FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

VOL. IV.	B E T H A N Y, AUGUST, 1847.	NO. VIII.

THE OCEAN.

      My dear Clarinda--THE sweet Psalmist of Israel has said, "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. For be commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet, so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. Oh! that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men!" Psalm cviii. 23-31.

      Having yourself twice crossed the Atlantic, and, in some degree, realized the facts stated in this beautiful extract, you will concur with me in regarding it as a very natural and beautiful description both of the ocean and of the experience of them who may spend much of their time in traversing it. You have never, indeed, seen it, as I have seen it on a former voyage, when its mountain waves, upborne by a most terrific tempest, made the most aged and experienced officers of the ship quail in awful despair of escaping from the yawning abyss that seemed eager at every moment to engulph us all. But the Lord heard our prayer, and we were safely brought to the haven we then desired to see.

      Having again tempted this great Atlantic, and already spent more than three weeks upon its bosom, and expecting soon to enter the English Channel, I sit down to offer you a few reflections upon "these works of the Lord" and "his wonders in the deep," of which we have just heard the prince of Hebrew poets, who lived almost [453] three thousand years ago, speak in strains as correspondent with my experience and observation as they are beautiful and devout.

      You will recollect that we left New York on the 4th inst. That same evening, through Sandy Hook, we entered into the ocean, and found a very gentle breeze and a gently swelling sea inviting us into the deep waters. After the sun had gathered up his golden beams and laid himself down as if to sleep amid the American forests, a perfect calm succeeded and invited us to repose.

      On casting my eyes over our company of twelve cabin passengers, as we sat at the tea-table, prognosticating its character, as it might develope itself on our passage, I consoled myself that we would not be oppressed by its loquacity or obtrusiveness; which, hitherto, I am happy to say, has been very fully verified. Fatigued with the business and scenes of the day, I retired early, reposed sweetly, and rose at dawn of day. The sea, too, it seemed, had enjoyed a tranquil night, and, with a face as smooth as a polished mirror, reflected the fleecy clouds, which, in the chambers of the East, occasionally veiled the sun as he lifted his full-orbed face from its tranquil bosom. Presently raising himself up, as if to select his pathway through the celestial arch, and disencumbering himself from the vapors of the night, he began his wonted race. Our sails hung motionless to the masts, as if reluctant to bear us away from our beloved homes. We spent the day in poring upon the beautiful face of the serene Atlantic, and in occasionally reading a few pages by way of relief.--Meanwhile, a large shoal of whales hove in sight and happily exhibited themselves for our amusement. They seemed to sport with much pleasure, and to enjoy the beauties of our horizon, while they vied with each other in showing how high they could spout the water from their nostrils as they rolled their huge carcases along and lifted themselves up in their mightiness, exhibiting their broad backs and deep sides as though challenging in defiance the puny hand of man.

      The shoal continued with us for more than an hour, and seemed to stretch over some two or three miles, leaving us still more disposed to reflect upon the mysteries of the deep, dark caves of the unfathomable abyss. During the remainder of our voyage we were occasionally greeted by several large companies of the grampus and of the porpoise. These, as well the whales, require often to appear above the ocean wave as they navigate the seas. They cannot live without breathing a portion of our oxygen. Being warm-blooded, they, as well as terrestrial animals, are dependent upon our [454] atmosphere. True, they need not to breathe so often as we do; but they must breathe, and that, too, within certain intervals.

      We saw on our whole voyage but few of the inhabitants of the great deep. But one shark was seen to approach our ship. He appeared to be an American citizen, being seen only on the coast. Occasionally a flying-fish presented itself on wing, sporting through the air, or, more probably hiding himself in our atmosphere from the dolphin, his constant enemy and pursuer.

      On another very tranquil day, of which we sometimes thought we had too many, (though, for my part, I always prefer a calm to a storm,) as we sailed in the Gulf Stream, we passed through some immense fields of the mollusca. This genus, of which there are many species, appear to be of a soft gelatinous nature, without an internal skeleton, and without any artificial covering and exhibit to us a new kind of animal life, as though midway between the vegetable and animal kingdoms. To this genus, you are aware, belong the coral species. Though inhabiting stone houses called coral, (for the coral is the name of the house rather than of the inhabitant,) they are themselves, like the oyster in its own shell, very unlike the beautiful houses, forests, and gardens, which they build and plant for themselves at the bottom of the sea. Before the zoology of the ocean began to be so much a subject of scientific inquiry and research, coral specimens were called lithophytes, or stone plants; but since we have cultivated a better acquaintance with their history, we now call them zoophytes, or animal plants.

