Matthew Fontaine Maury, Lieutenant, U.S.N.

“ It bends the rays of the sun from their path, to give us the twilight of evening and of dawn; it disperses and refracts their various tints to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of day. But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us and fail us at once, and at once remove us from midnight darkness to the blaze of noon. We should have no twilight to soften and beautify the landscape; no clouds to shade us from the scorching heat, but the bald earth, as it revolved on its axis, would turn its tanned and weakened front to the full and unmitigated rays of the lord of day. ”

“ Thus we behold sea-shells and animalcule in a new light. May we not now cease to regard them as beings which have little or nothing to do in maintaining the harmonies of creation? On the contrary, do we not see in them the principles of the most admirable compensation in the system of oceanic circulation? We may even regard them as regulators, to some extent, of climates in parts of the earth far removed from their presence. ”

“ The hot, dusty particles which fill the air increase its suffocating heat, and the east wind, blowing over the long-heated soil, brings with it no refreshment, but rather a still more burning glow. The pools which the yellow, fading branches of the fan-palm had protected from evaporation, now gradually disappear. As in the icy north the animals become torpid with cold, so here, under the influence of the parching drought, the crocodile and the boa become motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried in the dry mud...... ”

“ When we travel out upon the ocean, and get beyond the influence of the land upon the winds, we find ourselves in a field particularly favorable for studying the general laws of atmospherical circulation. Here, beyond the reach of the great equatorial and polar currents of the sea, there are no unduly heated surfaces, no mountain ranges, or other obstructions to the circulation of the atmosphere — nothing to disturb it in its natural courses. The sea, therefore, is the field for observing the operations of the general laws which govern the movements of the great aerial ocean. ”

“ By dashing through the Straits of Le Maire, the Flying Fish gained three days on the Gilpin; but here fortune again deserted the Pigeon, or rather the winds turned against her; for as she appeared upon the parallel of Cape Horn, and was about to double round, a westerly gale struck her and kept her at bay for ten days, making little or no way, except alternately fighting in a calm or buffeting with a gale, while her pursuers were coming up “hand over fist,” with fine winds and flowing sheets. ”

“ This sort of pulsation is heard also in the howlings of the storm and the whistling of the wind; the needle trembles unceasingly to it, and tells us of magnetic storms of great violence, which at times extend over large portions of the earth’s surface; and when we come to consult the records of those exquisitely sensitive anemometers, which the science and ingenuity of the age have placed at the service of philosophers, we find there that the pulse of the atmosphere is never still: in what appears to us the most perfect calm, the recording pens are moving to the pulses of the air. ”

“ To the cultivated lad there is a new world spread out when he enters on his first voyage. As his education has fitted, so will he perceive, year by year, that his profession makes him acquainted with things new and instructive. His intelligence will enable him to appreciate the contrasts of each country in its general aspect, manners, and productions, and in modes of navigation, adapted to the character of coast, climate, and rivers. He will dwell with interest on the phases of the ocean, the storm, the calm, and the breeze, and will look for traces of the laws which regulate them. ”

“ How often do we hear the voice of the loud thunder rumbling and rolling away above the cloud-surface, like the echo of artillery discharged among the hills! Hence we perceive or infer that the clouds intercept the prog, ress of sound, as well as of light and heat, through the atmosphere, and that this upper surface is often like Alpine regions, which echo back and roll along with rumbling noise the mutterings of the distant thunder. ”

“ The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light, and we should have presented to us at one view, in the empty cradle of the ocean, “a thousand fearful wrecks,” with that dreadful array of dead men’s skulls, great anchors, heaps of pearl and inestimable stones, which, in the poet’s eye, lie scattered in the bottom of the sea, making it hideous with sights of ugly death. ”

“ In that great inland basin of Asia which holds the Caspian Sea, and embraces an area of one million and a half of geo graphical square miles, we see the water-surface so exquisitely adjusted that it is just sufficient, and no more, to return to the atmosphere as vapor exactly as much moisture as the atmosphere lends in rain to the rivers of that basin. ”

