The wide and deep sea.

Date:
[between 1850 and 1859?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The wide and deep sea. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    matters stand, it rises some way up the sides of the projections, and all the solid substance that is above its reach, appears as dry land, while the rest forms the bed of the ocean. If there were more water, or if the depressions of the sea-bed were shallower, that water would then rise higher, and there would be even more sea, and less land than there now is. If there were less water, or the depressions of the sea-bed were deeper, then this would have the effect of making the land larger and the sea less. When men sail in ships over the wide ocean, and look down upon its mysterious surface surging and heaving beneath them, it is impossible for them not to wonder how far that liquid mass goes down under their vessel. There are some places in which a sound- ing line seems to reach the bottom with tolerable quickness; in others it will not touch the sea-bed until more than five miles beneath the surface. In some spots no bottom can be found. It thus appears that there are hills and valleys down at the bottom of the deep sea. The sea-bed is not like the bottom of a smooth basin; it is reared into peaks and ridges, and ploughed with furrows and grooves, and smoothed into slopes and plains, just like the high land which appears above the waters. The average or main depth of the wide sea, or ocean, is probably about three miles. There must be a quantity of water in the wide and deep sea, which is far too great for any form of num- bers to be able to convey a fair idea of its immensity. Imagine an enormous basin nearly three thousand times as large as England, and every where three miles deep; such a basin would but just contain the waters which are actually poured around the earth. The wide and deep sea is commonly known as The Ocean. This name was conferred upon the great waters by the old Greeks, many centuries ago. It signifies the Swiftly flowing. These old Greeks imagined that the wide sea was a large river, which ran with great speed quite round the earth, and it