      The tenantry of the ocean is, to say the least, as numerous, as various, and as marvellous as the tenantry of the earth. I might, indeed, have said, it is altogether more numerous diverse, and wonderful than that of the land. The superior capacity of the ocean might, itself, indicate this. I speak not only of its immense surface, but also of its great depth. Its depth, indeed, has never been fathomed, and never can be. Still we may suppose that its bottom is, at least, as uneven as the surface of the earth, and as deep as its mountains are high.

      Now as the mountains of the globe, though averaging less than half a mile high, rise, some of them, as the Alps, fifteen thousand feet; others, as the Andes, twenty-five thousand; and others, as the Himmalayah, twenty-nine thousand feet above the level of the sea we may rationally suppose that the seas having three times as much surface as the earth, may have depths proportionally greater than the loftiest peak on the Himmalayah, though it be more than five miles high. Our North American Appalachian chain, which you [455] have admired so much, being only at its loftiest summit some four thousand feet high, what think you must be the grandeur of the Andes or the Himmalayah! And what the vast depths of the ocean in proportion to its breadth? To imagine the wonders of the deep would be impossible, were we to suppose it on an average to be not more than some ten thousand feet, or two miles deep. For if every stratum of the earth, as we ascend from the sea to the mountain regions of perpetual snow, has its own vegetable and animal tenantry; and as the same law seems to obtain amongst the inhabitants of the ocean, who could divine the number or the variety of the tenantry which "the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear"!

      You have seen the sparkling foam break on the sides of the ship as it furrowed the deep blue waves during the gloom of night, every glow of which is but the "vital motion of an invisible animal world." The vegetable kingdom is not confined to the surface of the earth. The sea, too, has its fields and gardens. To this the phosphoric acid of inorganic nature with which the sea abounds, greatly contributes. This acid, converted into plants, becomes the food of innumerable tribes of animals. On these the crustacea luxuriate; and they, in their turn, lend their bodies as food for the cetaceous tribes of aquatic animals. Thus the fish multiply and increase beyond the power of human computation. The ocean, too, abounds with lime, from which, in a great measure, the coral reels are builded and calcareous shells are formed as habitations for the seven thousand distinct species which the science of conchology records and classifies.

      Some parts of the Pacific Ocean afford satisfactory evidence that much of its bottom is covered with vast forests of zoophytes, whose coral branches and bowers are tenanted with sporting legions of various adorned and decorated fish, as our forests are alive with tribes of gay birds of every plumage and of every song. Already have two hundred species of coral architects been discovered, which, for ages, have been employed in building islands and planting forests on the bottom of the sea. Thus they devote their lives and bequeth their bodies to form new abodes for the growing millions of the sons of men.

      Though some may be startled at the annunciation, it is nevertheless demonstrable from the revelations of geology, from the silent developments of rocks and mountains and from the depths of the seas, that before the Lord created, replenished, and adorned the present earth, he had for untold ages been preparing a comfortable habitation for man. This he did by innumerable agents, created for [456] for this express purpose, who had been laboring for ages in building round the earth, as its various strata fully attest, the very foundations of our present habitation. None but those who have read the rocks, and the fossils, animals and plants imbedded in them, could believe that many of them are but the bodies of defunct species of teeming generations of animalculae, amongst which are occasionally found the more massive remains of those of larger growth; so that we find them varying in size from forty-one million of the infusoria to the cubic inch in the Welsh polishing slate, to one billion in the cubic inch of the Rasencisen or iron clods, up to the crocodile Megalosaurus seventy feet long, and to that ancient monster of the main called the Dianotherium gigantium, the largest yet discovered.

