Hours of Exercise in the Alps

Here, in the first instance, we have three specimens of water, described as green, a clearer green, and bright green, taken in Gibraltar Harbour, at a point two miles from the harbour, and off Cabreta Point. The home examination showed that the first was thick with suspended matter, the second less thick, and the third still less thick. Thus the green brightened as the suspended matter became less.

Previous to the fourth observation our excellent navigating lieutenant, Mr. Brown, steered along the coast, thus avoiding the adverse current which sets in through the Strait of Gibraltar from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. He was at length forced to cross the boundary of the Atlantic current, which was defined with extraordinary sharpness. On the one side of it the water was a vivid green, on the other a deep blue. Standing at the bow of the ship, a bottle could be filled with blue water, while at the same moment a bottle cast from the stern could be filled with bright green water. Two bottles were secured, one on each side of this remarkable boundary. In the distance the Atlantic had the hue called ultramarine; but looked fairly down upon, it was of almost inky blackness—black qualified by a trace of indigo.

What change does the home examination here reveal? In passing to indigo, the water becomes suddenly augmented in purity, the suspended matter has become suddenly less. Off Tarifa, the deep indigo disappears, and the sea is undecided in colour. Accompanying this change, we have a rise in the quantity of suspended matter. Beyond Tarifa, we change to cobalt-blue, the suspended matter falling at the same time in quantity. This water is distinctly purer than the green. We approach Cadiz, and at twelve miles from the city get into yellow-green water; this the London examination shows to be thick with suspended matter. The same is true of Cadiz Harbour, and also of a point fourteen miles from Cadiz in the homeward direction. Here there is a sudden change from yellow-green to a bright emerald-green, and accompanying the change a sudden fall in the quantity of suspended matter. Between Cape St. Mary and Cape St. Vincent the water changes to the deepest indigo. In point of purity, this indigo water is shown by the home examination to transcend the emerald-green water.

We now reach the remarkable group of rocks called the Burlings, and find the water between the shore and the rocks a strong green; the home examination shows it to be thick with fine matter. Fifteen or twenty miles beyond the Burlings we come again into indigo water, from which the suspended matter has in great part disappeared. Off Cape Finisterre, about the place where the ‘Captain’ went down, the water becomes green, and the home examination pronounces it to be thicker. Then we enter the Bay of Biscay, where the indigo resumes its power, and where the home examination shows the greatly augmented purity of the water. A second specimen of water taken from the Bay of Biscay held in suspension fine particles of a peculiar kind; the size of them was such as to render the water richly iridescent. It showed itself green, blue, or salmon colour, according to the direction of the line of vision. Finally, we come to our last two bottles, the one taken opposite St. Catherine’s lighthouse, in the Isle of Wight, the other at Spithead. The sea at both these places was green, and both specimens, as might be expected, were pronounced by the home examination to be thick with suspended matter.

Two distinct series of observations are here referred to—the one consisting of direct observations of the colour of the sea, conducted during the voyage from Gibraltar to Portsmouth; the other conducted in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. And here it is to be noted that in the home examination I never knew what water I had in my hands. The labels, which had written upon them the names of the localities, had been tied up, all information regarding the source of the water being thus precluded. The bottles were simply numbered, and not till all the waters had been examined were the labels opened, and the locality and sea-colour corresponding to the various specimens ascertained. I must, therefore, have been perfectly unbiassed in my home observations, and they, I think, clearly establish the association of the green colour of sea-water with fine suspended matter, and the association of the ultramarine colour, and more especially of the black-indigo hue of sea-water, with the comparative absence of such matter.

What, in the first place, is the cause of the dark hue of the deep ocean?[49] A preliminary remark or two will clear our way towards an explanation. Colour resides in white light, appearing generally when any constituent of the white light is withdrawn. The hue of a purple liquid, for example, is immediately accounted for by its action on a spectrum. It cuts out the yellow and green, and allows the red and blue to pass through. The blending of these two colours produces the purple. But while the liquid attacks with special energy the yellow and green colours, it enfeebles the whole spectrum; and by increasing the thickness of the stratum we absorb the whole of the light. The colour of a blue liquid is similarly accounted for. It first extinguishes the red; then, as the thickness augments, it attacks the orange, yellow, and green in succession; the blue alone finally remaining. But even it might be extinguished by a sufficient depth of liquid.

