Arizona weekly citizen., 1881-12-25
OS THE OCEANS BOTTOM.
How .t Seems Far Under the Water Graphic
 Picture 1f It.

tNpeEltuce. 10 % IpNU Autb tue WUlcI fathOm after fathomE" We'll was the reply, the first time man goes down he IS apt Co be considerably scared on account of sde pressure. If man Is lowered too fast it will kill him. Divers are seldom or never killed by drowning, but by an unequal pressure. A diver could cut hole in the lower portion of his suit without dangerof being drowned as long as he stood erect, for as long as air is supplied by the pump the water could not reach his mouth. In deep water the pressure Is very great, and usually diver goes as deep as he can stand the pressure. You see we are m a vacuum. There is no pressure precep- tble to us on the copper helmet about our heads. The pressure IS all upon the l lower garments, and If 1t Is too great It drives all the blood in the body to the head, and the result IS death. I have seen men killed in this way whose heads were fairly split open, and whose eyes were driven from their sockets. A more horrible death could not be imagined, and l and almost all other divers have narrowly escaped 1t. When the diver Is 10 feet down the pressure tO the square ! foot is 62j0 pounds; at 30 feet IS, S,7JO pounds; at 70 feet, 3l,2j0 pounds; at 70 feet, 43,750 pounds; at go feet, j6,2j0 pounds: ai 1l0 feet, 6S,750 pounds; at l30 feet, l,2j0 pounds; at 15O feet. which Is the greatest depth to which have descended. 93,15O pounds, and at l60 feet, 1O0.O00 pounds.
 Divers seldom descend over l10 feet. and rarely as deep as that. Under the water the ears feel stopped up, but sometimes we can make ourselves un- derstood bv putting two helmets to- gether and shouting, but then 1t doesn't sound louder than an ordinary whisper. \ man who went down for the first time would be likely to signal to come up after feeling the pressure in the ears, which is very unpleasant until you are used Co it.
 "H2w ab2ut the fish; jo they ever modest yOut'
 "Nery seldom. You see, we make 1t a rulc not Co disturb them. We know tlat they are m their element, and we ulo uot in Ouys. As for sharks, We don't care for them. They are cowardly and are easily frightened of. We are much more -frai1 of the bariCOGts, a surface l fish, with -cCth three inches long. Talk ab0at fish, why one cant have any con ception of them until he has been under the water and seen them of all sizes and cOiors ol the rainbow. The noIse made by a school of fish sounds under water like the umbing of thunder.
 "One of the greatest curiOsities Tn this line Vas the Jew fish ] encountered y hen diving in the Bay of Cumana, on the C9sst of NcuezUela. The fish are from SIX to fifteen feet in length, and have a large mouth with small teeth. The Jcw fish have great deal of curl osity-more than any woman that l know o;-Gnl use to eye us while We were us work. We were a little afraid of them at first. but found that they would not harm us. 1 suppose you have heard of the electric eel, which has the power to g.ye a shock equal tO any bat tery. When ve were diving at tine West Indles one uf our divers received a shock from an eloctris eel, and for time he seemed almost paralyZed. Mules and other animals when fordlng streams ID that country often regcIfe a shock"
 "Is it dart. under UlterE
 That depends uFon how clear the water is. l have been down twenty faith Cms where ! could sec to read the finest print. and [ have been down ten feet where yuu could uotsee your hand be- fore you. ft i, uot very pleasant oxplor- ing a wreck, especially where there are dead bodies, when you are ia utter dark ness. I rem mber working in March, lSGl, OR the ship John Trux, which Was sunk at the Arch street wharf, Philadel- phia. The water of the Delaware river is SD thick and muddy that you can't see anything five feet below the surface, and as the steward and stevedore were both drowned, I knew I should not have a very pleasant job in recovering their bodies. Well, I went down, groped around in the darkness, found the sky light. and after 1 got into the cabin the first thing that my hands touched was the body of the steward
 Isn't 1t q horrible sight among the dead bodies in vessels Wreck?'
 Well, yes; but We get used to those sights, and while l cant say We don't mind them. I can say that they don't de- ter us from going down. 1 am one of those who believe that drowning is an easy death, comparatively, because l have noticed that the face of a drowned person looks as if he had gone to sleep, and seldom denotes pain: but. when the eyes are wide open and glassy in ap- pearance, and the gas in the stomach makes the body stand bolt upright it Is rather trying to the nerves. Sometimes we find drowned persons with a death grip upon piece of rigging or the side of a bunk, and it is very difficult to un- loosen their hold. Before We see body or an object under water we always see the shadow first. In looking for a body on a vessels wreck We sometimes find it closely following tue sediment in the water"
 "How about the bottom Of the ocean:"
 "In many places it is beautiful, es- pecially where the coral reefs are. Coral looks like a forest of trees that have been cut down. I have seen coral as large as the stump of any tree you ever saw, with enormous limbs running downward, the trunk and bran ,hes being of the Purest white coral [ have encountered a coral reef after descending three fathoms, and a bottom of pure white sand after de- scendiug two fathOms more
 "There has been a great improvement in the means and methods Ofsubmanne work, has there not ?'
 "Yes, indeed; almost the same work can be done under water as can be done on Lut ldLltl. " C tl0tdftI lD biluE scientific principles to our aid. must tell you about the schooner Joseph Far well, of ROckland, Maine. In Novem- Der. 1871, she was on her way to New York, loaded with two hundred tons of granite for the St. Louis PostOfiice. In Long Island Sound she was run into by steamer of New Haven, and went down, bow foremost, in lOS feet of water. Anybody who was ineXI erienced Iu such matters would suppose that she would be crushed to pieces wiCh such load, but We knew there was enough air or buoyancy to let her down gently, SD we went to work and got the schooner and her cargo Up without S2nO worth of damage
 Do you use the telephone under vater?'
 "Yes, with much success. It does away with much signaling. We have got things down fine now. All that we feel source of danger is want of air and unequal pressure.
 "MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA General sAsTmaHs Opinion of the Familiar