Matthew Fontaine Maury

“ Leaching.—The waters which dash against the shore, which the running streams pour into the flood, or with which the tides and currents scour the bottom of their channel ways, have soaked from the soil, or leached out of the disintegrated materials which strew the beach or line the shores, portions of every soluble ingredient known in nature. Thus impregnated, the laughing, dancing waters come down from the mountains, turning wheels, driving machinery, and serving the manifold purposes of man. At last they find their way into the sea, and so make the lye of the earth brine for the ocean. ”

“ Within the arctic circle is the pole of the winds and the poles of the cold; the pole of the earth and of the magnet. It is a circle of mysteries; and the desire to enter it, to explore its untrodden wastes and secret chambers, and to study its physical aspects, has grown into a longing. Noble daring has made arctic ice and snow-clad seas classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive—a desire to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge. ”

“ Arriving off the "Stormy Capes," the flotilla is separated, one division holding its way for the Pacific, the other hauling up for the Atlantic, each bound on its high and secret mission. They build, equip, and repair as they go; the fleet is imperishable, but individual life in it is ephemeral. They die, these tiny "men o' war," one after another, but the same watchful Providence that cared for them while living, now provides for their burial being dead. The inanimate shell, drawn to distant seas by under currents, descends like autumnal leaves from depth to depth by an insensible fall. ”

“ And yonder, farther still, away to the south, float the Magellanic clouds, and the "Coal Sacks"—those mysterious, dark spots in the sky, which seem as though it had been rent, and these were holes in the "azure robe of night," looking out in the starless, empty, black abyss beyond. One who has never watched the southern sky in the stillness of the night, after the sea breeze with its turmoil is done, can have no idea of its grandeur, beauty, and loveliness. ”

“ By such a one, the wind and rain, the vapour and the cloud, the tide, the current, the saltness, and depth, and warmth, and colour of the sea, the shade of the sky, the temperature of the air, the tint and shape of the clouds, the height of the tree on the shore, the size of its leaves, the brilliancy of its flowers—each and all may be regarded as the exponent of certain physical combinations, and therefore as the expression in which Nature chooses to announce her own doings, or, if we please, as the language in which she writes down or elects to make known her own laws. ”

“ Quantity of salt in the sea.—If all the salts of the sea were precipitated and spread out equally over the northern half of this continent, it would, it has been computed, cover the ground one mile deep. What force could move such a mass of matter on the dry land? Yet the machinery of the ocean, of which it forms a part, is so wisety, marvellously, and wonderfully compensated, that the most gentle breeze that plays on its bosom, the tiniest insect that secretes solid matter for its sea-shell, is capable of putting it instantly in motion. ”

“ The seaman, drifting along the coast, and misled by the increasing clearness and mirage, believes that he has been driven by a current towards the land; he casts the lead, and looks anxiously out for the sea breeze, in order to escape from what he believes to be threatening danger. The planks burn under his feet; in vain he spreads the awning to shelter himself from the broiling sun. Its rays are oppressive; repose does not refresh; motion is not agreeable. The inhabitants of the deep, awakened by the clear light of day, prepare themselves for labour. ”

“ There is no expression uttered by nature which is unworthy of our most attentive consideration—for no physical fact is too bald for study—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, for it is the voice of Wisdom. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ It elevates the mind and ennobles the man; for "His gentleness makes" it great. The Gulf Stream is now no longer, therefore, to be regarded by such a one merely as an immense current of warm water running across the ocean, but as a balance-wheel—a part of that grand machinery by which air and water are adapted to each other, and by which this earth itself is adapted to the well-being of its inhabitants— of the flora which deck, and the fauna which enliven its surface. ”

“ Familiar with clouds and sunshine, the storm and the calm, and all the phenomena which find expression in the physical geography of the sea, the right-minded mariner, as he contemplates "the cloud without rain," ceases to regard it as an empty thing; he perceives that it performs many important offices; he regards it as a great moderator of heat and cold—as a "compensation" in the atmospherical mechanism which makes the performance perfect. Marvellous are the offices and wonderful is the constitution of the atmosphere. ”

