The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

CHAPTER V. THE DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS. When a landsman, born far away among the mountains, comes down to the coast, and stands for the first time on the shore of the sea, it excites in him a feeling of awe and wonder, not unmingled with terror. There it lies, a level surface, with nothing that lifts up its head like a peak of his native hills. And yet it is so vast, stretching away to the horizon, and all over the sides of the round world; with its tides and currents that sweep from the equator to the pole; with its unknown depths and its ceaseless motion; that it is to him the highest emblem of majesty and of power--a not unworthy symbol of God himself. In proportion to its mystery is the terror which hangs over it. A vague dread always surrounds the unknown. And what so unknown as the deep, unfathomable sea? For thousands of years the sails of ships, like winged birds, have skimmed over it, yet it has remained the one thing in nature beyond alike man's knowledge and his power: Man marks the earth with ruin, His control stops with the shore.