Curiosities of Science, Past and Present / A Book for Old and Young

by John Timbs

In its entire length, the basin of this sea is a long trough, separating the Old World from the New, and extending probably from pole to pole.

This ocean-furrow was scored into the solid crust of our planet by the Almighty hand, that there the waters which “he called seas” might be gathered together so as to “let the dry land appear,” and fit the earth for the habitation of man.

From the top of Chimborazo to the bottom of the Atlantic, at the deepest place yet recognised by the plummet in the North Atlantic, the distance in a vertical line is nine miles.

Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off, so as to expose to view this great sea-gash, which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most grand, rugged, and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light; and we should have presented to us at one view, in the empty cradle of the ocean, “a thousand fearful wrecks,” with that dreadful array of dead men’s skulls, great anchors, heaps of pearls and inestimable stones, which, in the dreamer’s eye, lie scattered on the bottom of the sea, making it hideous with sights of ugly death.

GALES OF THE ATLANTIC.

Lieutenant Maury has, in a series of charts of the North and South Atlantic, exhibited, by means of colours, the prevalence of Gales over the more stormy parts of the oceans for each month in the year. One colour shows the region in which there is a gale every six days; another colour every six to ten days; another every ten to fourteen days: and there is a separate chart for each month and each ocean.

SOLITUDE AT SEA.

Between Humboldt’s Current of Peru and the great equatorial flow, there is “a desolate region,” rarely visited by the whale, either sperm or right. Formerly this part of the ocean was seldom whitened by the sails of a ship, or enlivened by the presence of man. Neither the industrial pursuits of the sea nor the highways of commerce called him into it. Now and then a roving cruiser or an enterprising whalesman passed that way; but to all else it was an unfrequented part of the ocean, and so remained until the gold-fields of Australia and the guano islands of Peru made it a thoroughfare. All vessels bound from Australia to South America now pass through it; and in the journals of some of them it is described as a region almost void of the signs of life in both sea and air. In the South-Pacific Ocean especially, where there is such a wide expanse of water, sea-birds often exhibit a companionship with a vessel, and will follow and keep company with it through storm and calm for weeks together. Even the albatross and Cape pigeon, that delight in the stormy regions of Cape Horn and the inhospitable climates of the Antarctic regions, not unfrequently accompany vessels into the perpetual summer of the tropics. The sea-birds that join the ship as she clears Australia will, it is said, follow her to this region, and then disappear. Even the chirp of the stormy petrel ceases to be heard here, and the sea itself is said to be singularly barren of “moving creatures that have life.”

BOTTLES AND CURRENTS AT SEA.

Seafaring people often throw a bottle overboard, with a paper stating the time and place at which it is done. In the absence of other information as to Currents, that afforded by these mute little navigators is of great value. They leave no track behind them, it is true, and their routes cannot be ascertained; but knowing where they are cast, and seeing where they are found, some idea may be formed as to their course. Straight lines may at least be drawn, showing the shortest distance from the beginning to the end of their voyage, with the time elapsed. Admiral Beechey has prepared a chart, representing, in this way, the tracks of more than 100 bottles. From this it appears that the waters from every quarter of the Atlantic tend towards the Gulf of Mexico and its stream. Bottles cast into the sea midway between the Old and the New Worlds, near the coasts of Europe, Africa, and America at the extreme north or farthest south, have been found either in the West Indies, or the British Isles, or within the well-known range of Gulf-Stream waters.