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The Sea, by M. J. Michelet, a Project Gutenberg eBook.
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<body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42845 ***</div>
<div class="fig_center">
<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="294" height="484" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
<p class="pmt4 pmb4 caption1 gesspert">THE SEA.</p>
<p class="caption2"><i>UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME</i>,</p>
<p class="caption3">And by the same Author.</p>
<div class="fig_center">
<img src="images/bar_o.png" width="88" height="13" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<table summary="books">
<tr>
<td><i>LOVE</i> (<span class="smcap">L'AMOUR.</span>) (<i>Twenty-seventh edition.</i>)</td>
<td class="tdr">Price, $1,00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i>WOMAN</i> (<span class="smcap">LA FEMME.</span>) (<i>Thirteenth edition.</i>)</td>
<td class="tdr">1,00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> colspan="2"<i>THE CHILD</i> (<span class="smcap">L'ENFANT.</span>) (<i>In press.</i>)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><i>THE INSECT</i> (<span class="smcap">L'INSÈCTE</span>) Its Life, Loves and Labors. (<i>In press.</i>)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><i>THE BIRD</i> (<span class="smcap">L'OISEAU.</span>) Its Life, Loves, and Labors. (<i>In press.</i>)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><i>WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.</i> (<i>In press.</i>)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="fig_center">
<img src="images/bar_o.png" width="88" height="13" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
<p class="p0 gesspert caption1">THE SEA</p>
<div class="center">
<img src="images/la_mer_txt.png" width="149" height="39" alt="(La Mer.)" title="(La Mer.)" />
</div>
<p class="p0 caption3">From the French of</p>
<p class="p0 caption2">M. J. MICHELET,</p>
<p class="caption3"><i>Of the Faculty of Letters, Author of "A History of France,"<br />
"Love," "Woman," "The Child," "The Insect,"<br />
"The Bird," "Women of the French Revolution,"<br />
etc., etc., etc.</i></p>
<p class="caption3">TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST PARIS EDITION.</p>
<div class="fig_center">
<img src="images/logo.png" width="77" height="54" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<p class="pmb4 caption3">NEW YORK:<br />
<br />
RUDD & CARLETON, 180 GRAND STREET<br />
PARIS: L. HACHETTE ET C<sup>ie</sup>.<br />
MDCCCLXI.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
<p class="center">
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by<br />
<br />
RUDD & CARLETON,<br />
<br />
In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.<br />
</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="caption2"><a name="EXTRACT_FROM_THE_LONDON_ATHENAEUM_Feb_9_1861" id="EXTRACT_FROM_THE_LONDON_ATHENAEUM_Feb_9_1861"></a>EXTRACT FROM THE LONDON ATHENÆUM, <span class="smcap">Feb. 9. 1861</span>.</p>
<p>'The Sea' is another of M. Michelet's dreamy volumes,—half science,
half fancy, with a blending in both of sensuous suggestion. M. Michelet
takes the seas of the world in his hands, manipulates them, invokes
their monsters, assembles all their finny droves, gossips with the sirens,
sails among the Hyperborean waters with Behemoth, and is on intimate
terms with Tennyson's little shell-king, who lives in a palace with doors
of diamond, and wears a rainbow frill, for the admiration of the nations
that dwell in his dim, sunken wildernesses. * * * * *
He discourses upon marine terrors and beauties, and tells the reader,
as a sublime Peter Parley might, that the salt of all the seas, if piled
upon America, would spread over the continent a solid, cliff-edged mass,
4,500 feet high. There are chapters on Sands, Cliffs and Beaches; on
Waves; on the anatomy of the Sea itself, which resembles "a gigantic
animal arrested in the earliest stage of its organization;" on Tempests;
on the sympathy between Air and Water; on the Fecundity of the Sea,
which, were it not self-devouring, would putrefy, according to M. Michelet
into one solid mass of herring; on Fish of every species, and especially
on Pearls. The Queens of the East, he says, dislike the gleams of
the diamond. They will allow nothing to touch their skins except pearls.
A necklace and two bracelets of pearls constitute the perfection of ornament.
The pearls silently say to the woman, "Love us! hush!"
In the North, too, dainty Countesses love their pearls,—wearing them
beneath their clothes by night and by day, concealing them, caressing
them, only now and then exposing them. So do the Odalisques of Asia
prize the soft linen vestment that just covers their limbs, never taking
it off until worn out, which says little for Oriental baths.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>The book is pleasant reading, like all else that M. Michelet writes.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a><br /><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</p>
<table style="width:80%" summary="ToC">
<tr>
<td colspan="2"></td>
<td class="tdr">Page</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Extract from The London Atheneum</span>,</td>
<td class="tdr">5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-top: .5em;">BOOK FIRST.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-left: 1.5em;">A GLANCE UPON THE SEAS.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">I.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_I">The Sea as seen from the Shore,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">II.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_II">The Beach, the Sands, and the Iron Bound Coast,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">19</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">III.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_III">The Same, (<i>Continued</i>)</a></td>
<td class="tdr">24</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IV">The Same, (<i>Continued</i>)</a></td>
<td class="tdr">81</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">V.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_V">The Fiery and the Watery Circle. The Currents of the Sea,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">40</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VI">Tempests,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">58</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VII">Tempests (<i>Continued</i>)</a></td>
<td class="tdr">63</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VIII">The Storm of October, 1859,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">72</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IX.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IX">The Beacons,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">91</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-top: .5em;">BOOK SECOND.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-left: 1.5em;">THE GENESIS OF THE SEA.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">I.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_I">Fecundity,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">105</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">II.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_II">The Milky Sea,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">114</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">III.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_III">The Atom,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">128</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IV">Blood-Flower,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">139</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">V.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_V">The World Makers,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">149</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VI">Daughter of the Seas,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">160</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VII">The Stone Picker,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">173<br />
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VIII">Shells, Mother of Pearl, and Pearl,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">182</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IX.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IX">The Sea Rovers (Poulpe, &c.)</a></td>
<td class="tdr">194</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">X.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_X">Crustaceæ. Battle and Intrigue,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">202</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">XI.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XI">The Fish,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">212</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">XII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XII">The Whale,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">225</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XIII">The Syrens,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">236</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-top: .5em;">BOOK THIRD.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-left: 1.5em;">CONQUEST OF THE SEA.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">I.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_3_CHAPTER_I">The Harpoon,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">251</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">II.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_3_CHAPTER_II">Discovery of the Three Oceans,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">260</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">III.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_3_CHAPTER_III">The Law of Storms,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_3_CHAPTER_IV">The Polar Seas,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">289</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">V.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_3_CHAPTER_V">Man's War upon the Races of the Sea,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">306</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_3_CHAPTER_VI">The Law of the Ocean,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">319</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-top: .5em;">BOOK FOURTH.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3" style="padding-left: 1.5em;">THE RESTORATION OF THE SEA.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">I.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_I">Origin of Sea Bathing,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">329</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">II.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_II">Choice of Coast,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">III.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_III">The House,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">349</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_IV">First Aspiration of the Sea,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">V.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_V">Baths. Restoration of Beauty,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">369</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_VI">The Restoration of Heart and Brotherhood,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">377</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_VII">The New Life of the Nations,</a></td>
<td class="tdr">388</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl" colspan="2"><a href="#NOTES"><span class="smcap">Notes.</span></a></td>
<td class="tdr">401</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_FIRST" id="BOOK_FIRST"></a>BOOK FIRST.</p>
<p class="caption3">A GLANCE UPON THE SEAS.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a><br />
<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_I" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE SEA AS SEEN FROM THE SHORE.</p>
<p>A gallant Dutch seaman, a cool and stern observer, who
has passed his whole life at sea, frankly tells us that his
feeling on first seeing the ocean was <i>fear</i>. For all terrestrial
animals, water is the non-respirable element,
the ever heaving but inevitably asphyxiating enemy;
the fatal and eternal barrier between the two worlds.
