must evidently have been very violent. Two or three sharp cracks were heard at the time the ship was lifted, and a piece of plank, which proved to be part of the false keel, was torn off and floated up by the bower, but no other serious injury was yet discovered. Our situation, however, was at this time as dangerous and painful as possible. Every moment threatened us with shipwreck, while the raging of the storm, the heavy bewildering fall of sleet and snow, and the circumstance of every man on board being wet to the skin, rendered the prospect of our having to take refuge on the ice most distressing. We remained in this state of anxiety and apprehension about two hours. On the one hand we feared the calamity of shipwreck; on the other, in case of her preservation, we looked forward to immense difficulties before the ship, so firmly grounded, could be got afloat. While I walked the deck under a variety of conflicting feelings, produced by the anticipation of probable events, I was suddenly aroused by another squeeze of the ice, indicated by the cracking of the ship and the motion of the berg, which seemed to mark the moment of destruction. But this renewed pressure, by a singular and striking Providence, was the means of our preservation. The nip took the ship about the bows, where it was received on a part rendered prodigiously strong by its arched form and the thickness of the interior fortifications. It acted like the propulsion of a round body squeezed between the fingers, driving the ship astern, and projecting her clear of all the ice fairly afloat with a velocity equal to that of her first launching!"

The year 1830 was one of the most disastrous ever known in the navigation of the northern seas, happily not for the loss of life, but of the ships employed in the whale fishery. A group of vessels consisting of the St. Andrew of Aberdeen, the Baffin and the Rattler of Leith, the Eliza Swan of Montrose, the Achilles of Dundee, and the Ville de Dieppe from that port, while entangled with icebergs and floes, encountered a violent gale, which drove in upon them the stupendous masses. On the evening of the 24th of June, the ships were ranged in a line stem to stern, pressed on each side by the ice, when the tempest arose that sealed their fate. In little more than a quarter of an hour, the Baffin, Achilles, Ville de Dieppe, and Rattler were crushed into fragments by the huge floes which the storm dashed against them, the noise of the ice rending asunder and splintering their timbers, the falling of the masts, and the cries of the sailors compelled to betake themselves to the frozen surfaces as their only refuge, forming a scene easier to imagine than describe. Another frightful tempest on the 2nd of July, accompanied with showers of hail and snow, accomplished in a similar manner the destruction of several of their companions. "The dark and fearful aspect of the sky gave warning of approaching danger. At seven in the morning a signal of distress was hoisted by the William of Hull, and in a short time she appeared almost buried under masses of ice. About ten, the North Briton was reduced to a complete wreck; and at eleven the Gilder was in a similar predicament. During six hours the storm slightly abated, but returning after that interval with augmented fury, pressed the ice with additional force upon the Alexander of Aberdeen and the Three Brothers of Dundee-two fine vessels, so strongly built that an observer might have supposed them capable of withstanding any shock whatever. They made accordingly a very stout resistance. The conflict was dreadful, and was beheld with awful interest by the sailors as they gazed around. At length their timbers gave way at every point-the sides bursting open, the masts crashing and falling with an astounding noise: the hull of the Three Brothers was so much twisted, that the two ends of the ship could scarcely be distinguished; finally, only some broken masts and booms appeared above the ice. The crews, spectators of this awful scene, gave three cheers in honour of the gallant resistance made by their vessels to the overpowering element by which they had been vanquished." This was a verification of one of Parry's remarks, that a ship, even the strongest that can be built, becomes like an egg-shell when

exposed to the full force of the agency in question. Nearly a thousand seamen, during this season of peril, were obliged by the wreck of their vessels to commit themselves to the ice, saving what food and clothing the time admitted of being preserved, and were ultimately brought off in safety by other vessels.