      Strange, however, it is, that the great animals built nothing except so far as their huge bones and massive frames are found piled up with fossil plants in the mountains piled on mountains built by the monadae, the least of the infusoria. We find miles on miles of limestone rock from one hundred to one thousand feet strata, composed of defunct generations of the coralline species, mingled with innumerable testaceous forms of life, consolidated by immense pressure. Indeed, these are but marble monuments reared in honor of the lower classes of animated nature, which after building immense stone houses for the wants of man, passed into eternal oblivion.

      But these animated atoms that have reared for us the everlasting hills and mountains are not the only genera or species that have wholly passed away. Professor Agazsiz, to whom Baron Cuvier, the first of naturalists, bequeathed his early collection of fossil fish, has found seventeen hundred species of deceased or fossil fish, not one of which is now known to live in salt water or fresh. No virtuoso, no geologist, it is farther affirmed, has found in the transition, secondary or tertiary formations of the earth, a single species of fish exactly similar to any one of the eight thousand species of fish now living.

      When, then, we sum up the present inhabitants of the ocean--its seven thousand tribes of shell-fish--its infinitely varied, elegantly formed, and beautifully adorned billions of billions of testaceous tenantry, with its eight thousand species of fishes, many of which would seem to be countless as its sands, may we not say that they who "go down to the sea in ships, that do business in the great waters--these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep?"

      But while musing on the wonders of this ocean of waters, I am led to reflect on that ocean which is under it, whose fiery waves, and [457] whose billows of lava occasionally have their spring tides, and inundate the sea and sometimes the land, with floods of ruin. You have long since learned that fire and water are God's two mighty agents both of mercy and of wrath to man; and that they were both predestined to inundate the world. David, the bard of Israel, used to sing and play upon his harp--"The Lord has founded the earth upon the seas and established it upon the floods." And Peter, according to Moses, affirms--"The heavens were of old, created by the word of God,--and the earth standing in and out of the water," "by which water," he adds, "it was once deluged, but is now reserved for fire against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men."

      Of these, God has two immense oceans--one of water, designated according to the shores it washes--Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, &c. &c., all composing one continuous ocean. So has he, in the bosom of the earth, one great ocean, which has, in the form of warm springs, boiling springs, and volcanoes, given some three hundred indications of its existence and of its ubiquity in the whole interior area of the earth.

      The habitable globe is every where strewed with volcanic rocks, solidified lava, fused metals, and other vestiges of its eternal fires. Earthquakes, as well as igneous rocks, and the rapidly increasing temperature as we descend, warrant the belief that in less than ten miles beneath our domicils, it is one immense caldron of boiling lava, into which rocks are constantly falling and dissolving. Seas will, doubtless, yet find their way into this unquenchable fire, which, when converted into gas, may, in an instant, convulse the earth from pole to pole, and at some unexpected moment cause it to dissolve, and like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind.

      If not to you, there are some who may read this letter, to whom it might be expedient to dilate upon the evidences that leave not the shadow of a doubt, that the earth has been for ages consuming itself by the very fires whose fuel it supplies. There is not a mountain of any note on the face of the earth, which does not indicate to the eye of intelligence, indubitable proofs that it has been upheaved from the depths of the ocean by the agency of fire.

      When we find an oyster, a lobster, or a trilobite in the heart of a rock, on the top of a mountain, we very rationally conclude that it was not created in that place, but that some fearful convulsion of the earth had raised it out of the depths of the sea. And when we find imbedded in rocks, recently cast up from the bottom of the ocean, trees and plants of other zones and climes, we as properly conclude that these, too, were not created, and did not grow where they are [458] now found. Instances of both of these facts are literally innumerable; and as innumerable the proofs of the agency of flood and fire in the formation of the surface of the present earth. There is not, indeed, a pit dug deep into the earth, nor a tunnel carried through a hill or a mountain; there is not a miner's shaft deeply penetrating the earth, nor a gap in a mountain, that does not prove that all the upper strata, of the earth were laid in water, and that convulsions from beneath have one day occurred to break these strata, and to disturb those layers of rock upon rock, sometimes by raising, and sometimes by undermining and depressing them.

      Sweden has been rising above the level of the sea for ages. It gives proof, abundant and clear, that it has been in some places raised four hundred feet. In one century it has risen almost seven feet by a pressure from beneath. Greenland has during this, been gradually sinking into the sea. Places of landing, less than a century ago, are now distant from the shore and buried under the waters. Mount Etna has piled up its chimney almost two hundred feet by its own eruptions, and gathered a hill of lava round it. Not fifty miles from Sicily, not long since, a mountain almost three hundred feet high was suddenly raised out of the bottom of the sea.