We need not, all things being considered, be at all surprised,
if that immense mass of waters which we call
the sea, dark and inscrutable in its immense depths,
ever and always impresses the human mind with a vague
and resistless awe.</p>
<p>The imaginative Orientals see it only and call it only,
as, the <i>Night of the Depths</i>. In all the antique tongues,
from India to Ireland, the synonymous or analogous
name of the sea is either <i>Night</i> or the <i>Desert</i>.</p>
<p>Ah! With what a great and a hallowed and a hallowing,
with what an at once soothing and subduing melancholy
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
it is that, evening after evening, we see the Sun,
that great world's joy, that brilliant, life-quickening,
and light-giving Sun of all that lives, fade, sink, die—though
so surely to rise and live again! Ah! as that
glorious light departs, how tenderly do we think of the
human loves that have died from us—of the hour when
we, also, shall thus depart from human ken, lost, for the
time, to this world—to shine more gloriously in that
other world, now dark, distant, unknown, but certain.</p>
<p>Descend to even a slight depth in the sea, and the
beauty and brilliancy of the upper light are lost; you
enter into a persistent twilight, and misty and half-lurid
haze; a little lower, and even that sinister and eldritch
twilight is lost, and all around you is Night, showing
nothing, but suggesting everything that darkness,—handmaiden
of terrible Fancy—can suggest. Above, below,
beneath, all around, darkness, utter darkness, save when,
from time to time, the swift and gracefully terrible motion
of some passing monster of the deep makes "darkness
visible" for a brief moment—and, then, that passing
gleam leaves you in darkness more dense, more utter,
more terrible, than ever. Immense in its extent,
enormous in its depth, that mass of waters which covers
the greater part of our globe seems, in truth, a
great world of shadows and of gloom. And it is
that which, above all, at once fascinates and intimidates
us. Darkness and Fear! Twin sisters, they! In the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
early day, the at once timid and unreasoning Childhood
of our race, men imagined that where no Light was,
neither could there be Life; that in the unfathomed
depths, there was a black, lifeless, soundless, Chaos;
above, nought but water and gloom,—beneath, sand,
and shells, the bones of the wrecked mariner, the rich
wares of the far off, ruined, and vainly bewailing merchant;—those
sad treasures of "that ever-receiving and
never-restoring treasury—the Sea."</p>
<p>The waters of the sea afford us no encouragement by
their transparency. Look not there for the seductive,
brightly sparkling, and ever-smiling nymph of the fountain.
Opaque, heavy, mighty, merciless, your sea is a
liquid Polyphemus, a blind giant that cares not, reasons
not, feels not—but hits a terribly hard blow. Trust
yourself upon that vast and ever-heaving bosom, bold
swimmer, and marvellously will you be upheld; the
mighty thing that upholds you dominates you, too; you
are a mere weak child, upheld, indeed, for the instant
by a giant-hand—in another moment that giant-hand
may smite you with a giant's fatal force.</p>
<p>Her anchor once tripped, who can tell whither the
good ship may be urged by some sudden wind, or some
unsuspected but irresistible current? Thus it was that
our northern fishermen, not only without their intention,
but even in spite of it, discovered polar America, and
supped full of the horrors of funereal Greenland. Not
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
a nation upon the earth but has its tales and traditions
of the sea. Homer and the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, have
handed down to us a goodly number of those frightful
legends, of shoals and tempests and of calms no less
murderous than tempests,—those calms during which the
hardiest sailor agonizes, moans, loses all courage and
all hope in the tortures of the hours, days, haply even
weeks, when, with cracked lip and blood-shotten eye,
he has around him, heaving upward and sinking downward,
but never progressing a cable's length,</p>
<p class="p0" style="padding-left:40%">
"Water, water, everywhere,<br />
But not a drop to drink."<br />
</p>
<p>Thrilling and saddening legends have all our old
writers handed down to us of the Anthropophagi, those
loathsome man-eaters, and of the Leviathan, the Kraken,
the great sea-serpent, &c. The name given to the
great African desert—<i>The Abode of Terror</i>,—may
very justly be transferred to the sea. The boldest sailors,
Phœnicians and Carthaginians, the conquering
Arabs who aspired to encircle and grasp the whole
world, seduced by what they heard of the Hesperides
and the land of gold, sailed out of the Mediterranean
to the wide ocean, but soon were glad to seek their port
again. The gloomy line eternally covered with clouds
and mist which they found keeping their stern watch
before the equator, intimidated them. They lay to;
they hesitated; from man to man ran the murmur
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
"<i>It is the Sea of Darkness</i>—and, then, back went
they to port and, there told to wondering landsmen
what wonders they had seen, and what horrors they had
imagined." Woe to him who shall persist in his sacrilegious
espionage of that dread region! On one of
those weird and far isles stands a sternly-threatening
Colossus, whose sempiternal menace is—"Thus far
thou hast come—farther thou shalt not go!"</p>
<p>Childish as we may think those terrors of the long
by-gone ages they really were much the same as the
emotions which we may any day see evinced by an inland-born
novice who for the first time looks upon the
sea. And not merely man, but all animals, experience
the same surprise, the same shock, when suddenly brought
face to face with the mighty water-world. Even at ebb
tide, when the water so gently and so lovingly caresses,
