Time alone, with its developments, with the growth of the human race, with the enormous possibilities then undreamt-of, could answer such questionings. Happily, brave explorers have seldom been lacking, who loving knowledge for its own sake have been content to labour patiently, not for money, not for fame, not for immediate results, but for the simple delight of better understanding the world around them, and for the benefit of future generations.
And indeed, if once we begin clearly to realise that the things which we see and hear, the wonders of Land and Ocean, are the outcome and expression of Divine Thought, we shall scarcely deem time wasted, which is spent in trying to find out a little more about those wonders.
CHAPTER II.
SALT WATER
“The new sight, the new wondrous sight,
The waters around me turbulent.”
E. B. Browning.
“Water, water, everywhere,
And not a drop to drink.”—S. T. Coleridge.
THE annual stampede of Britons to the coast says much for our National belief in Sea-breezes. In other countries also people go to the sea for change; but perhaps nowhere does the rush excel that on our Island. This revivifying gift, though partly due to the wide and free expanse through which the breezes have travelled, is largely owing to the briny ocean with which they have been in contact.
Sea-water differs from rain-water, well-water, river-water. True, it is made up of all these, since sooner or later and in one mode or another all water on Earth finds its way to the Ocean. Water may travel openly by river-routes; it may creep silently by dark and devious underground passages; it may float lightly viâ cloudland; but in any case its goal is the sea.