But wait--was that not how the world at large had come to think of the ocean as a whole? Wasn't the ocean just distance for most people these days? Didn't we all now take for granted a body of water that, so relatively recently--no more than five hundred years before, at most--was viewed by mariners who had not yet dared attempt to cross it with a mixture of awe, terror, and amazement? Had not a sea that had once seemed an impassable barrier to somewhere--to Japan? the Indies? the Spice Islands? the East?--transmuted itself with dispatch into a mere bridge of convenience to the wealth and miracles of the New World? Had our regard for this ocean not switched from the intimidation of the unknown and the frightening to the indifference with which we now greet the ordinary? And