as it leaves, that shore to which it shall so boisterously
return, your horse quite evidently likes it not; he shudders,
balks, snorts,—and very often bolts from it at
the very top of his speed. Your dog recoils, howls,
and, after his own canine fashion, returns insult for insult
to the waves that annoy and terrify him; he never
concludes a real peace with the element which to him
seems less doubtful than positively hostile. A certain
traveller tells us that the Kamtschatkan dogs, accustomed
as they are to the sight of the sea, are nevertheless
irritated and alarmed by it. During the long nights
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
immense troops of them howl back to the howling waves
that break, in their furious might, upon the iron-bound
shores of the northern ocean.</p>
<p>The natural introduction, the portico, the ante-room,
of the Ocean, which prepares us thoroughly to appreciate
its vast and melancholy extent, is to be found in
the dreary course of the rivers of north-western France,
the vast sands of the South, or the sad and rarely trodden
<i>Landes</i> of Brittany. All who approach the sea by
any of those routes are greatly impressed by that intermediate
region. All along the rivers, there is a seemingly
infinite chaos of roots and stumps, of willows and
the like water-loving vegetation, and the waters becoming
more and more brackish, at length become absolutely
salt—the veritable sea-water. In the Landes,
on the other hand, as we approach the sea, we have a
preliminary and preparatory sea of low-growing and
coarse shrubs, broom, and bushes. Proceed a league or
two, and you see sickly and drooping trees which seem,
after their manner, to tell you how much they suffer
from the blighting breath of their near neighbor, and
great tyrant, the Sea. Evidently, if they were not held
there by their great strong roots they would fly to some
climate more genial and some soil more generous; they
turn every branch from the sea and towards the earth,
as though they were a routed host, disorganized, panic-stricken,
and prepared to seek safety in flight. Fixed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
to the soil, they bend themselves eastward, twisting,
writhing, mutely agonized at every new assault of the
storm-winds from the seaward. Still nearer to the Sea,
the trunk of the tree is slender, its stature dwarfish,
and its few poor branches spread themselves confusedly
to the horizon. On the shore, on the very margin and
boundary line between land and Sea, where the crushed
shells rise in a fine and pungent dust, the trees are invaded,
covered, choked up with it; their pores are
closed, they inhale no air, they are stifled; still living
as to form, they are mere petrified trees, spectral trees,
melancholy shadows which have not even the privilege
of departing,—sad prisoners—even in death! Long
before we are face to face with the Sea, we can hear
and imagine that grand and terrible entity. At first,
we hear only a dull, uniform, and distant moaning,
which grows louder and louder still, until its majestic
roar silences, or covers, all meaner sounds. Very soon
we perceive that that roar is not monotonous, but has
its alternating notes; its full, rich, mellow tenor, and
its round, deep, majestic bass. The pendulum of the
clock oscillates less regularly than that alternating moan
and roar of the Ocean in its grand unrest. And this
latter, let me repeat it, has <i>not</i> the monotony of the
pendulum, for in "what those wild waves are saying,"
we feel, or fancy that we feel the thrilling intonations
of life. And in fact, at high flood, when wave rears
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
its crest upon wave, immense, electric, there mingles
with the tumultuous roaring of the fiercely rushing
waters, the sound of the shells and pebbles, and the
thousand things animate as well as inanimate that they
carry with them in their shoreward rush. When the
ebb comes, a soft murmur tells us that, together with
the sands, the sea carries back into her depths all with
which for a few brief hours the shore had been adorned
or enriched.</p>
<p>And how many other voices hath the mighty sea!
Even when least agitated, how her wailings and her
deep sighs contrast with the dull dead silence of the deserted
shore, which seems to expect, in mute terror, the
threatening of that mighty mass which so recently laved
it with a gentle and caressing wavelet. And will
she not speedily fulfil her threat? I know not, and
will not anticipate. I will not, just now, at least, speak
of those terrible concerts in which, haply, she ere long
will take the principal part; of her duets with the rocks,
of the basses, those muttered thunders which she utters
in the deep caverns of the rocky shore, or of those
strange, wild, weird, shrieking tones in which we seem
to recognize the "<i>Help, spare, save me!</i>" of some tortured
or fearfully imperilled humanity. No; let us, for
the present, contemplate her in her calmer moods; when
she is strong, indeed, but not violent.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_II" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE BEACH, THE SANDS, AND THE IRON-BOUND COAST.</p>
<p>We need not be at all surprised if childhood and ignorance
are astounded, <i>astonied</i>, when they first find
themselves face to face with that vast and mysterious
Sphinx of the Great Master's sculpture, the Ocean.
Why, in fact, should we be astonished by their gaze of
mingled awe, admiration and bewilderment, when we
ourselves, despite our early culture and life-long experience,
see so much in the great Riddle of that great
Sphinx which we cannot even hope to explain?</p>
<p>What is the real extent of the ocean? That it is
greater than that of the earth is about as much as, conscientiously,
we can at all positively affirm. On the
entire surface of our globe, water is the Generality—land
the Exception. But what is their relative proportion?
