Evening star., 1925-02-12
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL =. COLLINS.

Gut from New York harbor last
Tuesday sailed the good ship Arc
turus. bound for the Sea of Sarga $50
the regioa. west of the Azores. in the
Atlantic. where the seaweed stopped
the ships Of Christopher Columbus
and scared the sailors, who thought
tn they We're marooned for their
temerity in venturing over the edge
of the world.
Columbus, inventor of perpendic-
ular eggs and of propag Uganda, told
the sailors that the presence of the
seaweed was proof that they were
nearing Iand-approaching Cathay.
In hts own mind, Signor Columbus
believed the seaweed was the seam
where the two halves of the world
were marked off. The ancient Phoe-
nfcians discovered the shoal covered
with weed and called it the Sea of
S&Fgasso, believing it the limit of
the ocean, beyond which no mariner
dared sail. For thousands of years
IL was a myth-as disputable as was
the continent of Atlantis, so vividly
described to and by Solon-
Today we know that sargassum is
gn,f -sAaweed. and that the Sea
of. Ssrgasso, so-called, is a region
west of the Azores. between latitude
is and 3S north and longitude 30 and
so west, but it Is not the only region
of sargassum and il is not dangerous
to steamships. however bothersone
it was to Columbus little sailboats
of 100 tons.
The oceans constitute seven -tenths
Of the world surface. What land
scapes.. would they show if all the
water could be drained Off, or if the
Of sn1d
and melancholy waste could be sap
ped. leaving only roaring cataracts
falling over mountains as high as the
Himzlayas, into chasms six miles
deep, such as are known to exist in
the waters OF the Philippines? :?
Through the dark valleys of the
oceans wander creatures of uncanuy
shapes. Their food rains down to
them from the water world above.
which is as little comprehended by
the ut range -habitants of the utter
most depths as Is our ocean of atmos-
phere above US human fish.
That world beneath the oceans is
more than twice as expansive as is
the land of men. 1t, too, has its con-
tinental breadths as wonderful as
Europe, Asia, Africa and North and
South America with its millions of
populations" varying from the blue
whale, 80 feet in length, down to
the microscopic pteropods, and the
still smaller crustaceans, on which
the pteropods prey. These little ami
mails become food for the next larger
species, and they, in turn, for larger
kinds, even unto the great red Jelly
fish,. like the one captured near
Massa chusetts, whose tentacles meas
ured 1zp feet in length.
The greatest monsters of the deep
do not live in the greatest depths
miles below the surface-but in
waters no deeper than the height of
the Washington Monument. Just as
may be noted in tropic lands, where
altitude controls the kind of plaHt
life existent in varying heights, SO
the depths of the water are divided
into distinct zones, each with its own
forms of life In the extreme depths
are, weird red jelly fish and black
fishes with enormous teeth, and small
sharks, less than a foot in length.
The pressure of the water at such
depths is five or six tons to the inch,
yet 1t has no effect upon the tissue
of the fish accustomed to such en-
vironment, because the pressure exists
also within the cells of the fish, neu-
trali2ing the exterior tons. ----
No, Instruments yet devised have
been sufficiently tight to withstand
the. pressure of five tons to the inch,
as exists in these great depths. The
water enters through joints or cracks
in glass SO fine that they are invisible.
When the deep-water fish are drawn