CHAPTER V.
IN OCEAN DEPTHS
“My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the Sea.”—Longfellow.
“Of the old Sea some reverential fear
Is with me.”—Wordsworth.
THROUGH ages of the world’s history, man knew nothing of the Ocean beyond its surface.
He could sail on the sea; he could bathe in the shallow waters near land. If a good swimmer, he might go farther out, and might even dive for one or two minutes out of sight. In more recent times, with the help of a diving-bell, he could descend thirty or forty feet; and in a diving-dress he might even, if experienced, get from one to two hundred feet down.
But that was all. Of the vast depths beyond he was sublimely ignorant. He did not so much as know of their existence. Until the late scientific expedition made in the vessel Challenger, that great world of the Under-Ocean was swathed in mystery.
Nothing is known of it now by direct personal observation. No living man may penetrate those depths. The only mode in which we can learn what is, what lives, what happens there, is by means of “soundings,” by sending down and drawing up specially prepared instruments, the reading of which gives us information about that Under-world.
Soundings made in earlier times did little more than tell navigators how deep the sea thereabout might be. Such instruments as were then used could neither work beyond a limited depth, nor say their say with accuracy.