That, water covers four-fifths of the globe is
probable, though, some say a third or a fourth. It is
difficult, not to say impossible, to answer the question
precisely. A bold explorer discovers a polar land, lays
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
it down, latitude and longitude, with scientific precision;
in the very next year an equally bold and no less
scientific adventurer seeks it in vain; and in all latitudes
immense shoals and lovely Coral islands form in
the dark depths, rise to the surface, and disappear, just
as suddenly and unaccountably as they arose.</p>
<p>The real depth of the sea is still less known to us
than its extent; we are only at the mere commencement
of our early, few, and imperfect soundings.</p>
<p>The daring little liberties which we take with the
surface of the invincible element, and the confidence
with which we go hither and thither upon its unsounded
depths, have really nothing to say against the grand and
well-founded pride of the Ocean, impenetrable as she is
as to her secrets, ever moving yet unchangeable, a reality,
yet, in all but a few of her phenomena, as unreal
to us as the spectres of our actual dreaming. That
those mighty depths contain a whole world, a marvellously
great and diversified world, of life, love, war,
and reproduction of all sorts and sizes, we must imagine
and may already with confidence affirm; but we
have only, and barely, touched upon the threshold of
that world. We are in such a hurry to leave that
strange and hostile element! If we need the Ocean,
see ye, my brothers, the Ocean in no wise needs us.
Nature, fresh from the hand of Deity, scorns the too prying
gaze and the too shallow judgment of finite but presumptuous
man.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
<p>That very element which we term fluid, shifting, capricious,
suffers, in reality, no change; on the contrary
it is a very perfect model of regularity. The really
and constantly changing creature is Man. His body of
this year will have evaporated by this time next year,
for, according to Berzolius, four-fifths of our frame are
water, which at every instant we yield to the ever craving
atmosphere. Fragile and fleeting creature as Man
is, he has indeed good reason for reflection and for humility
when he finds himself in presence of the great
unchanging, and, humanly speaking, unchangeable, powers
of nature, just, and grand, glorious, as is his hope,
his belief, his <i>certainty</i> of a spiritual immortality. Despite
that delightful hope, that confident belief, that
sustaining certainty, Man yet is necessarily and terribly
saddened by the smiting and strange suddenness with
which he hourly sees the thread of man's life forever
broken. The Sea seems to exult over our fleeting tenure
of a life of which we cannot anticipate, far less
command, one added moment. Whenever we approach
her, she seems to murmur from her dark, inscrutable
depths, unchangeable as His will who made them—"Mortal!
to-morrow you shall pass away, but I, <i>I</i> am,
and ever shall be, unchanged, unchangeable, mighty
and mysterious. The earth will not only receive your
bones but will soon convert them into kindred and indistinguishable
earth, but I, ever and always, shall remain,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
main, the same majestic and indifferent entity, the great
perfectly balanced Life, daily harmonising myself with
the harmonious and majestic life of the bright far worlds
that shine above and around you." A stern and a
scorning rebuke that is which is given to our poor human
pride when, twice in our every mortal day the sea
tears from our vexed shores the stony spoils which twice
in every day she scornfully and terribly hurls back
again. To any imagination but that of the trained and
veteran seaman, the fierce rush of the rising tide infallibly
suggests the likeness of a fierce and deadly combat;
but when the child, or the Savage, observes that the
fury of the sea has its inevitable limits, the terror of
the child or Savage is turned—true coward-fashion—into
an unreasoning compound of hate and rage, and
he as fiercely, as impotently, pelts the terrible waves
with the very pebbles which without effort, without consciousness,
she has cast, heaps upon heaps, by ship loads,
at every vast beat of her semi-diurnal pulse! Foaming,
roaring, threatening, the waves rush shoreward;
the boy observes that though they may kiss, they cannot,
at his safe stand-point, submerge his delicate little
feet, returns laughter for their roarings, petty pebbles
for their impotent threats.</p>
<p>I saw a battle of this sort at Havre, in July, 1831.
A little boy whom I took thither felt his young courage
aroused and his young pride stung, by the loud challenges
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
and fierce threats of the incoming tide, and he
returned scorn for threat, feebly-thrown pebble for
surging and mighty wave. Greatly, aye, laughably unequal
was the strife between that small, white, delicate
and feeble hand of the young mortal, and the vast and
terrible force which cared not about it, feared it not,
felt it not, knew it not. <i>Laughably</i>, said I? Ah! no inclination
towards laughter remains with us when we reflect
upon the fleeting existence, the ephemeral and impotent
fragility of our best beloved, our fellows, our Maker's
favored, erring, vain-glorious, and, in the last issue,
utterly helpless Humanity, when in presence of that tireless
and inscrutable Eternity to which we may at any moment
be recalled! Such was one of my earliest glances at
the Ocean; such the gloomy meditations, only too truly
and too sternly realized, that were suggested to me
by that combat between the fierce Sea upon which I
look so often, and the glad and laughing, and buoyant
child upon whom, alas! I shall look, lovingly and anxiously,
no more.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_III" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE BEACH, THE SANDS, AND THE IRON-BOUND COAST,
CONTINUED.</p>
<p>Look upon the Ocean where and when you may, you
everywhere and alway shall find her the same grand
and terrible teacher of that hardest of all the lessons
man has to learn,—man's insignificance. Take your
stand upon some bold headland, from which with earnest
and well trained eye, you can sweep the entire
horizon; or, wander, with shortened ken, in the sandy
desert;—go whithersoever you will, where old Ocean
shall lash the shore, and everywhere and alway, I repeat,
you shall find Ocean the same—mighty and terrible.
True it is, that our finite and dim gaze cannot
discern the, humanly speaking, <i>Infinity</i> of the Ocean;
but we feel, we instinctively comprehend, that Infinity,
and the impression made by that instructive comprehension
is even deeper than could be made by Ocean
visibly to our material eye, tangibly to our poor human
hand.</p>
<p>Such, so deep, so permanent, was the impression
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
made upon me by that wild tumultuous scene on the
scourged-shore where Granville—dear old Granville!—keeps
neutral watch between Normandy and Brittany.
The wealthy, kindly and hearty, though bluff,
and somewhat vulgar Normandy with its vast outspread
of orchard and meadow suddenly disappears, and, by
Granville and by the frowning Saint Michel we pass all
at once into quite another world. For Granville, though
Norman as to race, is thoroughly Breton as to aspect.
