Deep water

“ When pushed forward into deep water, vast masses are lifted up by their inherent buoyancy, and, broken off at the landward end, are borne away by the winds, or on tides and currents, to parts of the sea far removed from their place of formation. ”

“ The chief work of a river is to drain the land; to bear superfluous waters into the great deep. Water lying stagnant on land becomes harmful. Immense supplies are perpetually needed; but it must be fresh water, clear water, running water, water newly fallen from the skies, [p. 90] or newly received from ever fresh because ever renewed springs. ”

“ When it reaches water so deep that more than seven eighths of its front is below the surface, it begins to feel an upward pressure, just as a piece of wood when forced below its natural water-line will spring back. ”

“ There was one of these rocks which was wholly covered at high tide, and at low tide only the top of it was to be seen. The space between it and the others was too deep for wading, even at low tide. Indeed, there was deep water all around it. ”

“ All over the surface of the land the water which falls from the sky courses seaward in brooks and rivers, bearing into the great deep the materials which are worn away from the land. Water is thus ceaselessly circulating between the air, the land, and the sea. ”

“ Rules to Govern Persons who have Fallen into Deep Water.—1. As soon as you find yourself at the surface, whither you are raised by your buoyancy, let your body quickly take its level, when the water will reach a little above your chin. ”

“ We had very much wading to do in crossing streams, sloughs and swamps, quite often having to wade places where the water was not less than three or four feet deep. The water was necessarily cold, but after a few days of experience we would become accustomed to it, so we would not mind it very much. ”

“ Birds flit about, and there are tracks of small animals in the mud. Evidently the water is as great an attraction to them as it is to us. If a well were dug in the plateau above, we can understand now how deep it would have to be in order to reach water. A well three-fourths of a mile deep would be a difficult one to pump. ”

“ As the river varies much with regard to the quantity of water in its channel,—frequently rising or falling from 6 to 12 feet in a few hours,—these snags are sometimes so deep in the water that they can be passed over with safety ”

“ It lies deep, deep down, far below the level of the ocean, and though many rivers and streams run into it none run out. You would think it must always be getting larger, but no. The water evaporates very quickly. ”

“ Sea-water differs from rain-water, well-water, river-water. True, it is made up of all these, since sooner or later and in one mode or another all water on Earth finds its way to the Ocean. Water may travel openly by river-routes ”

“ In many caverns, water is found at a great depth, and this circumstance, together with the fact that water is obtained by digging deep wells, seems to prove that there are sheets of water under ground, which extend to considerable distances. ”

“ Daily the sun transports millions of tons of water from the harmless plains of deep-sea waters, and the wind takes these vaporous foes of the land and hurls them on the loftiest mountains, so that they may gain the greatest speed and rending force and carrying power as they fly back with spoils of earth to their old friend the sea. ”

“ Those who have never beheld these masses of pellucid, brilliant, green waters, can never imagine the extraordinary loveliness of the scene. They cover a surface of 150,000 square miles, and contain nearly half the fresh water upon the surface of the globe. That the water is fresh, is of great importance to those who dwell upon their shores, as it can be of more use for household purposes, and machinery. The valley in which the lakes repose, is said to have been hewed out by the deluge, leaving the deep chasms in which the waters lie ”

“ It may be observed, that when the tide runs over shoals, and flows upon flat shores, the water is raised to a greater height than in the open and deep oceans that have steep banks; because the force of its motion cannot be broken upon these level shores, till the water rises to a greater height. ”

“ At a point where last ebb the eau or river of the sea was fordable, now there might be a deep cavity filled with water, in which, should the driver venture, horse and man and conveyance might be easily lost. ”

“ For the action of waves and currents on land slowly emerging from the deep, affords the only power by which we can conceive 171 so many deep valleys and wide spaces to have been denuded as those which are unquestionably the effects of running water. ”

“ The shower, the rain, and the storm pass away, the clouds vanish, and the bright stars again shine clearly upon the glad earth. The rain-drops sink into the ground, and gather in subterranean reservoirs, and run in subterranean channels, and bubble up in springs and fountains; and from the mountain-sides and heads of valleys the silver threads of water begin their long journey to the ocean. ”

“ To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. Neither in its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than any torrent—but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; and the sea itself, though it can be clear, is never calm, among our shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. ”

“ Yet tumbling down from that great eminence, where the gray spires of the peaks are dwarfed by distance until they grow thin as needles, is a stream of water, fed by springs that lie in the lap of still taller mountains in the rear, rushing in tumultuous flow until it breaks into seven waterfalls, and then checks its pace as it joins the river that runs on to the sea. ”

“ The vast volume of pent-in water meeting all manner of submerged obstacles dashes in zigzag from shore to shore, cannoning off walls of rock until the whole gorge becomes one rushing, gyrating mass of angry water. ”

“ Now, the power of this moving water is a mighty wide-spread agent of change in the physical condition of the globe. For wherever water is in motion over the surface of the land, whether it be a rippling stream, or a mountain torrent, or a majestic river, it is surely wearing away the channel through which it flows, and carrying along in its course particles of clay, or sand, or gravel. ”