“ Above the sea, the air is clearer or slightly clouded; above the land, it is thick, dark, and swollen. To the feelings, this stillness is pleasant. The sea breeze, the driving brine, that has made a salt-pan of the face, the short, restless sea, the dampness—all have grown wearisome, and welcome is the calm. ”

“ Were the salts of the sea lighter instead of heavier than the water, they would, as they feed the winds with moisture for the cloud and the rain, remain at its surface, and become more niggardly in their supplies, and finally the winds would howl over the salt-covered sea in very emptiness, and, instead of cool and refreshing sea-breezes to fan the invalid and nourish the plants, we should have the gentle trade-winds coming from the sea in fitful blasts of parched, and thirsty, and blighting air. ”

“ 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 in one view, in the empty cradle of the ocean, "a thousand fearful wrecks," with that array of "dead men's skulls, great anchors, heaps of pearl and inestimable stones," which, in the poet's eye, lie scattered on the bottom of the sea, making it hideous with sights of ugly death. ”

“ When, under the vertical rays of the never-clouded sun, the carbonized turfy covering falls into dust, the indurated soil cracks asunder as if from the shock of an earthquake. If at such times two opposing currents of air, whose conflict produces a rotary motion, come in contact with the soil, the plain assumes a strange and singular aspect. 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. ”

“ Then the sultry heat of the oppressive morning is dissipated, and there is a delightful freshness in the air which seems to give new life to all for their daily labours. About sunset there is again another calm. The sea breeze is now done, and in a short time the land breeze sets in. This alternation of the land and sea breeze—a wind from the sea by day and from the land by night—is so regular in intertropical countries, that they are looked for by the people with as much confidence as the rising and setting of the sun. ”

“ Thus our simple hypothesis acquires the majesty of truth, for we are now prepared boldly to assert we know that the sea has its system of circulation, because it transports materials for the coral insect and its rock from one part of the world to another; because its currents receive them from the rivers, and hand them over to the little mason for the structure of the most stupendous works of solid masonry that man has ever seen—the coral islands of the sea. ”

“ The stillness below is in harmony with the silence above, and one almost fears to speak, lest the harsh sound of the human voice, reverberating through those vaulted "chambers of the south," should wake up echo, and drown the music that fills the soul. On looking aloft, the first emotion gives birth to a homeward thought: bright and lovely as they are, those, to northern sons, are not the stars nor the skies of fatherland. ”

“ Indeed, these soundings suggest the idea that the sea, like the snow-cloud with its flakes in a calm, is always letting fall upon its bed showers of these microscopic shells; and we may readily imagine that the "sunless wrecks," which strew its bottom, are, in the process of ages, hid under this fleecy covering, presenting the rounded appearance which is seen over the body of the traveller who has perished in the snow-storm. The ocean, especially within and near the tropics, swarms with life. ”

“ Every one who has sailed in that southern girdle of waters which belt the earth on the polar side of 40°, has been struck with the force and trade-like regularity of the westerly winds which prevail there. The waves driven before these winds assume in their regularity of form, in the magnitude of their proportions, and in the stateliness of their march, an aspect of majestic grandeur that the billows of the sea never attain elsewhere. ”

“ It draws up vapours 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. It bends the rays of the sun from their path to give us the aurora of the morning and twilight of evening ”

“ 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. ”

“ TIDE-RIPS AND THE SEA DRIFT.
740. The glories of the sea, and the destiny of the nautilus.—We never tire of the sea; like the atmosphere, it is a laboratory; in which wonders by processes the most exquisite are continually going on. Its flora and its fauna, its weaves and its tides, its currents and its salts, all in themselves afford profitable subjects of study and charming themes for thought. ”