Sternly, solidly, invincibly, the great Rock rears his defiant
front, and looks down in a quite insolent contempt
upon the wild surges that incessantly assault, but never
harm, that passionless and mutely mocking Titan. Let
the wild winds, unpent from their northern caverns,
sweep the rugged coast; borne on the cross-currents
from the angry West, let the wind sweep all things else
clear from its path and this stern unconquerable rock
ever and alway saith "thus far shalt thou come, but no
farther. Strengthened though you are by your mad
trans-Atlantic leap of a thousand leagues, against me
your fury shall be spent in vain."</p>
<p>I loved that odd and somewhat dull little town,
which owes its support to the distant and most perilous
fishery. Every family there, feels that it is supported
by a dread game in which human life is at stake; and
this feeling produces a certain harmonious gravity in
the aspect and tone of the dwellers hereabout, and of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
all their surroundings. A touching and a hallowing
melancholy, that, of which I have often felt the influence,
when, walking on the already darkening shore or
gazing from the upper town that crowns the great rock,
I have seen the sun sink below the far and misty horizon,
harshly streaked by alternate rays of luridness
and gloom, and not pausing to tint the sky with those
glowing and fantastic brilliances which in other climes
delight us. Here it is already autumn in August, and
twilight scarcely exists. Scarcely has the sun set, when
the shrewd winds freshen, and the dark green waves
sweep on with added force; below, you see a few spectral
forms hurrying along in their dark cloaks, and
from afar you hear the melancholy bleatings of the
sheep already benighted on their scanty pasturage.</p>
<p>The very small upper town rears its northern front
sharply and boldly above the very edge of a cold dark
abyss, facing the great sea, and swept by an eternal
blast. This part of the place consists of only poor
houses, and in one of them I found my quarters with a
poor man, a maker of those pretty shell pictures for
which the place is famous. Ascending by a ladder,
rather than a staircase, into a dark little room, I looked
out upon the strange wild scene, as strange and tragic,
as wild and impressive, as that which had presented itself,
when, also from a window, I had caught my first
view of the great glacier of the Swiss Grindelwald.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
The glacier had shown an enormous monster of peaked
icebergs which seemed crashing down upon me; and
this vexed sea of Granville seemed an army of monstrous
waves all rushing together to the attack.</p>
<p>My host here, though far from old, was feeble and
suffering, and, as I examined his shell work and talked
with him, I perceived that his mind was somewhat
shaken. Poor fellow; upon that shore his only brother
had perished, and from that moment the sea appeared
to him an intelligent and persistent enemy. In the
winter it beat his windows with snow or with icy
winds, and kept him sleepless and peaceless during the
long and dreary nights, and in the summer it brought
him the vivid lightnings and the far resounding thunders.
At the high tides it was still worse; the spray
then beat upon his very windows, and he felt doubtful
if some day he would not be drowned even on his own
hearth. But he had not the means of finding a more
secure shelter, and perhaps he was unconsciously retained
there by we know not what strange fascination.
He had not resolution to break altogether with that
terrible foe, for which he had a certain respect, as well
as a great awe. He seldom spoke of it by name; like
the Icelander who, when at sea, does not name the
Ourque, lest she should hear, and appear. I fancy that
even now I can see his pale face, as, pointing to the
wave-beaten beach, he said—"That terrifies me!"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
<p>Was he a lunatic? Not at all. He spoke quite sensibly,
and was in reality interesting and even distinguished.
A nervous being, too delicately organized for
such a scene as that in which he was placed.</p>
<p>But the sea can madden, and often does. Livingstone
brought from Africa a bold and intelligent man who
had hunted and killed Lions, but had never seen the
Sea. When taken on board ship, the novel sight was
too much for his brain, he became frantic, and threw
himself headlong into the heaving deep, which at once
terrified and fascinated him. On the other hand, so attached
do some men become to the sea, that they can
never quit it. I have seen old pilots, compelled by
infirmity to abandon their office, fret themselves into
imbecility.</p>
<p>On the very summit of Saint Michael you are shown
what they call <i>Maniac's Shelf</i>; and I know no place
better fitted to make one mad than that giddy height.
All around a vast stretch of white sand, solitary ever,
and ever treacherous. It is neither land nor water; it
is neither sea water nor fresh, though streams are constantly
flowing beneath. Rarely, and but for brief
moments, a boat can cross there, and if you cross when
the water is out you risk being swallowed in. I can
state that with full authority, for I nearly lost my life
there. A very light vehicle in which I ventured there,
and the horse that drew it, disappeared in too, and only
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
by a perfect miracle I escaped on foot, feeling myself
sinking at every step. At length, however, I reached
the Rock, that gigantic Abbey, Fortress and Prison,
that frowning sublimity, so well worthy of the scene
which it so sternly dominates. This is no place for a
detailed description of such a monument. On a huge
block of granite, that Titanic pile rises and rises still,
rock upon rock, age upon age, and still dungeon above
dungeon. At the foot, the <i>in pace</i> of the Monks;
higher up, the iron cage made by Louis XI.; higher
still, that of Louis XIV.; higher still, the prison of our
own day. And all this in a whirlwind, a perpetual
tempest; a Sepulchre without the Sepulchre's peace.</p>
<p>Is it the fault of the sea, if this beach is treacherous?
Not at all. There, as elsewhere, the Sea arrives strong
and loud, indeed, but in all frankness and loyalty.
