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Suppose that it were possible for some convulsion of Nature to lay bare, let us say, the entire bed of the North Atlantic Ocean. With one bound the fancy leaps at the prospect of a rediscovery of the lost continent, the fabled Atlantis whose wonders have had so powerful an effect upon the imaginations of mankind. Should we be able to roam through those stupendous halls, climb those towering temple heights reared by the giants of an elder world, or gaze with stupefied wonder upon the majestic ruins of cities to which Babylon or Palmyra with all their mountainous edifices were but as a suburban townlet! Who knows? Yet maybe the natural wonders apparent in the foundations of such soaring masses as the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, or the Canaries; or, greater still, the altitude of such remote and lonely pinnacles as those of the St. Paul’s Rocks, would strike us as more marvellous yet. To thread the cool intricacies of the “still vext Bermoothes” at their basements and seek out the caves where the sea-monsters dwell who never saw the light of day, to wander at will among the windings of that strange maze of reefs that cramp up the outpouring of the beneficent Gulf Stream and make it issue from its source with that turbulent energy that carries it, laden with blessings, to our shores; what a pilgrimage that would be! Imagine the vision of that great chain of islands which we call the West Indies soaring up from the vast plain 6000 feet below, with all the diversity of form and colour belonging to the lovely homes of the coral insects, who build ceaselessly for themselves, yet all unconsciously rear stable abodes for mankind.