The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-03-21
practically all the inhabited land in the

practically all the inhabited land in the !
world.
The question as to whether man will
ever be able TO descend into the depths |
of the ocean and make direct explora-
tons of it's varied life and discover |
treasures of derelict gold, has always |
furnished rich fruit for speculation. 1t
is not wise in these days of mechanical
wonder to place too positive limit to
mans accomplishment, but 1t is prob
able that mans eyes will never look
upon the bottom of the sea in the
greater depths. Several years ago it
was my fortune to make voyage in
Mr.. Lakes submarine boat, the Argo-
naut. We started from Atlantic High
lands in New Jersey, and ran some dis
lance off Sandy Hook at the bottom of
the Atlantic Ocean. The Argonaut was
built in the shape of huge cigar of
enormously strong plates of steel, many
times riveted, and yet Mr.. Lake dared
sink her hardly deeper than thirty or
forty feet for fear of the pressure of
the sea. When one realizes that the
ocean has deeps of nearly 10000 feet, a
thousand times as much, one feels the
| utter feebleness of man and the made
quacy of his poor inventions. And yet
even at the depth of thirty feet one,
may gain some impression of the awful
somberness of the sea deeps We had
left sunshine and a blue sea dotted
with the sails of oyster smacks, and
We had descended to almost total dark
ness, the water here being somewhat
muddy. There was a dim yellowness
| beyond the glass ports, and here and
| there the shadowy form of a curious
fish. But what sank heaviest on the
spirits was the eternal silence, the mo-
! ticnlessness the GOODNESS; and if this
| impression came so strongly at thirty
| feet, what must be the awful loneliness
OF 10000 feet? We We're submerged for
did sunshine and green hills look more
| welcome than they did when the Argo-
naut thrust her back above the waves.
! wreck, therefore, though battered
and crushed almost beyond recognition,
will always reach bottom, there to be
slowly eaten away until the last of it
disappears, For the sea is a vast labor
atory in which all things are dissolved
| 1t is a significantly curious fact that of
all the thousands of dredgings made in
the deep-sea, bottom, nothing man-made
ever has been brought up. except some
worm riddled portions of a ships plank
dredged by Sir John Murray from a
depth of three-quarters of a mile. to
the north of Scotland during the Triton
expedition, although many dredgings
have been taken in main routes of yes
sells across the Atlantic The ocean re-
ceives what fortune brings and not
only swallows it silently, but utterly
wipes II out OF existence, in its original
| form. until its substance is a part OF
Its own transparent blue. It may be
5 that bits of glass and gold from sunker
ships remain long after the steel of the
= hulk has dissolved. but sooner or later
even these disappear We are accustom
? ed to think of wrecks in the sea bottom
= as slowly being covered by deposits from
$ the water; the suggestion of sunker
4 ship instantly brings a vision of half
= buried hulk with skeleton ribs and tn,
e stump OF a mast reaching out above
. and sea-weed and peering fishes. II
( shallow water near the shore or in har
Dor mouths wrecks are thus buried, bu
in the deep ocean there is very little de
r post falling to the floor of the sea. &c
ology has pointed out vast cliffs o
:, | stratified rocks formed by deposits from
s sea water where the land was submerg
ed, but as Sir John Murray shows. sue
rocks could never have been deposited Il
9 very deep water far from continenta
land. From the shore of the land out
p ward to a depth of about 600 feet a.
IL average of 200 miles from shore Their
e are deposits OF sand and gravel wor
from the land by the action of wave
e and rivers. In the vast sloping plain
) oeyond that depth the bottom is cover
Y ed with dull blue, green, and red muds
e clays, and organic oozes. In mediur
e depths these muds or oozes are made u
l. OF uncounted billions of shells and s<el
e etons Of minute animals which ono
n lived in the water above-mollusks. for
II ar1iniferae, algae, diatoms, and radiola
: rians. Hence we hear of diatorn ooZes
Y radolar'or oozes, and so on, and IT
d from trcw'edge of the nature of IN
g ooze brought up and the kind Of shell