The Savannah morning news., 1904-09-02
SAHARAS OF THE SEA.
Watery Wastes as Dreary N. Anx
TO Be Found on Land.

From LIE Matin.
Oceans, like continents. have their
deserts. On the high seas there are
vast spaces whose waves have never
been parted by the PROV of a sailing
vessel or dashed by the propeller of =
steamer, immense solitudes where the
flap OF sail is never heard nor the
strident cry of a siren: veritable des-
erts, whose silence is broken only by
the bowling of the wind and the roar
of waves which have been vainly pur-
SUNG one another since the day of
creation.
These deserts lie forgotten betwixt
the narrow ocean highways Travelled
by vessels. In such waste nlaces of
the sea disabled ship. driven out of
its course by hurricane, may drift
tor months, tossed by the ceaseless
ground swell. without being able to
nail assistance; her only chance of es-
cape is the possibility that some ocean
ic current may drag her into more
frequented region.
1t is generally supposed that by rea-
son OF the universal increase of mari
time traffic the sea is everywhere fur
IOWed by vessels. That is a mistake
ocean commerce has grown enormously
during the last half century, but that
development is due to the substitution
of steam navigation for the old-fash-
Toned employment of sailing vessels.
When the first steamer began to churn
the water with its paddle wheels the
sailing fleets ceased to increase; with
the advent of the screw propeller they
began to decrease.
The gradual but constant disappear
ance of sailing ships made the ocean
more of desert than before. Sailing
vessels mad then established routes in
accordance with winds, currents and
seasons, the gaps between the routes
taken By outward bound and home
ward-bound ships are often considera-
bic. Moreover, the capricious elements
not lnfrequently played the mischief
with nautical instructions, and as a
result the field of operations for ocean
shipping was vastly extended.
ms is no longer true to-day. The
liner goes straight ahead in defiance of
wind and wave. The ports between
which she plies are great industrial or
commercial centers whittier come
numberless railways, serving as pro-
longatlons of the lines of navigation.
Freight cars carry their loads of mer-
chandise to the lesser ports and the
cities of the interior The railway has
killed coastWiSe navigation.
The ocean highways are, therefore,
anything but numerous. The most fire.
quented Of oceans is the Atlantic.
Apart from Polar seas we see that in
its northern part there is only one des-
ert zone-a dreary waste of waters be-
tween the routes from Europe to the
United States or Canada, and those
from Europe to the Antilles In the
South between the routes from South
America or the Western American
coast and the routes from South Afri-
ca, extends a desert occasionally ira
versed by the steamers of lines from
Cape Town and Mozambique, which,
when the coffee season it at its hight
in Brazil, cross the Atlantic for car
goes at Rio Janeiro or Santos.
The Indian ocean is frequented only
in the north by lines out of India and
Indo-China, and a little in the west
by liners from Oceanica, which call at
Colombo and then make straight for
Australia. Two lines, each with a
steamer month, follow a slender lane
from Australia to Cape Town.
The Pacific is the Sahara of great
seas. Saving only the steamships from
the Far East to California and Column
bia, a line from Sydney to San Fran
cisco and a one-horse line with sail
ings four or five times a YEAR,, be-
tween Tahiti and the United States
save for these mere ribbon-like streaks
the Pacific is a desert. Only a few
native canoes ply daringly from is
land to island in archipelagoes girt
round with coral reefs-veritable ocean
graveyards, the terror of seafaring
men.
How many ships of which we have
received no tidings and of which not
SO much as a drifting spar has ever
been picked up, have been dragged by
irresistible winds into those solitudes
of the South Pacific no one will ever
know, for the ocean guards its prey
well. Sometimes, however little part
of its secret leaks out and then we di-
vine the shocking tragedies of which
it has been the theater.