all the water out 

 of one of the great ocean-basins, and lay its bed 

 bare, we should find ourselves in a land a good deal 

 different from any to which we are accustomed. 

 Many of the main features we should, of course, 

 recognise : we should find hills and table-lands, and 

 plains and valleys, and we should see mountain-slopes 

 rising, with little-varying degrees of steepness, towards 

 the continents and islands that form the dry land. 

 But what would astonish us about them would be 

 their vastness, their simplicity, and their uniformity — 

 in other words, their want of character, due to the 

 fact that the natural agencies, which should add 

 beauty of feature, are non-existent. 



The dry land is the scene of an unceasing tumult 

 of plastic forces : sun and frost, rain and flood, 

 glacier and torrent, wind and wave, are continually 

 at work changing its appearance almost after the 

 manner of a living spirit. But beneath the ocean 

 none of these sculpturing forces are known. There 

 there is little or no change of temperature, and no 

 violent movement of water, consequently the landscape 

 has no detail, and its style is vast, monotonous, and 

 unvaried. 



For instance, if we could walk straight across the 

 Bay of Bengal (which, though we call it a bay, is 

 really a great inlet of the ocean) from Madras to the 

 Andamans, we should for the first lo or 1 1 miles 