The real fault is in the land, apparently solid, but undermined
by numberless streams of fresh water which
converts that seemingly solid beach into a treacherous
and devouring quagmire. And especially is the fault
in the ignorance and negligence of man. In the long
dark ages when man invented the legend and the pilgrimage
of the Archangel who vanquished the Devil,
the Devil took possession of that deserted plain. The
sea is quite innocent in the matter. Far, indeed, from
doing harm, the sea upon its madly bounding waves
brings in a nourishing and fecundating salt more precious
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
than the fat slime of the Nile, enriching the once
hideous marshes of Dol into the lovely gardens of our
own day. The Sea is a somewhat violent mother, no
doubt;—but a mother still. Abounding in fish, she
lavishes upon the opposite Cancale, and upon many
another bank, millions, thousands of millions, of oysters,
whose crushed shells give beauty, and verdure, and
flowers, and fruit. We must enter into a right understanding
with the Sea, and not be led away by the false
notions which its barren beach or its own more violent
phenomena—often only the disguises of very real and
very great benefits—may suggest to us.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IV" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE BEACH, THE SANDS, AND THE IRON-BOUND COAST,
CONTINUED.</p>
<p>The headlands, the sandy beaches, the bold capes and
the low shores, command various, but ever useful, views
of the great sea, stern and wild at the first glance, but
divine and friendly, as we come to know it better. The
advantage of the headlands is that at the foot of one
of those giant rock-walls we more entirely than elsewhere
appreciate the breathing and bounding pulse of
the sea. Insensible, imperceptible, on the Mediterranean,
that pulse is very distinct on the ocean. The
Ocean breathes and pulsates, even as you and I do; it
compels me to calculate my days and hours, and to look
up to Heaven. It reminds me alike of myself and of
the world. Let me seat myself upon some such shore,
that, for instance, of Antifer, whence I may look out
upon that vast expanse. The sea which, but a moment
agone, seemed dead, has suddenly shuddered and become
tremulous—first symptom of the great approaching
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
movement. The tide has heaved past Cherbourg and
Barfleur, and turned sharply and violently round the
lighthouse; its divided waters lave Calvados, rush upon
Havre and come to me at Étretat, at Fécamp, at
Dieppe, to hurl themselves into the canal despite the
strong Northern currents. It is for me to watch its
hour. Its height, almost indifferent to the sandhills,
is here, at the foot of the headland, alike worthy of
your attention and powerful to command it. This long
rock-wall of thirty leagues has but few stairways. Its
narrow inlets, which form our smaller havens, occur at
rare and great distances. And at low water we can
with inquiring gaze inspect and question the strata above
strata, gigantically and regularly superposed, which, as
so many Titanic registers, tell us the history of accumulated
ages of growth and decay, of life and death.
From that great open book of time every year tears
away a page. We have before us a piece of an hourly
perishing, hourly renewing, world, which the sea from
beneath is hourly devouring, and the torrents and the
tempests, the frosts and the thaws from above, are hourly,
and still more destructively, attacking. Wearing,
crushing, beating, pulverising, wave, and wind, and
storm and Time, that great <i>Edax rerum</i>, that unsparing
and untiring Moth of the Universe, are, even as we
gaze, converting the one vast rocky mass into the rounded
and petty pebble. It is this rough work which makes
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
this coast, so richly fertile on the land side, a real maritime
desert on the seaward. A few, very few, sea
plants survive the eternal crushing and grinding of the
ever crushed and ever crushing pebbles driven hither
and thither by every wave that every wind scourges
into motion. The molluscæ, and even the very fish
shun this vexed shore. Great contrast that between an
inland country so genial, and such a stern, rugged,
threatening and inhospitable coast.</p>
<p>It is only to be seen thoroughly when looked down
upon from the bold headland. Below, the hard necessity
of toiling over the beach, the sand yielding, and
the pebbles round, hard, and rolling, makes the task of
traversing this narrow beach a real and violent gymnastic
exercise. No; let us keep to the heights where
splendid villas, noble woods, the waving harvests, the
delicious gardens which even to the very edge of the
great rocky wall, look down upon that magnificent channel
which separates the two shores of the two great empires
of the world.</p>
<p>The land and the sea! What more! Both, here,
have a great charm; nevertheless, he who loves the sea
for her own sake, he who is her friend, her lover, will
rather seek her in some less varied scene. To be really
intimate with her, the great sandy beaches, provided,
always, that they be not too soft, are far more convenient.
They allow of such infinite strolls! They suffer
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
us so well to build up our air castles, and to meditate
upon so many things; they allow us to hold such familiar
and deep conference with that never silent sea!
Never do I complain of those vast and free arenas in
which others find themselves so ill at ease. When
there, I am never less lonely than when alone. I come,
I go, I feel that ever present sea. It is there, ever
there, the sublime companion; and if haply that companion
be in gentle mood, I venture to speak, and the
great companion does not disdain to speak to me again.
How many things have we not said to each other in
those quiet wastes, when the crowd is away, on the limitless
sands of Scheveningen, Ostend, Royan, and Saint
Georges. There it is that in long interviews we can
establish some intimacy with the Sea, acquire some familiarity
with its great speech.</p>
<p>When from the towers of Amsterdam the Zuyderzee
looks muddy, and when at the dykes of Scheveningen
the leaden waves seem ready to overleap the earthy
mound, the Sea wears its least pleasing aspect; yet I
confess that this combat between land and water attracts
me forcibly—this great invention, this mighty effort,
this triumph of man's skill and man's labor, over the
fiercest force of inanimate nature.</p>
<p>And this sea also pleases me by the treasures of fecund
life which I know to abound in its dark depths.
It is one of the most populous in the world. On the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
night of St. John, when the fishery opens, you may see
another sea arise from the depths—the Sea of Herrings.
