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From the whirling coils of the tides and races round the coast, he judged that the sea-bed was as seamed and broken and full of faults as the visible cliffs ashore. In bad weather, the men in those submarine galleries and the outbranching tunnels could hear the crash of the waves above their heads, and the rolling and grinding of the mighty boulders with which they disported.
Where it is too cold for surface animal life, as in the Antarctic Ocean, these dead diatoms form the mud on the bottom of the ocean, and in the extremely deep parts, the sea-bed is red clay, but most of it is an 'ooze' 'Globigerina, as it is called made up of the shells of those very creatures you have now been seeing on that microscope slide.
It would, I think, be unreasonable to suppose that such an immense tract of sandy desert, once undoubtedly a sea-bed, should immediately contract; considering, indeed, the sterile character of the country to the north of Gawler's Range, to the westward of Port Lincoln, and along the whole of the south coast of Australia, nearly to King George's Sound, I must confess I have no hope of any inland fertile country.
And in his nostrils was the indescribable odor of the ancient sea-bed that, for uncounted thousands of years, had lain under a blazing sun and scorching wind and mistless nights, knowing no touch of human life save the passing presence of those who dared to follow that one thin trail. And always with that dogged regularity the sandy miles were being measured by those steady hoofs.
Thus, if the water of the ocean should be suddenly drained away, we should see the atolls rising from the sea-bed like vast truncated cones, and resembling so many volcanic craters, except that their sides would be steeper than those of an ordinary volcano.
It was a presence an imaginary shape or essence from the human multitude lying below: those who had gone down in vessels of war, East Indiamen, barges, brigs, and ships of the Armada select people, common, and debased, whose interests and hopes had been as wide asunder as the poles, but who had rolled each other to oneness on that restless sea-bed.
These ash-beds attain a thickness of about 120 feet just below the road to Ballycastle, but rapidly tail out in both directions from the locality of the vent. Just below the ash-beds, the white chalk with flints may be seen extending down into the sea-bed. Nowhere in Antrim is there such a display of volcanic ash and agglomerate as at this spot. No one can visit the geological sections in Co.
From his superior height, Kenkenes saw, over the heads of the immense concourse, two lines of foam riding like the wind across the sea-bed toward each other. Between them was a great body of plunging horses; overhead a forest of fluttering banners; and faint from the commotion came shouts and wild notes of trumpets.
On the contrary, although pale with terror, he was able to state that he had beheld the sea-bed peopled with human bodies standing upright, which the swaying of the water, still sensible at this shallow depth, softly rocked as though they were monstrous algæ, their hair on end bristling vertically, and their arms raised toward the surface.... All these corpses, anchored to the bottom by the weight of stones, took on an appearance of eerie life resembling, one might say, a forest of trees moved from side to side by the wind and eager to welcome the diver come down among them.... There were, he added, old men, children numerous beyond count, so that one could but compare them to the trees of a forest."
And from that place where I did stand, there spread out all before me the blue shining that I had seen from the mouth-part of the Upward Gorge; yet did it be a great way off. And, indeed, I should tell you in this place, that it was by the glimmering of this shine within the sky of the night that I had steered, as we did come across the olden sea-bed.
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