“ Every vessel of the Navy that will, when she puts to sea, is, if she desires it, furnished with a sufficient quantity of sounding-twine, carefully marked at every length of one hundred fathoms — six hundred feet — and wound on reels of ten thousand fathoms each. It is made the duty of the commander to avail himself of every favorable opportunity to try the depth of the ocean, whenever he may find himself out upon “blue water.” For this purpose he is to use a cannon ball of thirty-two pounds as a plummet. ”

“ The sun with his rays would, were it not for currents, raise the water in the torrid zone to blood heat; but before that can be done, they run off with it to the poles, softening, and mitigating, and tempering climates by the way. The provision for this is as beautiful as it is benign; for, to answer a physical adaptation, it is provided by a law of nature that when the temperature of water is raised, it shall expand; as it expands, it must become lighter, and just in proportion as its specific gravity is altered, just in that proportion is equilibrium in the sea destroyed. ”

“ Indeed, I know of no subject more fit for profitable thought on the part of the truth-loving, knowledge seeking student, be he seaman or landsman, than that afforded by the atmosphere and its offices. Of all parts of the physical machinery, of all the contrivances in the mechanism of the universe, the atmosphere, with its offices and its adaptations, appears to me to be the most wonderful, sublime, and beautiful. ”

“ When in motion, its force is sufficient to level the most stately forests and stable buildings with the earth — to raise the waters of the ocean into ridges like mountains, and dash the strongest ships to pieces like toys. It warms and cools by turns the earth and the living creatures that inhabit it. It draws up vapors from the sea and land, retains them dissolved in itself, or suspended in cisterns of clouds, and throws them down again as rain or dew when they are required. ”

“ These little mites of shells seem to form but a slender clew indeed by which the chambers of the deep are to be threaded, and mysteries of the ocean revealed; yet the results are suggestive; in right hands and to right minds, they are guides to both light and knowledge. The first noticeable thing the microscope gives of these specimens is, that all of them are of the animal, not one of the mineral kingdom.
450. The ocean teems with life, we know. Of the four elements of the old philosophers — fire, earth, air, and water — perhaps the sea most of all abounds with living creatures. ”

“ Here, then, we have another of those gossamer-like clews, that sometimes seem almost palpable enough for the mind, in its happiest mood, to lay hold of, and follow up to the very portals of knowledge, where pausing to knock, we may boldly demand that the chambers of hidden things be thrown wide open, that we may see and understand the mysteries of the winds, the frost, and the trembling needle. ”

“ Like conical-shaped clouds, the points of which descend to the earth, the sand rises through the rarefied air on the electrically-charged centre of the whirling current, resembling the loud water-spout, dreaded by the experienced mariner. ”

“ In the Mediterranean, the evaporation is greater than the precipitation. Upon the Red Sea there never falls a drop of rain; it is all evaporation. Are we not, therefore, entitled to regard the Red Sea as a xnake-weight, thrown in to regulate the proportion of cloud and sunshine, and to dispense rain to certain parts of the earth in due season and in proper quantities? Have we not, in these two facts, evidence conclusive that the winds which blow over these two seas come, for the most part, from a dry country — from regions which contain few or no pools to furnish supplies of vapor? ”

“ Nature grants us all that this postulate demands, repeating it to us in many forms of expression; she utters it in the blade of green grass which she causes to grow in climates and soils made kind and genial by warmth and moisture, that some current of the sea or air has conveyed far away from under a tropical sun. ”

“ Astronomers had measured the volumes and weighed the masses of the most distant planets, and increased thereby the stock of human knowledge. Was it creditable to the age that the depths of the sea should remain in the category of an unsolved problem? It was a sealed volume, abounding in knowledge and instruction that might be both useful and profitable to man. The seal which covered it was of rolling waves many thousand feet in thickness. Could it not be broken? Curiosity had always been great, yet neither the enterprise nor the ingenuity of man had as yet proved itself equal to the task. ”