You will imagine that the boundless plain of waters
will prove too limited for this great living upburst, this
triumphant revelation of the boundless fecundity of
Nature. Such was my first impression of this sea, and
when I saw the pictures in which genius has so well
marked its profound character, Ruysdaël's gloomy <i>Estacade</i>
beyond any other painting in the Louvre has
always irresistibly attracted me. Why? In the ruddy
tints of those phosphorescent waters, I feel not the cold
of the North Sea, but the fermentation, the stream, the
rushing energy of life.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, were I asked what coast the most grandly
and powerfully impresses me, I should answer, that
of Brittany, especially those wild and sublime headlands
of granite which terminate the old world at that
bold point which dominates the Atlantic and defies the
western storm winds. Nowhere have I better felt than
there, those lofty and ennobling melancholies which are
the best impressions of the sea.</p>
<p>But I must explain, here. There are different melancholies;
there is a melancholy of the weak, and a
melancholy of the strong,—the melancholy of the too
sensitive souls who weep only for themselves, and that
of the disinterested hearts, which cheerfully accept their
own lot, and find nature ever blessing and blessed, but
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
feel the evils of society, and in melancholy itself find
strength for action, means for creating good or mitigating
evil. Ah! what need we have, we of the working
brain, often to strengthen our souls in that mood
which we may call <i>heroic melancholy</i>.</p>
<p>When, some thirty years since, I paid a visit to this
country, I could not account for the potent attraction
that it had for me. At the foundation of this attractive
potency of Brittany, is its great harmony. Elsewhere,
we feel, though we cannot explain it to ourselves, a certain
discordance between the race and the soil. The
very beautiful Norman race, in those districts in which
it is most unmixed, and where it retains the peculiar,
ruddy complexion of the true Scandinavian, has not
the slightest apparent affinity with the territory upon
which it has intruded itself. In Brittany, on the contrary,
on the most ancient geological formation on our
globe, on that soil of granite and of flint, lives a race
solid as that granite, sharp as that flint, a sturdy
and antique race. Just as much as Normandy progresses,
Brittany retrogrades. Witty, lively, and too imaginative,
the impossible, the utterly absurd, are ever welcome
to her. But, if wrong on many points, she is
great upon a most important one; she has character;
often you may think her erroneous, but never can you
deem her common-place.</p>
<p>If we would for a time emerge from that wretched
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
common-place, that deadly liveliness, that horrible waking
dream "of stupid starers and of loud huzzas," let
us seat ourselves on one of the impending and commanding
peaks that overlook the bay of Douarnenez,—the
stern, bold headland, for instance, of Penmark. Or,
if the wind blow too strongly there for our frame, effeminated
by the late hours, the bad atmosphere, and
the hateful habits, and still more hateful passions, of the
thronged city, let us take a quiet sail among the lower
isles of the Morbihan, where the soft warm tide is lazy,
and all but soundless. Where Brittany is mild, Brittany
is surpassingly mild. Sailing among her islands and
on her gentler tides, you might fancy yourself on Lethe;
but, on the other hand, when Brittany is aroused, Brittany,
take my word for it, is terribly strong and terribly
in earnest!</p>
<p>In 1831 I felt only the sadness of that coast, not its
more than compensating inspiration; I was yet to learn
the real character of that sea. It is in the most solitary
little creeks, pierced in between the wildest and
most rugged looking rocks, that you will find her truly
gay, joyous, buoyant, abounding in glad and vigorous
life. Those rocks seem to you to be covered by you
know not what greyish ashy asperities—look a little
more closely and you perceive that that layer of seeming
dust is a little world of living creatures, left there
high and dry by the ebb of the sea, to be revived and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
fed again next tide. There, too, you see our little
stone workers, hosts upon hosts of those sea hedge-hogs or
urchins, which M. Cailland has so intelligently watched
and so admirably described. All this swarming
though minute world chooses and feels just contrariwise
to our choice and our feeling. Beautiful Normandy
terrifies them; the hard pebbles of the beach would
crush them, and they love not, either, the crumbling
limestone that overhangs the more smiling shore, for
they care not to build where at any moment building
and foundation may sink into the depths forever. They
love and affect only the solid rocks of Brittany. Let
us take a lesson from them, and trust only to truth and
not to mere appearance. The marine life shuns precisely
those enchanting shores whose vegetable life is
the most abounding and the most brilliant. They are
rich, but rich only in fossils; very curious are they to
the geologist, but they yield to him only the bones of
the dead. The stern granite, on the contrary, looks
down upon the sea swarming with its piscine life, and
supports upon its massive breast the humble, but none
the less interesting little molluscæ whose laborious life
makes the serious charm, the great moral of the sea.</p>
<p>And yet amidst all that teeming life there is a deep
silence; that infinite population is ever and inevitably
silent. Its life is self-concentrated, its labors unmarked,
uncheered, by a sound; it has no connection
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
with you or me—to us, that life is only another aspect
of Death. A great and a dead solitude, says some feminine
heart; it alarms, it saddens me.</p>
<p>Wrong! All here is lovable and friendly. These
little creatures speak not to the world, but they all the
time are hard at work for it. They yield themselves
up to the sublime voice of their sublime parent, the
Ocean, that speaks for them; by his great utterance,
they speak, confidingly, and by proxy.</p>
<p>Between the silent earth and the mute tribes of the
sea, a great, strong, grave, and sympathetic dialogue is
constantly carried on—the harmonious agreement
with the <i>Great I AM</i>, with himself and his great work—that
great eternal conflict which, everywhere and always,
is <span class="smcap">Love</span>.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_V" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE FIERY AND THE WATERY CIRCLE—THE CURRENTS
OF THE SEA.</p>
<p>Scarcely has the earth cast one glance upon herself
ere she not merely compares herself to the Heavens
above, but vaunts her own superiority. Geology, the
mere infant, hurls a Titanic cry against her elder sister,
Astronomy, that haughty and splendid queen of all
the sciences. "Our mountains," exclaims Geology,
"are not <i>cast confusedly hither and thither like those
stars in the sky</i>; our mountains form systems in which are
found the elements of a general and orderly arrangement
of which the celestial constellations present no
trace." Such is the bold and impassioned phrase which
is uttered by a man as modest as he is illustrious,—M.
Elias de Beaumont. Doubtless, we have not yet developed
the order, which, yet, we may not doubt is great,
which prevails in the seeming confusion of the Milky
Way, but the more obvious regularity of the surface of
the globe, the result of the revolutions in its unfathomed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
and unfathomable depths, preserve still, and ever
will preserve, for the most ingenious science, many
clouds and many mysteries. The forms of that great
mountain, upheaved from the mighty mass of waters,
which we call the Earth, shows many arrangements
which, while they are sufficiently symmetrical, are still
not reducible to what would seem a perfect system.
