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They were to be found, freed and fed he was to feed them till such time as they could be sent to the nearest English port in a man-of-war. If you abuse a man long enough in great words flashed over the sea-beds, things happen. The Governor sent inland swiftly for his prisoners, who were also soldiers; and never was a militia regiment more anxious to reduce its strength.

Their outward resemblance to some of the ridges on the moon is unquestionable; and if we could believe that the Maria, as we now see them, are dried-up sea-beds, it might be concluded that these ridges had a similar origin; but their close connection with centres of volcanic disturbance, and the numbers of little craters on or near their track, point to the supposition that they consist rather of material exuded from long-extending fissures in the crust of the "seas," and in other surfaces where they are superimposed.

I must ask you to believe that there is no less conclusive proof that a still more prolonged succession of similar changes occurred before the chalk was deposited. Nor have we any reason to think that the first term in the series of these changes is known. The oldest sea-beds preserved to us are sands, and mud, and pebbles, the wear and tear of rocks which were formed in still older oceans.

I must ask you to believe that there is no less conclusive proof that a still more prolonged succession of similar changes occurred, before the chalk was deposited. Nor have we any reason to think that the first term in the series of these changes is known. The oldest sea-beds preserved to us are sands, and mud, and pebbles, the wear and tear of rocks which were formed in still older oceans.

The terminator, or boundary between light and shade, was not, as in the Moon, pretty sharply defined, and broken only by the mountainous masses, rings, and sea-beds, if such they are, so characteristic of the latter.

But everywhere the true craters are in evidence, even on the sea-beds, although they attain their greatest number and size on those parts of the moon covering sixty per cent of its visible surface which are distinctly mountainous in character and which constitute its most brilliant portions.

When the great pulse of the tide rushes up this channel, it is gradually accumulated into a mighty volume at the upper end, the ebb and flow of which at spring tides extends through the astonishing range of not less than fifty feet. These discrepancies between the tides at different places are chiefly due to the local formations of the coasts and the sea-beds.

Some, however, regard them as old sea-beds, from which every trace of fluid, owing to some unknown cause, has vanished, and that the folds and wrinkles, the ridges, swellings, and other peculiarities of structure observed upon them, represent some of the results of alluvial action.

As they crossed one of these, Redgrave allowed the Astronef to sink to within a few thousand feet of the surface, and then he and Zaidie swept it with their telescopes. Their chance search was rewarded by something they had not seen in the sea-beds of the other hemisphere.

To him it seems clear that the basis of the present continents was laid in ancient sea-beds, formed of the detritus of continents yet more ancient. But two links are still wanting to complete the chain of Hutton's hypothesis.