Yet they grind exceeding small;
Tho’ with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all.”
The deliberation, the minuteness, the exactness, the patience and the waiting of the grinding sea, and yet the magnificent, sublime result, are most beautifully exemplified to those who have “entered into the springs of the sea,” or have “walked in search of the depth.”
The upper currents of the sea are comparatively shallow. Whilst the depth is often eight or nine miles, these currents in the deepest places do not extend more than 2,000 or 3,000 feet, and usually only a few fathoms. They move, however, when deep, with considerable velocity, say at the rate of four miles an hour. The great body of water lies below, totally undisturbed by any atmospheric agencies, yet moving slowly, invisibly, but sufficient to keep the equilibrium and level of the waters. So quietly does this great mass of the ocean pass over the bottom surface, that the smallest particle of microscopic matter that has fallen down, is not disturbed, and would remain there forever, but for the giant tread of the earthquake, or the volcanic explosion. The dust ground and deposited by the “mills of God,” makes the foundations of islands and continents.
Although demonstrated that life organisms extend to the bottom at the deepest places, yet in the rapidly flowing current the busy activities of life are to be seen. There are plains and meadows, forests and deserts, hills, mountains and plateaus, in the sea. At some places the bottom teems with life. Take, for instance, what are called the “banks”—the fishing grounds of Norway, Ireland, Newfoundland, etc.; they are submarine plains unquestionably, and must have a high degree of fertility in order to supply food for the billions of fish of a voracious kind—as codfish, halibut, etc. These large fish feed on mollusca and crustacea, and these feed on smaller animals—but principally on Algæ or sea-weed. Feeding on pastures of this kind we sometimes find the most enormous animals. Steller’s sea-cow is an instance. They are described as found by him in 1742, on Behring’s Island, covered with a hide resembling the bark of an old oak tree. They grew to be thirty-five or forty feet long, and to weigh 50,000 pounds. They fed on the abundant Algæ along the coast. They yielded milk in abundance, which with their flesh were said by Steller to be superior to those of the cow.
But if the sea map be considered as an aquarium, (that is, a body of water supporting animal and vegetable life), better expressed by the term aquavivarium—so may it be considered a cemetery, an aquamortuum. The life, so profuse, that takes into itself bodies of endless forms and sizes, finally yields them up to the sea, and they are buried in the bottom. There is no land where the sea has not been, and where “vestiges of creation” may not be found. If we ascend to the highest mountain, or descend to the lowest valley, behold there are diatoms, shells of mollusks, débris of corals, and bones of whales. Whence came they? Science can answer no better than Scripture: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.”
Beside the natural course of life and death, there are various ways by which the inhabitants of the sea may be suddenly destroyed. As, for instance: by the influx of fresh water; by volcanic agency; by earthquake waves; by storms; by suffocation when crowded into shoals, weeds, sand, etc.; being driven ashore by fishes of prey; too much or too little heat; diseases and parasites; poisons; lightning; and many other agencies.
Although the sea is immense, it has bounds and limits; thus far and no farther, is the command of Him that made it. I am overpowered with the immensity of the subject. In trying to comprehend the whole it is impossible to see the minutia; or to compass within our limits one fairly developed idea.