Clarence Day, Jr.

“ It is horribly cold in those depths, but what cares man for that? It is horribly hot in earth's tropics, but has that kept him out? If he stays where he belongs, and where he can live with most comfort, it bores him; but a place that's unfit for human habitation attracts him at once.
"The Roosevelts of the future won't go to Africa for their hunts—they'll dive overboard, and shoot old, astonished sea dragons with undersea guns. The Beebes will desert South America for some submarine jungle, to study its nut-bearing orchids, or to collect five-toed clams. ”

“ Men could build fine submarine castles with air pipes to the surface. The sea bottom could be lit with the richest electric lights of all colors. If respectable men don't soon begin going, some nation like Germany, which desires new colonies, will send convicts down there as settlers. ”

“ That's what makes all men ridiculous, their complacency with their primitive ways. I tried to make those Bo-Bolo chiefs understand how small their crops really were, but they thought that I was talking foolishness when I explained what was possible. Yet with some of our old-fashioned hand plows, let alone the machine kind, they could all be rolling in corn in that estuary, instead of half starving."
"And you mean that we, on our part, could be rolling in flatfish?" I asked, looking twice as sardonic as he had. I do not like flatfish. ”

“ Two or three flatfish apiece, for a whole year, for Europe. There are many billions of fine fresh flat fatfish—fat fratflish, I mean—there are billions of armies of these and other fish in the sea. We skim off a silly little fraction of this annual crop, and then publish newspaper articles about our improved methods! ”

“ They'll need to take plenty of air along, just as Peary took pemmican; they'll need to plant air stations, to be used like the oases in deserts; but all necessary inventions will be made, once there is a demand. ”