      Passing within seventy or eighty miles of the Azores, the other day, being carried thither by north easterly winds, I was reminded of the volcanic island thrown up in the vicinity of one of them in 1811, and which was again submerged. All the Azores are, I presume, volcanic islands. I need not name Iceland, covered with lava, nor the Cape de Verd islands,--nor the burning mountains of the Andes, and of Mexico. Nor need I name the hundred volcanic islands of the Pacific. There is in one of these Islands, Hawii, if I remember right, an immense crater one thousand feet below the surrounding country, on the edge of which one may stand and look down into a sea of lava, lashing its sides, boiling and swelling as if tempest tossed and infuriate with rage.--Not far from this fiery whirlpool there is a neighboring volcano that rises twelve thousand feet high, which seems to be its chimney; and which, by its frequent eruptions, prevents the necessity of its boiling over. To these might be added many more, of which I cannot now speak particularly. But are not these enough to sustain the alarming fact that under this ocean of water there is one of fire, and that the depth and the extent of the igneous ocean are much greater than those of the aqueous ocean?

      The earth is most correctly presented to us as a globe. On the outside of this globe we have the envelope, on which we live, called [459] its surface. This surface is divided into continents and oceans, islands and lakes, denominated according to the taste or caprice of its inhabitants. But geologically speaking, its surface, excepting its ocean, sea, and lake basins, is but its outside envelope, composed of a layer, or stratum, deposited from, as well as by the waters that once overwhelmed it. This stratum, by the action of the heavens, has been converted, like the human heart, into a proper abode for a spirit. The sun, moon, and stars, the winds and vapors, with all their combined influences, aided by those more sublimated, spiritualized, imponderable agents--light, heat, electricity, &c., have decomposed, fertilized, and prepared it for the seeds that God has sown, and the germs of life that he has planted in it; and have rendered it a suitable habitation for man. He is now learning to read it.

      The work is divided into two grand divisions. The first is now published, containing some twenty volumes; but only two or three volumes of the second department have yet appeared. A philosopher called WATER is the author of the first series of volumes, and another called FIRE is the author of the second series, so far as it has appeared. Few have read the first volume called, "Modern Alluvium," and fewer the second called "Ancient Alluvium." Some have peeped into the "Pliocene," the "Miocene," and the "Eocene."--Others, such as Mr. Lyell, have read the "Cretaceous," "Saliferous," and "Carboniferous" volumes, down to the "Silurian," and "Cambrian," and have penetrated into the second department so far as to have read a few pages in stratified Mica and Gneiss, and just opened the amorphous pages of unstratified granite.

      This onion-like earth has many envelopes, each one of which reveals a thousand mysteries. They all either prove or illustrate that, (as Moses reports,) before the six days' creation began--"the earth was without form and void--that darkness enveloped it, and that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."--Thus we understand Peter's allusion to the earth's "standing in the water and out of the water;" but how long!--its multiform and manifold generations of aquatic animals alone can imperfectly develope.

      I will only add, for I have been beguiled for an hour or two by God's works in the sea, and "his great wonders in the deep," into an excursion into fields of thought and reflection on subjects always interesting to myself, as an amusement, and more especially now, while slowly moving on the placid face of these "great waters;" I say I will only add, that the everlasting mountains piled on each other, have been reared by steam engines fabricated in the bosom of the earth, as mighty monuments of the dead, containing in them the [460] mortal remains of untold generations of animated nature; and having inscribed upon them the epitaphs of multitudes of defunct genera and species that have passed into eternal oblivion, and that, too, by the spasmodic action of the fire ocean in some of its more violent and fitful movements, instigated by causes unknown to mortal man.

      From this long episode, prosaic indeed, I will return (if I have not lost myself,) to our voyage.

      I need not tell you of all the pleasures of sea-sickness, nor of all the unpleasant things that occur in a sea voyage. We had our usual share of all these. Brother Henshall was confined two days, and some for a much longer time. They suffered much for the time being. I was, indeed, more affected than on any former voyage. But as I dislike confinement, not having lain one day in bed for forty years, (thanks to the Father of mercies!) I kept on foot every day.

