“From this spot”--the spot on which he stood--“the water is about eight miles distant, the intermediate space being a flat surface, entirely covered a quarter of an inch thick with salt in crystals, looking much like snow, in such quantities that it can be scraped up by the hand perfectly free from earth; and on all this space not a blade of grass to be seen.” The same task is carried on by the working of sun-heat, as by the fire under a kettle. All day long in a warm climate the sun’s rays are busily at work, lifting from the ocean-surface a continuous stream of fine invisible vapour. The water is drawn up particle by particle, not in masses; and the sun’s rays have no power to lift the ocean-salt, which remains behind, floating still in the sea. But when a strong wind lashes the surface into waves, and rends the tops of billows into fine spray, it often carries a great deal of salt to a distance. We know how salt may be tasted on the lips miles inland, and how windows near the coast become encrusted with it in stormy weather. Moving air, like moving water, can carry weight; and it is thus, through the action of moving air, and not through the heat of the sun, that we have our health-giving breezes off the sea, laden with salt. CHAPTER III. EARTH’S VAST OCEAN “Thou great strong sea.”--AUBERON HERBERT. “Drop by drop He counts The flood of Ocean as it mounts.”--C. ROSSETTI. In these days we know the Ocean as one vast whole. Not like our early forefathers, standing on the brink, to gaze with awe-stricken eyes into mysterious distances, and to speculate upon the unknown. Minor oceans do exist, certainly. We have the Atlantic, North and South; the Pacific, North and South; the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Indian. Yet for us there is but one great world-wide OCEAN, encircling the Earth, every part being in connection with every other part. A drop of water which to-day floats in southern seas may, months or years hence, have found its way by currents into the far north. A speck of ice, at this moment fast in the rigid embrace of polar berg or floe, may, months or years hence, be washing to and fro in tropical waters. A much greater area of water than of land is found upon the Earth’s surface. So vast is the amount of the former that, if the whole had to be put into separate vessels, each vessel being one cubic mile in size, the number of such vessels required would amount to no less than _three hundred and thirty-five millions_. This very large order speaks for itself. The outer Crust of our Earth, taking land and sea together, may be divided into three distinct parts. Like most such divisions in Nature, the one is often found to glide by gentle stages into another.