And now we are prepared for a brief, but tolerably complete, statement of the action of sea-water upon light, to which it owes its darkness. The spectrum embraces three classes of rays—the thermal, the visual, and the chemical. These divisions overlap each other; the thermal rays are in part visual, the visual rays in part chemical, and vice versâ. The vast body of thermal rays is beyond the red, being invisible. These rays are attacked with exceeding energy by water. They are absorbed close to the surface of the sea, and are the great agents in evaporation. At the same time the whole spectrum suffers enfeeblement; water attacks all its rays, but with different degrees of energy. Of the visual rays, the red are attacked first, and first extinguished. While the red is disappearing the remaining colours are enfeebled. As the solar beam plunges deeper into the sea, orange follows red, yellow follows orange, green follows yellow, and the various shades of blue, where the water is deep enough, follow green. Absolute extinction of the solar beam would be the consequence if the water were deep and uniform; and if it contained no suspended matter, such water would be as black as ink. A reflected glimmer of ordinary light would reach us from its surface, as it would from the surface of actual ink; but no light, hence no colour, would reach us from the body of the water.

In very clear and very deep sea-water this condition is approximately fulfilled, and hence the extraordinary darkness of such water. The indigo, to which I have already referred, is, I believe, to be ascribed in part to the suspended matter, which is never absent, even in the purest natural water, and in part to the slight reflection of the light from the limiting surfaces of strata of different densities. A modicum of light is thus thrown back to the eye before the depth necessary to absolute extinction has been attained. An effect precisely similar occurs under the moraines of the Swiss glaciers. The ice here is exceptionally compact, and, owing to the absence of the internal scattering common in bubbled ice, the light plunges into the mass, is extinguished, and the perfectly clear ice presents an appearance of pitchy blackness.[50]

The green colour of the sea when it contains matter in a state of mechanical suspension has now to be accounted for, and here, again, let us fall back upon the sure basis of experiment. A strong white dinner-plate was surrounded securely by cord, and had a lead weight fastened to it. Fifty or sixty yards of strong hempen line were attached to the plate. With it in his hand, my assistant, Thorogood, occupied a boat fastened as usual to the davits of the ‘Urgent,’ while I occupied a second boat nearer to the stern of the ship. He cast the plate as a mariner heaves the lead, and by the time it had reached me it had sunk a considerable depth in the water. In all cases the hue of this plate was green: even when the sea was of the darkest indigo, the green was vivid and pronounced. I could notice the gradual deepening of the colour as the plate sank, but at its greatest depth in indigo water the colour was still a blue-green.[51]

Other observations confirmed this one. The ‘Urgent’ is a screw steamer, and right over the blades of the screw was an orifice called the screw-well, through which one could look from the poop down upon the screw. The surface glimmer which so pesters the eye was here in a great measure removed. Midway down a plank crossed the screw-well from side to side, and on this I used to place myself to observe the action of the screw underneath. The eye was rendered sensitive by the moderation of the light, and, still further to remove all disturbing causes, Lieutenant Walton had a sail and tarpaulin thrown over the mouth of the well. Underneath this I perched myself and watched the screw. In an indigo sea the play of colour was indescribably beautiful, and the contrast between the water which had the screw-blades for a background, and that which had the bottom of the ocean as a background, was extraordinary. The one was of the most brilliant green, the other of the deepest ultramarine. The surface of the water above the screw-blade was always ruffled. Liquid lenses were thus formed, by which the coloured light was withdrawn from some places and concentrated upon others, the colour being thus caused to flash with metallic lustre. The screw-blades in this case played the part of the plate in the former case, and there were other instances of a similar kind. The white bellies of the porpoises showed the green hue, varying in intensity as the creatures swung to and fro between the surface and the deeper water. Foam, at a certain depth below the surface, is also green. In a rough sea the light which has penetrated the summit of a wave sometimes reaches the eye, a beautiful green cap being thus placed upon the wave even in indigo water.

But how is this colour to be connected philosophically with the suspended particles? Take the dinner-plate which showed so brilliant a green when thrown into indigo water. Suppose it to diminish in size until it reaches an almost microscopic magnitude. It would still behave substantially as the larger plate, sending to the eye its modicum of green light. If the plate, instead of being a large coherent mass, were ground to a powder sufficiently fine, and in this condition diffused through the clear sea-water, it would send green light to the eye. In fact, the suspended particles which the home examination reveals act in all essential particulars like the plate, or like the screw-blades, or like the foam, or like the bellies of the porpoises. Thus I think the greenness of the sea is physically connected with the matter which it holds in suspension.

We reached Portsmouth on the 5th of January 1871. There ended a voyage which, though its main object was not realised, has left behind it pleasant memories, both of the aspects of nature and the genial kindliness of men.