r finds bird and beast fearless and familiar. Man's
cruelty is a lesson of experience. The timid and fearful of the lower
creation belong to creatures of prey. The shark, for example, is as
cowardly as the wolf.

I thought to speak of other marine creations with which the diver
grows acquainted, finding in them only a repetition of the same degree
of life he has seen in the upper world. But let it be enough to state
the conclusion--as yet only an impression, and perhaps never to be
more--that in marine existence there is to be found the counterpart
always of some animate existence on earth, invertebrate or radiate,
in corresponding animals or insects, between whose habits and modes
of existence strong analogies are found. The shrimps that hang in
clusters on your hand under the water are but winged insects of the
air in another frame that have annoyed you on the land.

Let me dismiss the subject with the brief account of a diver caught in
a trap.

In the passion of blind destruction that followed and attended the
breaking out of hostilities between the North and the South, as a
child breaks his rival's playthings, the barbarism of war destroyed
the useful improvements of civilization. Among the things destroyed by
this iconoclastic fury was the valuable dry-dock in Pensacola Bay. It
was burned to the water's edge, and sunk. A company was subsequently
organized to rescue the wreck, and in the course of the submarine
labor occurred the incident to which I refer.

The dry-dock was built in compartments, to ensure it against sinking,
but the ingenuity which was to keep it above water now served
effectually to keep it down. Each one of these small water-tight
compartments held the vessel fast to the bottom, as Gulliver was bound
by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary
to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and
allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was
checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected
each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed
interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to
tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to
effect this.

It was a difficult and tedious job under water. The net of
intersecting beams lay so close together that the passage between was
exceedingly narrow and compressed, barely admitting the diver's
body. The pens, so framed