Harper's Young People, October 11, 1881 / An Illustrated Weekly

by Various

Did you ever see the ocean? Have you been to that most wonderful place in the world, the sea-shore? If you live in the interior, and have not seen the salt-water, save all your spare pennies, and resolve that some day you will travel east or west, and look at least once in your lifetime upon the great and wide sea. Perhaps you have seen it. All the better. You know how the waves look, how the sea-birds skim over the water, how beautiful the sky and clouds that rest on the horizon, how sweet the air, what grand sights and sounds you may find where the land and water meet.

If you live near the sea, take this book in your hand, and let us go down by the water. If you live far away from the sea, look at the picture, and at any other pictures like it you can find, and try to remember what you read, that when some day you do see the real ocean, you may perhaps understand it better, and learn to love it as do all those who see it every day. First, be careful. Do not be disappointed. Do not expect too much. You can see only a mere speck of the sea at once. As you stand by the shore, the vast circle of water seems to be immense, yet it is only a very little space on the wide sea. It is this that disappoints people who see the water for the first time. They expect too much, so that they do not really understand it.

Look at the big wave just ready to break. Where did it come from? How long have these waves been pounding on the shore? How old is the sea? When did it begin, and what does it all mean? If you wait here a little while, you will observe that the waves are slowly coming nearer and nearer, or are moving off, leaving the beach bare. Taste the water. It is bitter and salt, like brine. These are strange things, and perhaps if you sit here by the water for a while, we may learn something of what they mean.

The world is like a splendid picture-book, full of stories more wonderful than any fairy tale. The boy or girl who has eyes to see can read this book as he walks over the great pages. The sea is one of the best pictures in the book, its history and its work the strangest story you ever heard. This water you see from the eastern shore of the United States is a part of the Atlantic Ocean. If an ocean steam-ship should sail straight away toward the horizon at a speed of three hundred miles a day, she would be ten days in crossing to Europe. Yet this ocean is only a long gulf between the continents. Outside of this gulf is the real ocean, covering three-fourths of the entire surface of the earth, or, as they measure it, about 146,000,000 square miles of water.

How old is the sea? Thousands of millions would fail to tell the number of years that the sea has covered the earth. Before there was any dry land, as we see it to-day, there was water everywhere. The land sprang from the sea. These waves helped to build up the hills and rocks. The tides helped to carve out the continents. Nearly all the surface of the dry land was once dissolved in the sea, just as to-day we find salt dissolved in the sea-water.

Men who have studied the sea and the land feel sure that at one time, so long ago no one can imagine the number of years, the world was red-hot, and all the water hung in thick clouds of steam above the melting rocks. Showers of scalding rain fell on the glowing earth, and gathered in ponds and lakes of boiling water. As the earth cooled, more and more water fell from the steaming sky, and slowly the pools grew larger and became united, until at last all the waters were gathered together in one place. Just as now salt is dissolved in the sea-water, so many of the elements of which the dry land is composed were dissolved in the hot seas, or were suspended as soft mud in the swift currents that flowed hither and thither under the cloudy skies where the sun never shone.

In time the rain ceased, and the blue sky appeared. Then more wonderful things happened. The muddy water began to grow clear and cool. The materials dissolved or suspended in the water fell down to the bottom and covered the floor of the sea, and a new kind of rock began to be made. The soft mud became hard and firm. Earthquakes tore up the beds of hardened mud, twisted them into new shapes, and lifted them above the water into the air. Then the dry land appeared. Rocky, rough, and wild, without trees or grass. Much of it was the remains of the older fiery days before there were any seas, but much also came out of the water, and was once dissolved in it, just as salt is now dissolved. Iron, silver, gold, limestone, chalk, and slate, with many other things that go to make the land, were once drifting about in those old oceans, or lay as mud upon the bottom.

Then the waves began to work, tearing and rending the rocks, knocking off bits and pieces only to throw them about in every tide, grinding and rolling them together in the surf, and then appeared that strange thing under your feet—the sand. Pools and little bays were formed on that old shore, and the sand and mud settled in quiet corners. The rain fell on the soft mud, and every drop left its little mark where it fell. To-day we can see this very mud turned to stone with every splashing rain-drop printed on it. These pools and bays afterward became dry land, only to be turned over, twisted, and bent out of shape by earthquakes, or torn up by floating icebergs drifting on those ancient seas.

This has been the work of the sea—to create the dry land. To-day, even while you are looking on, the sea is at work. The waves are always tearing down and building up. The water holds countless millions of living creatures, each in its tiny shell. Each one drinks the water, and extracts from it the lime he uses to build his house. Millions of these creatures die every day, and their tiny houses sink down like a white snow-storm of shells and skeletons to the bottom of the ocean. Deep under the Atlantic these shells cover the bottom with a soft mud called ooze. Perhaps this ooze will in some long-distant time be lifted above the sea to form a new dry land, just as ages ago the bones of other creatures made vast ranges of hills along the shore.

The water is the great land builder, and these waves are the hammer with which it grinds and pounds the rocks into sand. The tides and currents shift the sand about, making new beaches where the birds gather to find their food, and children come to play. Day by day, summer and winter, the work goes on. The sea is never idle, never hurries, never stops. The beach to-day is different from yesterday. To-morrow it will be different still. You may not see the change, but the change goes on, and will go on for countless years on years to come.