[Illustration: THE SEA.]
Here is a view of the sea. In front is a splendid wave just ready to put
on its creamy cap, and to fall over with a glorious roar upon the shore.
How the spray will fly as the white water rushes up the beach with a
soft hissing sound, or dashes over those brown rocks! Behind is the
level floor of the water, and far away the sky and water meet at that
beautiful line called the horizon.
Did you ever see the ocean? Have you been to that most wonderful place
in the world, the sea-shore? If you live in the interior, and have not
seen the salt-water, save all your spare pennies, and resolve that some
day you will travel east or west, and look at least once in your
lifetime upon the great and wide sea. Perhaps you have seen it. All the
better. You know how the waves look, how the sea-birds skim over the
water, how beautiful the sky and clouds that rest on the horizon, how
sweet the air, what grand sights and sounds you may find where the land
and water meet.
If you live near the sea, take this book in your hand, and let us go
down by the water. If you live far away from the sea, look at the
picture, and at any other pictures like it you can find, and try to
remember what you read, that when some day you do see the real ocean,
you may perhaps understand it better, and learn to love it as do all
those who see it every day. First, be careful. Do not be disappointed.
Do not expect too much. You can see only a mere speck of the sea at
once. As you stand by the shore, the vast circle of water seems to be
immense, yet it is only a very little space on the wide sea. It is this
that disappoints people who see the water for the first time. They
expect too much, so that they do not really understand it.
Look at the big wave just ready to break. Where did it come from? How
long have these waves been pounding on the shore? How old is the sea?
When did it begin, and what does it all mean? If you wait here a little
while, you will observe that the waves are slowly coming nearer and
nearer, or are moving off, leaving the beach bare. Taste the water. It
is bitter and salt, like brine. These are strange things, and perhaps if
you sit here by the water for a while, we may learn something of what
they mean.
The world is like a splendid picture-book, full of stories more
wonderful than any fairy tale. The boy or girl who has eyes to see can
read this book as he walks over the great pages. The sea is one of the
best pictures in the book, its history and its work the strangest story
you ever heard. This water you see from the eastern shore of the United
States is a part of the Atlantic Ocean. If an ocean steam-ship should
sail straight away toward the horizon at a speed of three hundred miles
a day, she would be ten days in crossing to Europe. Yet this ocean is
only a long gulf between the continents. Outside of this gulf is the
real ocean, covering three-fourths of the entire surface of the earth,
or, as they measure it, about 146,000,000 square miles of water.
How old is the sea? Thousands of millions would fail to tell the number
of years that the sea has covered the earth. Before there was any dry
land, as we see it to-day, there was water everywhere. The land sprang
from the sea. These waves helped to build up the hills and rocks. The
tides helped to carve out the continents. Nearly all the surface of the
dry land was once dissolved in the sea, just as to-day we find salt
dissolved in the sea-water.
Men who have studied the sea and the land feel sure that at one time, so
long ago no one can imagine the number of years, the world was red-hot,
and all the water hung in thick clouds of steam above the melting rocks.
Showers of scalding rain fell on the glowing earth, and gathered in
ponds and lakes of boiling water. As the earth cooled, more and more
water fell from the steaming sky, and slowly the pools grew larger and
became united, until at last all the waters were gathered together in
one place. Just as now salt is dissolved in the sea-water, so many of
the elements of which the dry land is composed were dissolved in the hot
seas, or were suspended as soft mud in the swift currents that flowed
hither and thither under the cloudy skies where the sun never shone.
In time the rain ceased, and the blue sky appeared. Then more wonderful
things happened. The muddy water began to grow clear and cool. The
materials dissolved or suspended in the water fell down to the bottom
and covered the floor of the sea, and a new kind of rock began to be
made. The soft mud became hard and firm. Earthquakes tore up the beds of
hardened mud, twisted them into new shapes, and lifted them above the
water into the air. Then the dry land appeared. Rocky, rough, and wild,
without trees or grass. Much of it was the remains of the older fiery
days before there were any seas, but much also came out of the water,
and was once dissolved in it, just as salt is now dissolved. Iron,
silver, gold, limestone, chalk, and slate, with many other things that
go to make the land, were once drifting about in those old oceans, or
lay as mud upon the bottom.
Then the waves began to work, tearing and rending the rocks, knocking
off bits and pieces only to throw them about in every tide, grinding and
rolling them together in the surf, and then appeared that strange thing
under your feet--the sand. Pools and little bays were formed on that old
shore, and the sand and mud settled in quiet corners. The rain fell on
the soft mud, and every drop left its little mark where it fell. To-day
we can see this very mud turned to stone with every splashing rain-drop
printed on it. These pools and bays afterward became dry land, only to
be turned over, twisted, and bent out of shape by earthquakes, or torn
up by floating icebergs drifting on those ancient seas.
This has been the work of the sea--to create the dry land. To-day, even
while you are looking on, the sea is at work. The waves are always
tearing down and building up. The water holds countless millions of
living creatures, each in its tiny shell. Each one drinks the water, and
extracts from it the lime he uses to build his house. Millions of these
creatures die every day, and their tiny houses sink down like a white
snow-storm of shells and skeletons to the bottom of the ocean. Deep
under the Atlantic these shells cover the bottom with a soft mud called
ooze. Perhaps this ooze will in some long-distant time be lifted above
the sea to form a new dry land, just as ages ago the bones of other
creatures made vast ranges of hills along the shore.
The water is the great land builder, and these waves are the hammer with
which it grinds and pounds the rocks into sand. The tides and currents
shift the sand about, making new beaches where the birds gather to find
their food, and children come to play. Day by day, summer and winter,
the work goes on. The sea is never idle, never hurries, never stops. The
beach to-day is different from yesterday. To-morrow it will be different
still. You may not see the change, but the change goes on, and will go
on for countless years on years to come.