One who has never traveled upon the ocean expects to find it somewhat thickly populated. He thinks of the vast travel and traffic that go over the waters, and he is ready to imagine that the great deep is alive with its hurrying to and fro of the nations. He reads of lands “whose commerce whitens every sea,” and he is ready to think that the ocean itself is as full of sails as the harbor of some mighty metropolis. But he finds his mistake. As he leaves the land the ships begin to disappear. As he goes on his way they soon all vanish, and there is nothing about him but the blue sea and blended sky; sometimes he may meet or overtake a solitary ship during the day; but then, again, there will be many days when not a single sail will cross the horizon. There are spaces measured by thousands of miles, over which no ship has ever passed. The91idea of a “nation’s commerce whitening every sea” is the wildest fancy. If all the ships that have ever been built were brought together in a single fleet they would fill but a hand’s breadth of the ocean. The space, therefore, that man and his works occupy on the sea is as small in extent as the hold on it by his power is slight and superficial. Both together are as nothing. The ocean covers three-fourths of the surface of the globe, and by far the greater part of this vast expanse is and ever has been entirely free from his presence and visitation.—Sel.