“ Here is the best place of all for sharp eyes to find the animals and plants we seek. Where the hard rock has been worn down into hollows, the falling tide leaves a pool of still, clear water. These rock-pools are the home of many a creature. So let us look for them, until the rising tide sweeps over the rocks once more, and drives us away. ”

“ So our rivers are doing to-day what they have always done—they are tearing down rocks, grinding and sifting the fragments, and letting them fall where the current of fresh water meets a great body of water that is still, or has currents contrary to that of the river.
Do you see a little dead fish in the water? It is on the way to become a fossil, and the mud that sifts over it, to become a layer of slate. Every seashore buries its dead in layers of sand and mud. ”

“ The resounding impact of water on rocks, the clouds of water-smoke which rise high in the air, and the river below churned into a whirling cream of eddy and surge and backwater, unite in a composite effect, at once magnificent and bewildering. ”

“ So also is the rapidity of each stream, some of them moving in a turbulent and awful manner, as the rapids and eddies at the foot of large falls, some moving in large majestic waves like the swells of a large deep lake agitated by the wind, and some in a beautiful smooth current, down which the canoes are scarcly perceived to move. ”

“ God has so made it that as much water is incessantly rising into the air from the sea as is being poured into it. But how is it, then, that the streams and rivers do not dry up ? Whence comes that volume of water which they are continuously pouring into the sea? The mists and clouds which rise from the sea are driven over the land by the wind, and fall back on the earth in the form of either dew, fog, rain or snow. ”

“ The action of flowing ice, whether in the form of river-like glaciers or broad mantles, especially the part it played in sculpturing the earth, is as yet but little understood. Water rivers work openly where people dwell, and so does the rain, and the sea, thundering on all the shores of the world ”

“ The instant the water reaches the earth, it is hurried away toward the sea, and unless some agency delays the run-off, the rivers would naturally contain water only on the rainy days and a little while after. ”

“ So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air! ”

“ Water, tumbling as snow, hardens into ice, and rasps away continually at the surfaces of the mountains. Rivers scrape off, and carry away with them, every particle of earth that they meet with on their journey to the sea. ”

“ The swimmer who, attracted by the beauty of the spot, ventures among breakers in the open sea, where the still waters hide the splendours of the deep, or in the hollows of unfrequented rocks, in unknown caverns abounding in sea plants, testacea, and crustacea, under the deep portals of the ocean, runs the risk of meeting it. ”

“ And as these surface-waters are drawn off into the clouds, their place is taken by lower layers continually rising from the depths. The sea itself is in constant and creative motion, but the influence of this great body of water extends far beyond its shores. ”

“ The water, projected from a rock over a hundred feet in height, falls into a circular basin, as smooth as a mirror, except where the stream plunges in, and from its bright bosom reflects the enchanting scenery which surrounds it ”

“ Like such a great river as that he knew so well and frequented all his days, his life flowed steadily and strongly, the brimming stream augmenting always, deepening and widening, the heavier current moving, at the end, more slowly but not through slackening of power, until, at the last turn, the majestic estuary opens and broadens, as, with no hurry of fretting waves, no straining through silted sandbanks, undiminished, the mighty mass of waters mingles with the sea. ”

“ It is the sea water mingling here into the river—
at least so it seems—perhaps it is something else—but what matter?
The sea water! It is quiet and smooth here!
How slowly they move, little by little trying
the hawsers that drop and groan with their agony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this way the sun-waves and the air carry off water everyday, and all day long, from the top of lakes, rivers, pools, springs, and seas, and even from the surface of ice and snow. Without any fuss or noise or sign of any kind, the water of our earth is being drawn up invisibly into the sky. ”

“ The tidal movement of the ocean, deep-sea currents, and the agitation of inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands strewn over the bottom by diluvial streams or sent down by mountain torrents, and throw them up on dry land, or deposit them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast—for the flowing is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the refluent wave. ”

“ A drop of water falls on the Rocky Mountains, it trickles along, going around through pebbles and grains of sand; it joins with others, meets trees and roots, winds and twists perhaps for hundreds, even thousands of miles before one can tell by what channel it will reach the sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Back of the granite barriers the river spread right and left, and then went out to sea in a deep and narrow stream, curiously free from ice. Indeed, there was but little ice in the main basin, and a kind of steam hung over it so that the Poor Boy was compelled and delighted to conclude (with the aid of his companions) that the river toward its mouth must be swollen by warm springs. ”

“ While the surface is [10] alive with its myriads, the depths are still and untenanted; while bays, shores, reefs, and sandbanks, covered by many fathoms of water, are teeming with shelled mollusks, fishes, and thousands of wondrous creeping things, the profundity of ocean is a comparative desert; whatever lives there must be so constituted as to sustain a tremendous amount of aqueous pressure. ”

“ Owing to a flow of upland water down a river the ebb lasts longer than the flood tide by a period, increasing in length as the distance from the mouth of the river increases; and, similarly to the sea, the current may continue to run down a river after the tide has turned and the level of the water is rising. ”