The "deep sea fryseth not." This was a notion of the ancient mariners, once held, too, by some of the learned, on the ground of its saltness, but sufficiently refuted by modern observation. In the severe winter of the year 1348, the ocean was completely frozen over around Iceland, so as to admit of the inhabitants riding on horseback from one promontory to another at some distance from the shore. It is found that sea-water, containing the ordinary quantity of saline ingredients, freezes at the temperature of about 27° Fahrenheit, five degrees below the freezing point of fresh water; but as the arctic winters vary in their severity, like those of the temperate zones, some seasons being comparatively mild, the amount of ice formed varies correspondingly. Hence some navigators have found the sea open at one period, where to others it has presented an impassable icy barrier at the same season in a different year, and the latter have found it impossible to penetrate to the high latitudes reached by the former. Several of the early adventurers to the polar seas succeeded in advancing to extreme northerly points. Davis, in 1587, attained to the latitude of 72° 12′; Baffin, in 1616, to 78°; Hudson, in 1607, to 81°; and Captain M'Cullam, in 1751, to 8310, where he found the sea still open to the north. This was remarkably the case in the year 1754, when Captain Wilson passed through floating ice between the latitudes of 74° and 81°, where he found a completely clear sea, and advanced as high as 83°. During the same year, a southerly wind, which blew for several days, carried Mr. Stephens from the coast of Spitzbergen; and he actually reached the latitude of 8430, meeting with very little ice in his passage, and experiencing no excessive cold. The elder Scoresby, in 1806, attained the latitude of 81° 50′; but, in the year succeeding, he was unable to pass beyond 78°. The obstacles presented by the ice have hitherto prevented the northern coast-line of America from being traced by A lamentable loss of life has been incurred in attempts to effect this enterprise-that of Sir John Franklin and his crews-though, if accomplished, it could never be productive of any practical benefit to commerce, but is simply a point of geographical interest and scientific importance.

sea.

Of the two principal basins in which the waters of the ocean chiefly roll-the Atlantic and the Pacific-the coast line of the former is the most extensive, though its superficial area is far less than that of the latter.

European shores of the Atlantic from the Strait of Waigatz between the island of that name
and the main land of Archangel, to the Strait of Kaffa, at the entrance of the Sea of Azov
Asian shores along the Black Sea, the sea of Marmora, and the Mediterranean Sea
African shores along the Mediterranean

17,000 miles

3,000

2,000

West African shores from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope -
Whole eastern shores of the Atlantic

American shores of the Atlantic, including Greenland as a part of the continent, though probably incorrect

- 20,000

Whole coast line of the Atlantic

48,000

American shores of the Pacific Ocean from Cape Horn to Behring's Strait

11,000

The greater geographical extent of the outline of the Atlantic is due to its numerous

projections into the land, especially in its northern regions, where it forms many mediterranean, or close seas, of immense size. This feature of its basin confers important advantages upon the nations that occupy its coasts, facilitates inter-communication, and has contributed in no slight degree to their superior civilisation. It is now the great highway of the world's commerce, has constantly property amounting to many millions in value upon its surface, and day and night the lives of thousands are at the mercy of its winds and waves. According to Humboldt, the form of the Atlantic basin is that of a longitudinal valley, whose projecting and retiring angles correspond to one another. Theorising with reference to its origin, he refers it to a very violent rush of the waters from the south, which, upon being obstructed in their course by the Brazilian mountains, took an easterly direction, and scooped out that remarkable indentation of Africa now forming the Gulf of Guinea. He supposes, that being stopped by the high coast of Upper Guinea, the stream ran again to the west, and gave origin to a similar indentation of the American shore, now occupied by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico; and issuing thence, it proceeded between the mountains of Western Europe and those of North America, gradually diminishing in its velocity and force, until it at length subsided. We have had occasion before to remark upon the striking configuration of the east and west sides of the Atlantic, as though its continental shores had once been united, and been riven asunder by some grand catastrophe.

The Mediterranean arm of the Atlantic is its most important branch, extending through

48° of longitude. No second example occurs of the ocean penetrating inland to such an extent, or one at all comparable with it. This was the Great Sea of the ancients, a title which proclaims their limited knowledge of physical geography. It is, however, an ocean en petit, daily becoming of greater commercial and political importance, since the overland route through Egypt to the East has been established. In no other part of the globe is there such a variety of coast-line within a few days' sail-the rich landscapes of Spain, the hot stony pavement of Libya, the sandy plains of the Nile, the volcanic shores of Italy and Sicily, the bold southern heights of Asia Minor, the rugged promontories of the Greek peninsula, and the white

