Sea (water)

“ Have you ever watched the sea when its surface is much ruffled, and noticed how, besides the big waves of the tide, there are numberless smaller ripples made by the wind blowing the surface of the water, or the oars of a boat dipping in it, or even rain- drops falling? ”

“ 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 sea is magnetic as much as aquatic: an ocean of unknown forces floats in the ocean of the waves, or, one might say, on the surface. Only to behold in the sea a mass of water is not to see it at all: the sea is an ebb and flow of fluid, as much as a flux and reflux of liquid. ”

“ Uniform character of sea water.—As a general rule, the constituents of sea water are as constant in their proportions as are the components of the atmosphere. It is true that we sometimes come across arms of the sea, or places in the ocean, where we find the water more salt or less salt than sea water is generally ”

“ If you turn over a stone, or lift up a piece of sea-weed which has been thrown up by the waves, twenty, or thirty, or forty of them will come skipping out like so many tiny kangaroos. And if you walk near the edge of the water when the tide is coming in you may often see them leaping about in such vast numbers that they look just like a thick mist rising for a foot or eighteen inches into the air. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Every drop of water in the sea is as obedient to law and order as are the members of the heavenly host in the remotest regions of space; for when the morning stars sang together in the almighty anthem, we are told "the waves also lifted up their voice" in chorus; and doubtless, therefore, the harmony in the depths of the ocean is in tune with that which comes from the spheres above. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 clear, heavy water-edge of ocean rising and falling close to their bows, in that unaccountable way which the sea has always in calm weather, turning the pebbles over and over as if with a rake, to look for something, and then stopping a moment down at the bottom of the bank, and coming up again with a little run and clash, throwing a foot's depth of salt crystal in an instant between you and the round stone you were going to take in your hand ”

“ This system of circulation commenced on the third day of creation, with the “gathering together of the waters,” which were “called seas,” and doubtless will continue as long as sea water shall possess the properties of saltiness and fluidity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here at the edge of the Atlantic is a most beguiling stretch of water, filling innumerable bays—water so clear and calm and deep-hued far away that it is hard to realise that it makes a cruel and treacherous sea in which only on the gentlest of days dare a swimmer plunge and feel his way among the underlying rocks, or upon the roaring waves of which dare a hardy sailor venture his boat. ”

“ It is that all space is filled with what we may call an ocean of æther, which can be tossed into waves and ripples just as the air we breathe is traversed in all directions by aerial vibrations, and the restless sea by waves and ripples on the water-surface. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Berzelius assures us that four-fifths of our living frames are water; just as four-fifths of our globe are covered by Oceans, Seas, Lakes, and Rivers. For our arid Earth the Sea is a constant Hydropathist, curing it of its otherwise deadly dryness, and nourishing and beautifying its fruits and flowers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Opposite to its extremity the sea begins to foam, and the water is then seen gently moving round in a circle, increasing to a rapid whirling motion, rising upwards, an hundred paces in circumference at the bottom, but lessening gradually upwards to the size of a spout, through which the sea-water appears to be conveyed into the cloud, as is manifest by its blackness and increase of bulk. ”

“ Every drop of water which flows from the earth to the sea carries something with it. Generally, there is so little of any substance in the water that we cannot taste it, and we call it pure water; but the purest of spring or river-water has always some solid matter dissolved in it, and all this goes to the sea. ”

“ The resistance of the sea water to the ascent of the fresh water is cut off by this ingenious contrivance, and the fresh water rises above the level of the sea through the pipe, by natural causes, the head or source of the spring being in the upper ground of the mainland. ”

“ Who is able to number the different species of animals which people the seas? or who can determine their form, structure, size, and [Pg 476] properties? How infinitely great is that God who has created the sea! will be the conclusion of all who investigate the subject, and it is not without the wisest reasons that the Creator has made the ocean and the seas to occupy two-thirds of the whole globe. The seas were designed not only to form great reservoirs of water, but by means of their evaporation to be the sources of rain, snow, and various meteors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sea resembles a large pond in which the water rises and falls with the oceanic tide, and a river is a canal leading into it. The rhythmical rise and fall of the sea generates waves which would travel up the river, whatever were the cause of the oscillation of the sea and quite independent of any direct action of the sun and moon on the water of the river itself. ”

“ WHETHER WATER RISES FROM THE SEA TO THE TOPS OF MOUNTAINS. The water of the ocean cannot make its way from the bases to the tops of the mountains which bound it, but only so much rises as the dryness of the mountain attracts. ”

“ At the flow of the tide, the fresh water is raised, as it were, in a single mass by the salt water which flows in, and which ascends the bed of the river, while the fresh water continues to flow towards the sea.—Mr. ”

“ The fresh-water forms are specifically distinct from those incidental to salt or brackish water,—fresh-water species, however, are sometimes carried some distance into the sea by the force of the current, and in tidal rivers marine forms are carried up by the force of the tide. ”

“ For the present it will be enough if we learn something regarding the first of these facts—the waves of the sea.
Here again you may profitably illustrate by familiar objects what goes on upon so vast a scale in nature. Take a basin, or a long trough of water, and blow upon the water at one edge. You throw its surface into ripples, which, as you will observe, start from the place where your breath first hits the water, and roll onward until they break in little wavelets upon the opposite margin of the basin. ”

“ An attentive study of the currents of the sea, and a close examination of the laws which govern the movements of the waters in their channels of circulation through the ocean, will lead any one irresistibly to the conclusion that always, in summer and winter, there must be, somewhere within the arctic circle, a large body of open water. ”

“ We have also pools, of which some do strain fresh water out of salt; and others by art do turn fresh water into salt. We have also some rocks in the midst of the sea, and some bays upon the shore for some works, wherein is required the air and vapor of the sea. ”

“ In the sea many and very various effects may be produced upon objects moving through the water when passing between the eye and the surface, by light, by the reflecting powers of the bottom of the water, and by the relative clearness of the water, all of which factors of the effect produced vary to an almost incalculable extent. ”

“ The water will not mix with that of the sea, and for fifty miles into the ocean it can be distinguished. In some places it is seven or eight miles wide, at others it is scarcely more than a hundred yards, where it has cut its way through the rolling earth. ”

“ Underneath the dense impending cloud, the sea becomes violently agitated, and the waves dart rapidly towards the centre of the troubled mass of water: on reaching it they disperse in vapor, and rise, whirling in a spiral direction towards the cloud. ”

“ Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects. ”

“ Sunrise offered a very beautiful spectacle; the water was quite unruffled, but the motion communicated by the tides was so great that, although there was not a breath of air stirring, the sea heaved slowly with a grand and majestic motion. ”

“ What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: ”

“ CHAPTER XII Who hath desired the Sea—the sight of salt-water unbounded?
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded? ”

“ The great, vast ocean is something so much beyond anything I ever imagined,—the same vast expanse of dark-blue rolling waves as far as the eye can reach,—day after day, day after day,—the great ship a mere speck, an atom in the vast circle of water,—water everywhere. The very wind sounds differently than on land; a cheerful breeze is like the breath of a giant, and a playful wave will send a dozen hogsheads of water over the lofty bulwarks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, instead of considering the ocean as the barren waste of desolation it appeared to the ancients, to the modern thinker the ocean has, layer by layer, deposited the land from its bosom, and now by its vapors provides the rains which support its vegetable life, upon which all other life depends, and creates the rivers and the springs, which play such an important part in the modification of the interior of continents, at the greatest distance from the sea. ”

“ Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny. ”