When England sends us hardware and woollen goods, she expects us to repay her with cotton and sugar, that are just as valuable to us as hardware and woolens to her; but see how differently we treat the kingdoms from which the plant-ships are all the time bringing us food and clothes and medicines, etc. All we return is just so much as we don't want to use. We take in good fresh air, and breathe out impure and bad. We throw back to the earth whatever will not nourish and strengthen us; and yet no complaint comes from the faithful plants. Do you wonder? I will let you into the secret of this. The truth is, that what is worthless to us is really just the food they need; and they don't at all know how little we value it ourselves. It is like the Chinese, of whom we might buy rice or silk or tea, and pay them in rats which we are glad to be rid of, while they consider them good food.
Now, I have given you only a peep into this carrying trade, but it is enough to show you how to use your own eyes to learn more about it. Look about you, and see if you can't tell as good a story as I have done, or a better one if you please.
CHAPTER I. THE STAR-FISH TAKES A SUMMER JOURNEY.
Once there was a little star-fish, and he had five fingers and five eyes, one at the end of each finger,—so that he might be said to have at least one power at his fingers' ends. And he had I can't tell you how many little feet; but being without legs, you see, he couldn't be expected to walk very fast The feet couldn't move one before the other as yours do. they could only cling like little suckers, by which he pulled himself slowly along from place to place. Nevertheless, he was very proud of this accomplishment; and sometimes this pride led him to an unjust contempt for his neighbors, as you will see by and by. He was very particular about his eating; and besides his mouth, which lay in the centre of his body, he had a little scarlet-colored sieve through which he strained the water he drank. For he couldn't think of taking in common seawater with every thing that might be floating in it,—that would do for crabs and lobsters and other common people; but anybody who wears such a lovely purple coat, and has brothers and sisters dressed in crimson, feels a little above such living.
Now, one day this star-fish set out on a summer journey,—not to the seaside where you and I went last year: of course not, for he was there already. No; he thought he would go to the mountains. He could not go to the Rocky Mountains, nor to the Catskill Mountains, nor the White Mountains; for, with all his accomplishments, he had not yet learned to live in any drier place than a pool among the rocks, or the very wettest sand at low tide: so, if he travelled to the mountains, it must be to the mountains of the sea.
Perhaps you didn't know that there are mountains in the sea. I have seen them, however, and I think you have, too,—at least their tops, if nothing more. What is that little rocky ledge, where the lighthouse stands, but the stony top of a hill rising from the bottom of the sea? And what are the pretty green islands, with their clusters of trees and grassy slopes, but the summits of hills lifted out of the water?
In many parts of the sea, where the water is deep, are hills and even high mountains, whose tops do not reach the surface; and we should not know where they are, were it not that the sailors, in measuring the depth of the sea, sometimes sail right over these mountain-tops, and touch them with their sounding-lines.
The star fish set out one day, about five hundred years ago, to visit some of these mountains of the sea. If he had depended upon his own feet for getting there, it would have taken him till this day, I verily believe; but he no more thought of walking, than you or I should think of walking to China. You shall see how he travelled. A great train was coming, down from the Northern seas; not a railroad train, but a water train, sweeping on like a river in the sea. Its track lay along near the bottom of the ocean; and above you could see no sign of it, any more than you can see the cars while they go through the tunnel under the street. The principal passengers by this train were icebergs, who were in the habit of coming down on it every year, in order to reduce their weight by a little exercise; for they grow so very large and heavy up there in the North every winter, that some sort of treatment is really necessary to them when summer comes. I only call the icebergs the principal passengers, because they take up so much room; for thousands and millions of other travellers come with them,—from the white bears asleep on the bergs, and brought away quite against their will, to the tiniest little creatures rocking in the cradles of the ripples, or clinging to the delicate branches of the sea-mosses. I said you could see no sign of the great water train from above: that was not quite true, for many of the icebergs are tall enough to lift their heads far up into the air, and shine with a cold, glittering splendor in the sunlight; and you can tell, by the course in which they sail, which way the train is going deep down in the sea.
The star-fish took passage on this train. He didn't start at the beginning of the road, but got in at one of the way-stations somewhere off Cape Cod, fell in with some friends going South, and had altogether a pleasant trip of it. No wearisome stopping-places to feed either engine or passengers; for this train moves by a power that needs no feeding on the way, and the passengers are much in the habit of eating their fellow-travellers by way of frequent luncheons.
In the course of a few weeks, our five-fingered traveller is safely dropped in the Caribbean Sea; and, if you do not know where that sea is, I wish you would take your map of North America and find it, and then you can see the course of the journey, and understand the story better. This Caribbean Sea is as full of mountains as New Hampshire and Vermont are; but none of them have caps of snow like that which Mount Washington sometimes wears, and some of them are built up in a very odd way, as you will presently see.