CHAPTER XV The Wonders of the Deep The world’s literature in all the ages has much to say about the mystery and the wonder and the power of the sea. In ancient days Homer made frequent use of the expression, “the loud resounding sea,” and, in modern times, Byron apostrophizes the unconquerable ocean and seems glad to think that while “Man marks the earth with ruin; His control stops with the shore.” But here, as elsewhere, the language of writers who have the Theistic view of things strongly developed is supreme for its vividness and power. Thus we find the Psalmist saying, “They that go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters, these behold the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.” No finer reflection of that saying has been seen in our day than the verses, “There’s a schooner in the offing And her topsail’s shot with fire And my soul has gone aboard her For the Isle of my desire. “I must forth again at midnight, And to-morrow I shall be Hull down on the trail of rapture Mid the wonders of the sea.” “The Western Sea” beyond the sunset shore of British North America always had a romantic and fascinating attraction for explorers and navigators. As indicated in a previous chapter, the hope of discovering a north-west passage by a sea channel from the Atlantic to the Pacific had lured some of the most dauntless navigators to hardship and death a few centuries ago. There is a picture somewhere of an old sea-rover in uniform and decorations, studying a map of British North America on which his clenched, determined hand rests, and underneath he is represented as saying, in this regard, to his eager little grandson, “This must be done, and Britain must do it.” Well, Britain’s seamen discovered, after endless persistence, that there was no north-west passage by sea. But gallant British explorers who remembered the motto on a famous battle-axe, “I either find a way or make one,” rested not till they forced a pathway by land to the ocean of their dreams.