“ The volume of warm water in the North Atlantic is greater than the volume of cold water that meets and opposes it; consequently, the warm thrusts the cold aside, dividing and compelling it to go round. The same thing is repeated in the North Pacific, whereas the converse obtains in the South Atlantic. Here the great polar flow, after having been divided by the American Continent, enters the Atlantic, and filling up nearly the whole of the immense space between South America and Africa, seems to press the warm waters of the tropics aside, compelling them to drift along the coast on either hand. ”

“ Thus, when we consider the salts of the sea in one point of view, we see the winds and the marine animals operating upon the waters, and, in certain parts of the ocean, deriving from the solid contents of the same those very principles of antagonistic forces which hold the earth in its orbit, and preserve the harmonies of the universe. ”

“ There is no expression uttered by Nature which is unworthy of our most attentive consideration — for no physical fact is too bald for observation — and mariners, by registering in their logs the kind of lightning, whether sheet, forked, or streaked, and the kind of thunder, whether rolling, muttering, or sharp, may be furnishing facts which will throw much light on the features and character of the clouds in different latitudes and seasons. Physical facts are the language of Nature, and every expression uttered by her is worthy of our most attentive consideration. ”

“ The Sailing Directions had cautioned the navigator, again and again, not to attempt to fan along to the eastward in the equatorial-doldrums; for, by so doing, he would himself engage in a fruitless strife with baffling airs, sometimes re-enforced in their weakness by westerly currents. But the winds had failed, and so too, the smart captain of the Flying Fish evidently thought, had the Sailing Directions. ”

“ After this southward motion of the isotherm of 60o has been checked in December by the cold, and after the sources of the current which brought it down have been bound in fetters of ice, it pauses in the long nights of the northern winter, and scarcely commences its return till the sun recrosses the equator, and increases its power as well in intensity as in duration. Thus, in studying the physical geography of the sea, we have the effects of night and day, of clouds and sunshine, upon its currents and its climates, beautifully developed. ”

“ Man can never see — he can only touch the bottom of the deep sea, and then only with the plummet. Whatever it brings up thence is to the philosopher matter of powerful interest; for by such information alone as he may gather from a most careful examination of such matter, the amount of human knowledge concerning nearly all that portion of our planet which is covered by the sea must depend. Every specimen of bottom from the deep sea is, therefore, to be regarded as probably containing something precious in the way of contribution to the sources of human knowledge. ”

“ No fact gathered in such a field as the one before us can, therefore, come amiss to those who tread the walks of inductive philosophy; for, in the hand-book of nature, every such fact is a syllable; and it is by patiently collecting fact after fact, and by joining together syllable after syllable, that we may finally seek to read aright from the great volume which the mariner at sea and the philosopher on the mountain see spread out before them. ”

“ But is it probable that, throughout all the geological periods, during all the changes which have taken place in the distribution of land and water surface over the earth, the winds, which in the general channels of circulation pass over the Dead Sea, have alone been unchanged? Throughout all ages, periods, and formations, is it probable that the winds have brought us just as much moisture to that sea as they now bring, and have just taken up as much water from it as they now carry off? ”

“ No one had succeeded in penetrating, and bringing up from beyond the depth of two or three hundred fathoms below the aqueous cover ing of the earth, any specimens of solid matter for the study of philosophers. The sea, with its myths, has suggested attractive themes to all people in all ages. Like the heavens, it affords an almost endless variety of subjects for pleasing and profitable contemplation, and there has remained in the human mind a longing to learn more of its wonders and to understand its mysteries. ”

“ The better to comprehend how such creatures may influence currents and climates, let us suppose the ocean to be perfectly at rest — that throughout, it is in a state of complete equilibrium — that, with the exception of those tenants of the deep which have the power of extracting from it the solid matter held in solution, there is no agent in nature capable of disturbing that equilibrium — and that all these fish, &c., have suspended their secretions, in order that this state of a perfect aqueous equilibrium and repose throughout the sea might be attained. ”