Perhaps you didn't know that there are mountains in the sea. I have seen
them, however, and I think you have, too,--at least their tops, if
nothing more. What is that little rocky ledge, where the lighthouse
stands, but the stony top of a hill rising from the bottom of the sea?
And what are the pretty green islands, with their clusters of trees and
grassy slopes, but the summits of hills lifted out of the water?
In many parts of the sea, where the water is deep, are hills and even
high mountains, whose tops do not reach the surface; and we should not
know where they are, were it not that the sailors, in measuring the
depth of the sea, sometimes sail right over these mountain-tops, and
touch them with their sounding-lines.
The star fish set out one day, about five hundred years ago, to visit
some of these mountains of the sea. If he had depended upon his own feet
for getting there, it would have taken him till this day, I verily
believe; but he no more thought of walking, than you or I should think
of walking to China. You shall see how he travelled. A great train was
coming, down from the Northern seas; not a railroad train, but a water
train, sweeping on like a river in the sea. Its track lay along near the
bottom of the ocean; and above you could see no sign of it, any more
than you can see the cars while they go through the tunnel under the
street. The principal passengers by this train were icebergs, who were
in the habit of coming down on it every year, in order to reduce their
weight by a little exercise; for they grow so very large and heavy up
there in the North every winter, that some sort of treatment is really
necessary to them when summer comes.
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