marble cliffs of its archipelago of islands. Nothing can exceed in beauty the scenery of the Grecian seas, whether by the Ananes rocks rising perpendicularly from the deep like the coral reefs of the Pacific, or in the gulfs of Corinth, Nauplia, and Ægina, or passing between Samos and the mainland of Asia, or breasting the current of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. A remarkable feature of the Archipelago is the great depth of its water- a line of 1200 feet generally finding no bottom at the distance of less than a mile from the shore, and one of 2400 feet failing to reach it in some parts of the Gulf of Nauplia. The Mediterranean shows also an immense depth in other places; that of 1800 feet between Italy and Greece, 6000 between Sardinia and Sicily, 4800 north-west of Sardinia, and 8000 feet between Spain and Africa, while the deepest part of the North Sea, lying between Kinnaird's Head, Scotland, and the Naze of Norway, does not exceed 900 feet. Another peculiarity of the Mediterranean is the depression of its level below that of the Atlantic and the Black Seas, arising from a prodigious evaporation, which is supposed to carry off three times the amount of water brought into it by the rivers. Hence there is a constant current setting into it from the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar, and from the Black Sea through the Dardanelles. Every thing, as Humboldt observes, that relates to the formation of this sea, which has had so powerful an influence upon the first civilisation of mankind, is highly interesting. Ascending from its shores, in his journey through Spain into the kingdom of Valencia, towards the lofty plains of La Mancha and the Castiles, he hailed far inland, in the lengthened declivities, indications of the ancient coast of the Peninsula. The physical aspect of the region recalled the traditions of the Samothracians, and other historical testimonies, according to which the bursting of the waters of the Euxine through the Dardanelles augmented the basin of the Mediterranean, then a lake, and overflowed the southern part of Europe.

The central elevated plain of Spain was a barrier to the inundation on the one hand, till the Pillars of Hercules were rent asunder by the force of the flood, when the draining off of the waters, through the intervening strait that was formed, brought the Mediterranean

progressively to its present level, while Lower Egypt emerged again from its surface on the one side, and the fertile valleys of Tarragon, Valencia, and Murcia on the other. This is not a modern geological reverie, but the opinion of the ancient geographers, Strabo and Eratosthenes, founded upon the configuration of the land, and a traditional report of some great catastrophe in early ages, to the occurrence of which a different sentiment, which impressed the mind of antiquity, still points, that the irruption was made by the waters of the Atlantic.

The Phoenicians-the earliest known navigators of the Mediterranean-are said to have come, in thirty days' sail, with an easterly wind, to the "weedy sea." This is a modern denomination of the Atlantic, Mar de Sargasso, in the language of the Spanish and Portuguese sailors. The occurrence of floating sea-weed, Fucus natans, is one of its peculiarities. It is found in immense quantities, in two separate regions of the Atlantic, covering the ocean like a mantle, a little to the west of the meridian of Fayal, one of the Azores, between 25° and 36° of latitude, where it forms a vast marine meadow. The other region occupies a smaller space between lat. 22° and 26°, and about long. 70° and 72°, two hundred and seventy-six miles to the east of the Bahamas. Though there is a species of sea-weed, observed by Lamouroux, with stems upwards of eight hundred feet long, yet, in the latitude stated, the weed is not fixed to the bottom, but floats in separate masses on the surface of the water. It owes its origin doubtless to submarine rocks, which continually replace at the surface what is carried off by the equinoctial currents, the growth of marine cryptogamia being extremely rapid. There is some obscurity resting upon the manner in which these weeds are uprooted, at depths where it is generally thought the sea can only experience a very slight agitation. Lamouroux, however, observes, that if the fuci adhere to the rocks with the greatest firmness before the display of fructification, they separate with great facility after that period; and, added to this, the fish and the molluscas gnawing the stems may contribute to the separation in question. Humboldt observed a vine-leaved fucus vegetating at the bottom of the ocean, at the depth of 192 feet, notwithstanding which its leaves were as green as those of our grasses. He estimated that, at such a depth, the fucus could only have received light equal to half of that supplied by a candle at the distance of a foot. This fact, and others of a kindred nature, offer formidable difficulties to the common opinion, that absence of light must always produce blanching; and clearly indicate that it is not under the influence of the solar rays alone that the carburet of iron is formed, the presence of which gives the green colour to the parenchyma of plants. Upon a scale equally grand and extensive, the ocean exhibits the boundless profusion of creative power, in the animal as well as the vegetable life, of which it is the repository. There is a portion of the Greenland sea occupied by microscopic Medusan races, to an extent of not less than twenty thousand square miles; yet Scoresby estimates that two square miles must comprehend 23,888,000,000,000,000 of these creatures-a number which he illustrates by observing, that to count it would require 80,000 persons, and a period equal to the interval between the present and the Creation.