      We had about four stormy days on the whole passage, and having to sail as near the wind as possible, we had more rough sailing than had we, in a tempest, been going before the wind. We were carried so far south as to make our passage some five or six hundred miles farther than the real distance between New York and Liverpool. Our berths were large and comfortable; our Captain a gentleman, and admirably qualified in all respects for his station, did everything to make us comfortable that he could, both in health and in sickness. He invited me to preach to the passengers every Lord's day. Not only the cabin, but the steerage passengers attended, and we had their attention while I addressed them for an hour and a half. Our table was well furnished with every thing desirable and necessary, having had fresh meats and fowl of every variety in abundance, with good vegetables and other luxuries till we landed. We kept so far to the south, that we neither saw the Banks of Newfoundland, nor an iceberg on the passage. Our Captain, so perfectly master of his profession, could almost every day tell us within a mile or two of our locality. When he told us that we had Cape Clear to the south, and were but thirty-five miles from its light-house, before we had a single indication of it to the eye, we were, of course, pleased to hear the tidings; but still more to ascertain, in a few hours, that it was as near the fact as could be imagined.

      We entered the channel with a propitious breeze, and soon passing the eastern promontory of Ireland, we saw the mountains of Wales lifting their blue heads in the distance. The island of Anglesea soon made its Holyhead a very interesting scene.

      We got our telescopes upon it and bade it welcome. A few hours, and we [461] could trace the houses and fields on the island. I looked, but looked in vain for a tree. I counted some seven windmills in motion on different parts of the island. I even counted the slate roofed houses in its principal village, but I could find nothing green larger than an apple tree on its whole premises. Still., the appearance of mother earth, and of the residence of man upon it, is a very interesting spectacle to any one who sails across an ocean of from three to four thousand miles extent.

      We spent a pleasant night, but made little headway, the wind having gone to sleep with us. Next morning we had the coasts of Ireland in sight. During the forenoon we passed the harbors of Waterford and Cork, and in the afternoon took a pilot aboard.--Again becalmed, (O how unpleasant when approaching a desired haven!) we were disappointed in getting into port. A steamer came along in the morning, our Captain hired her services to bring the Siddons into port, and in six hours we passed the river Dee, separating England and Wales, and saw the trees and country seats around Liverpool rising in all their beauty on the banks of the Mersey.

      When our pilot informed us that the Exmouth, from Londonderry, had recently been dashed to pieces on that same Islay on which I had been wrecked some nine and thirty years ago--and that of 220 passengers, men, women, and children, not one escaped--I felt a new fountain of gratitude sprang up in my heart. But four seamen from the topmast escaped, being flung off when she struck upon a perpendicular rock; seizing some of its cliffs, though stunned, they held on till they recovered, and clambering to its summit; escaped destruction!

      At ten o'clock we had the pleasure of approaching the docks, and as soon as we came near them, of seeing two gentlemen saluting us as though they were some old acquaintances. I could not recognize them. Conjecture was in vain. But soon the vessel was moored and being helped on shore by one of them, I learned that I had brother Davis of Mollington by the hand, and that the other was his brother Samuel.

      In five minutes we were on board of a cab, and away to the custom-house to have our trunks examined by the officers of her majesty, Victoria. There we were introduced to brethren Woodworth and Tickle of Liverpool, and having passed the custom-house ordeal with impunity, we were immediately in a carriage, and away to the rail-cars, and in little more than an hour we found ourselves at the delightful abode of brother Davis and his excellent lady, seventeen miles from the city. Thus in twenty-five days from Now York, and [462] a voyage, as we made it, of 3800 miles, brother Henshall and myself found ourselves safe, and in the enjoyment of all that we could desire, in the bosom of these friends, that the common faith and hope of the gospel through the sacrifice of Emmanuel, have obtained for us. It was some time before I could realize the scenes through which I had passed. In the words of our favorite poet already quoted at the beginning, I will say--"Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!"

      My love to every one around Bethany that loves our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Finished after my landing, May 30, 1847.

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 4 (August 1847): 453-463.]