“ It is now suggested that henceforward we should view the surface of the sea as a nursery teeming with nascent organisms, its depths as the cemetery for families of living creatures that out-number the sands on the sea shore for multitude. Where there is a nursery, hard by there will be found also a graveyard; such is the condition of the animal world. But it never occurred to us before to consider the surface of the sea as one wide nursery, its every ripple a cradle, and its bottom one vast burial-place. ”

“ The astronomer is said to see the hand of God in the sky; but does not the right-minded mariner, who looks aloft as he ponders over these things, hear his voice in every wave of the sea that "claps its hands," and feel his presence in every breeze that blows? ”

“ In that great inland basin of Asia which holds the Caspian Sea, and embraces an area of one million and a half of geographical square miles, we see the water-surface so exquisitely adjusted, that it is just sufficient, and no more, to return to the atmosphere as vapour exactly as much moisture as the atmosphere lends in rain to the rivers of that basin—a beautiful illustration of the fact that the span of the heavens was meted out according to the measure of the waters. ”

“ The operations of water.—There are processes no less interesting going on in other parts of this magnificent field of research. Water is nature's carrier. With its currents it conveys heat away from the torrid zone and ice from the frigid; or, bottling the caloric away in the vesicles of its vapour, it first makes it impalpable, and then conveys it, by unknown paths, to the most distant parts of the earth. The materials of which the coral builds the island, and the sea-conch its shell, are gathered by this restless leveller from mountains, rocks, and valleys in all latitudes. ”

“ The slightest change in the purity of the atmosphere, though it may be too slight for recognition by chemical analysis in the laboratory, is sure to be detected by its effects upon the nicer chemistry of the human system, for it is known to be productive of disease and death. No chemical tests are sensitive enough to tell us what those changes are, but experience has taught us the necessity of ventilation in our buildings, of circulation through our groves. The cry in cities for fresh air from the mountains or the sea, reminds us continually of the life-giving virtues of circulation. ”

“ Our investigations go to show that the roaring waves and the mightiest billows of the ocean repose, not upon hard or troubled beds, but upon cushions of still water; that everywhere at the bottom of the deep sea the solid ribs of the earth are protected, as with a garment, from the abrading action of its currents, and that the cradle of its restless waves is lined by a stratum of water at rest, or so nearly at rest that it can neither wear nor move the lightest bit of drift that once lodges there. ”

“ Seeing, then, that the inhabitants of the sea, with their powers of secretion, are competent to exercise at least some degree of influence in disturbing equilibrium, are not these creatures entitled to be regarded as agents which have their offices to perform in the system of oceanic circulation, and do they not belong to its physical geography? Their influences upon the economy of the sea are like those outstanding quantities which the astronomer finds in the periods of heavenly bodies. ”

“ Here it was, then, at this crossing of the winds, that I thought I first saw the footprints of an agent whose character I could not comprehend. Can it be the magnetism that resides in the oxygen of the air? Heat and cold, the early and the latter rain, clouds and sunshine, are not, we may rely upon it, distributed over the earth, by chance; they are distributed in obedience to laws that are as certain and as sure in their operations as the seasons in their rounds. ”

“ Scarcely has one left the Java Sea—which is, as it were, an inland sea between Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and the archipelago of small islands between both of the last named—than, in the blue waters of the easterly part of the East Indian Archipelago, nature assumes a bolder aspect, more in harmony with the great depth of the ocean. The beauty of the Java Sea, and the delightful phenomena which air and ocean display, have here ceased. ”

“ Taking all together, the howling, shrieking storm, the noble ship plunging fearlessly beneath the crimson-crested waves, the furious squalls of hail, snow, and sleet driving over the vessel and falling to leeward in ruddy showers, the mysterious balls of electric fire resting on our mast-heads, yard-arms, etc., and above all, the awful sublimity of the heavens, through which coruscations of auroral light would often shoot in spiral streaks and with meteoric brilliancy, altogether presented a scene of terrible grandeur and awful sublimity surpassing the wildest dreams of fancy. ”