The Hawaiian gazette., 1904-07-12
WATERY WASTE SELDOM
TRAVERSEO BY VESSELS

There are deserts on tne ocean as
well as on the dry land-vast waters
upon which the eye of man has never
rested and which seldom If ever have
been crossed by the ships of commerce.
The waves on these wastes have never
been parted by the PROV of a sailing
vessel or dashed by the propeller of a
steamer; immense solitudes where the
flap of a sail is never heard nor the
strident cry of siren; veritable
deserts, whose silence Is only broken
by the bowling of the wind and the
roar of the waves, which have been
vanly pursuing one another since the
day of creation.
These deserts lie forgotten betwixt
the narrow ocean highways travelled by
vessels. In such waste places of the
sea, disabled ship, driven out of it's
course by n hurricane, may drift for
months. tossed by the ceaseless ground
swell without being able to hail as
sistance. Her only chance of escape is
the possibility that some oceanic cur
rent may drag her into a more fire.
quented region.
1t is generally supposed that by rea-
son of the universal increase of mari
time traffic the sea Is everywhere fur
rowed by vessels. This is a mistake.
Ocean commerce has grown enormous
ly during the last half century, but
the development Is due to the substi-
tuition of steam navigation for the old
fashion of sailing vessels. When the
first steamer began to churn the water
with it's paddle wheels the sailing fleets
ceased to increase. With the advent
of the screw propeller they began to
decrease. The gradual but constant
disappearance of sailing ships made
the ocean more of a desert than before.
Sailing vessels had their established
routes in accordance with winds cur
rent and seasons. The gaps between
the routes taken by the outward bound
and inward bound ships were often
considera BILE. Moreover. the capricious
elements not infrequently played the
mischief with nautical instructions,
and as a result the field of operations
for ocean shipping was vastly ex-
banded.
This Is no longer true today. The
liner goes straight ahead, in defiance
of wind and wave, the ports between
which she plies are great industrial or
commercial centres, whittier come
numberless railways, serving as pro-
longatons 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
ports have killed coastwise navigation.
No t,,h, Eos.
anything but numerous. The most fire.
quented of oceans is the Atlantic.
Apart from the polar seas we see in
its northern part there is only one des-
ert zone-a dreary waste of waters
between 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 the lines
from Cape Town and Mozambique,
which, when the coffee season is at its
height in Brazil cross the Atlantic to
Rio Janeiro or Santos.
The Indian ocean is frequented only
in the north, by liners out OF India
and Indo China and a little in the
west by liners from Oceania which
call at Colombo and then make straight
for Australia. Two lines, each with
n steamer a month, follow a slender
lane from Australia to Cape Town.
The Pacific is the Sahara of the great
seas. Saving only the steamships from
the far east to California and British
Columbia, a line from sydney to San
Francisco. and a one-horse line with
sailings 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 island
to island in archipelaGoes girt round
with coral reefs, veritable ocean grave
yards, 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 |