Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1856-05-22
PICTURES OF THE OCEAN.


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PICTURES OF THE OCEAN.
A wonderous world is the world of the
great sea. There are deep abysses filed with
rocks, spectral ruins of large ships and the
corpses of men. There lie, half covered
with lime and slime, the green decaying gun,
and the precious box filed with the gold of
Peru's snow-covered Alps by the side Of
countless skeletons, gathered from every
shore and every cline. There moulders the
bald skull of the grave sea captain, by the
side of the broken amor of gigantic turtles !;
the whaler's harpoon rest peaceably near the
tooth of the whale; thousands of fish dwell
in huge bales of silk from India, and over
them pass, in silent crowds, millions of d.
minutive infusoria; enormous whales, and
voracious sharks, chasing before them thick
ly packed shoals of frightened herrings.-
Here the sea foams and frets restlessly up
curiously shaped cliffs, and oddly-formed
rocks; there it moves sluggishly over large
plains of white shining sand. In the morn
ing the tidal waves break in grim fury against
the bald peaks of submarine Alps, or pass,
in Kissing streams, through ancient forests
on their side; in the evening they glide
noiselessly over bottomless abysses, as if a.
fraid lest they, also, might sink down into
the eternal night below, from which rises
distant thunder; and the locked up waters
roar and whine like evil spirits chained in
the vast deep.
The ocean is vast charnal house. There
are millions and millions of animals mould
ering, piled up, layer upon layer, in huge
masses, or forming mile long banks For no
peace is found below, and under the thin,
transparent veil, there reigns endless murder,
wild warfare, and fierce bloodshed Infinite,
unquenchable hatred seems to dwell in the
cold unfeeling deep. Destruction alone main
tains life in the boundless world of the ocean.
Lions, tigers, and wolves reach a gigantic
size in its vast caverns, and day after day
destroy whole generations Of smaller animals.
Polypi and medusp, in countless numbers
spread their nets, catching the thoughtless
radiati by tens of thousands, and the huge
whale swallows at one gulp, millions of mi
mute, but living creatures. The sword fish
and the sea-lion hunt the elephant and rhi-
noceros of the Pacific, and tiny parasites dart
upon the sunny fish, to dwell in myriads in
his thick layers of fat. All are hunting,
killing, numbering; vt the strife is silent,
no war-cry is heard, no burst of anguish dis
turbs the eternal silence, no shouts of tri-
umph rise up through the crystal waves to
the world of light. The battles are fought
in deep still secrecy; only now and then the
deep parting waves disclose the bloody scene
for an instant, or the dying whale throws his
enormous carcass high up in the air driving
the water up in lofty columns, capped with
foam and tinged with blood.
When Captain Ross, in the Arctic sea,
exploring the bottom of the sea, dropped his
lead to the depth of 5000 feet, he still
brought up living animacula and at the
depth exceeding the height Of our loftiest
mountains the water is alive with countless
hosts of diminutiVe, phosphoric creatures,
which, when attached to the surface, convert
every wave into crest Of light, and the wide
ocean into sea of fire. 1t is well-kuoWn
that the abundance of these minute beings,
and of the animal matter supplied by their
rapid decomposition, is such, that the sea
water itself becomes nutritious food to
many of the largest dwellers in the OCEAN
Still they all have their own homes, even
their means of locomotion They are not
bound to certain regions of that great coun-
try below, the oceans waters. They travel
far and fast; currents unknown to man car
ry them in vast masses from the pole to the
equator, and often from pole to pole, so that
the whale must travel with locomotive speed,
to follow the meduse of the Arctic to the
seas of the Antilles, if he will not dispense
with his daily food How strange chase.
The giant of the seas racing iu furious haste
after hardly visible, fniut ycolored jelly balls!
Now singly, now in shoals, fish are con-
stantly seen moving through the ocean. The
delicate mackerel travels towards the south ;
the small delicate sardine of the Mediterra-
mean, moves in the spring westward, and re-
turns in the fall, to the east. The sturgeon
of the northern sails lonely up the rivers of
the continent of Europe, and has been found
in the very heart of Germany, under the ia
nous cathedral Of strasburg. Triangular
masses Of salmon press up nearly all north
ern rivers, and are sometimes so numerous,
so closely packed, they actually impede the
progress of large rivers. Before their arr-
val, countless millions of herrings leave the
same waters, but where their home is man
has not yet found out. Only in the spring
months there suddenly appear vast banks of
this remarkable fish, two or three miles wide
and twenty or thirty miles long, and sodense