The dry and elevated portions show themselves more or
less as the waters leave them bare. It is the limiting
line of the sea which, in reality, traces out the form of
continent and of island; it is by the Sea that we commence
all true understanding of Geography.</p>
<p>Let us note another fact, which has been discovered
only within a few years past. The Earth presents us
with some seemingly antagonistic features. The New
World, for instance, stretches from north to south, the
Old World from east to west; the sea, on the contrary,
exhibits a great harmony, an exact correspondence between
the two hemispheres. It is in the fluid portion
of our world, that portion which we have deemed to be
so capricious, that the greatest regularity exists. That
which this globe of ours presents of the most rigidly regular,
the most symmetrical, is just that which appears
to be most utterly free, most entirely the mere sport of
unrestricted motion. No doubt, the vertebræ and the
bones of that vast creature have peculiarities which we,
as yet, are not qualified to comprehend. But its living
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
movements which cause the ocean currents, convert
salt water into fresh water, which anon is converted to
vapor to return again to the salt water, that admirable
mechanism is as perfect and systematic as the sanguineous
circulation of the superior animals; as perfect a resemblance
as possible to the constant transformation of
your own venous and arterial blood.</p>
<p>The world would wear quite another aspect, were we
to class its regions, not by <i>chains of mountains</i> but by
<i>maritime basins</i>.</p>
<p>Southern Spain, resembles Morocco, more than Navarre;
Provence, resembles Algeria, rather than Dauphiny;
Senegambia, the Amazon, rather than the Red
Sea; and the great valley of the Amazon, is more like
to the moist regions of Africa than it is to its arid neighbors,
Peru, Chili, &c.</p>
<p>The symmetry of the Atlantic is still more striking
in its under-currents and the winds and breezes that
sweep over it. Their action potently helps to create
these analogies, and to form what we may call the <i>fraternity
of the shores</i>.</p>
<p>The principle of Geographical unity, will be more and
more sought for in the <i>maritime basin</i>, where the waters
and the winds, faithful intermediaries, create the
relation, the assimilation, of the opposite shores. Far
less can we ask this illustration of Geographical unity
from the mountains, where two slopes frequently present
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
to you, under the same latitude, both a Flora and
a population absolutely different; on the one slope, eternal
summer, on the other, eternal winter, according to
the aspect of each. The mountain rarely gives unity
of country; far more frequently, duality, discordance,
actual diversity.</p>
<p>This striking state of the case was first pointed out
by Borg. de Saint Vincent, and has since, in a thousand
instances, been confirmed by the discoveries of Maury.</p>
<p>In the immense valley of the sea, beneath the double
mountain of the two continents, there are, strictly
speaking, only two basins:—</p>
<p>1. <i>The basin of the Atlantic</i>;</p>
<p>2. <i>The great basin of the Indian Ocean, and the
Pacific.</i></p>
<p>We cannot give the name of basin to the indeterminate
cincture of the great Austral Ocean, which has no
boundary save that on the north it is touched by the Indian
Ocean, the Coraline and the Pacific.</p>
<p>The Austral Ocean alone exceeds in extent all other
seas together, and covers almost one-half of the entire
globe. Apparently, the depth of that sea is in proportion
to its extent. While recent soundings of the Atlantic
give a result of 10,000 to 12,000 feet, Ross and
Denham found in the Southern Ocean from 14,000 to
46,000 feet. Here, too, we may note the mass of the
Antarctic ice, infinitely more vast than the Arctic. We
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
shall not be very wide of the truth, if we say that the
southern hemisphere is the world of waters, the northern
the world of land.</p>
<p>He who sails from Europe to cross the Atlantic, having
been fortunate enough to get clear of our ports in
which he too frequently is imprisoned by the westerly
wind, and having cleared the variable zone of our capricious
seas, speedily gets into the fine climate and
constant serenity which the N. E. breezes, the genial
trade-winds, spread over sea and sky. Above and
around, everything favors him, everything smiles upon
him, but, as he approaches the Line, the inspiring breezes
cease to breathe balmily upon him, and the air is almost
suffocating. He enters the circle of those calms
which prevail under the Equator, and present unchangeably
their barrier between our northern trade-winds and
those of the south. Heavy mists and clouds are all
above and around him, and the tropical rains descend
in mighty torrents. Bitterly the seaman complains of
those gloomy and deluging clouds, but only for their
gloomy screen what scathing beams would descend upon
the poor dizzy heads, and be reflected in smiting power
from the bright, broad mirror of the Atlantic? <i>But</i> for
those torrents which fall upon the other face of our
globe, the Indian Ocean and the sea of Coral, what
would be their fermentation in the craters of their antique
volcanoes! That dark mass of blackest clouds,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
once the terror of the navigator and the obstacle to
navigation, that sudden and dense night extended over
those broad waters form precisely the safeguard, the
protecting facility which softens our passage and enables
us, sailing southward still, to meet again the bright
sun, the clear sky, and the balmy mildness of the regular
winds.</p>
<p>Quite naturally, quite inevitably, the heats of the
Line raise the waters in masses of vapor, and form that
dark band, so threatening in appearance, but in reality
so beneficent.</p>
<p>The observer who from some other planet could look
upon our world would see around her a ring of clouds not
unlike the belt of Saturn. Did he seek the purpose
and the use of that ring, he might, in reply, be told—"It
is the regulator which, by turns absorbing and giving
forth, equalizes the evaporation and fall of the waters,
distributes the rains and dews, modifies the heat
of each country, interchanges the vapors of the two
worlds, and borrows from the southern world the rivers
and streams of our northern world." Marvellous co-partnership
and mutual reaction! South America, from
the respiration of its vast forests, condensed into clouds,
fraternally nourishes the flowers and fruits of our Europe.
The air which revives and inspirits us, is the
tribute paid by the hundred isles of Asia, exhaled by
the great vegetation of Java or Ceylon, and entrusted
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
to the great cloud-messenger that turns with the world
and sheds life and freshness upon it.</p>
<p>Place yourself in imagination upon one of the many
islands of the Pacific and look to the southward. Behind
New Holland you will perceive that the southern
ocean touches with its circular wave the two extreme
points of the old and the new continents. No land in
that antarctic world; not one of those little islands or
of those pretended Polar lands which discoverers have
marked only to behold their disappearance, and which
probably have been but so many icebergs. Water, still
water; water without end.</p>
<p>From the same post of observation on which I have,
in imagination, placed you, in contrast with the great
circle of antarctic waters, look eastward, towards the
arctic hemisphere, and you may discern what Ritter
terms the circle of fire. To speak more precisely, it is
an opened ring, formed by the volcanoes commencing at
the Cordilleras, passing by the heights of Asia, to the
innumerable basaltic isles of the eastern ocean. The
first volcanoes, those of America, present, for a length
of a thousand leagues a succession of sixty gigantic
Beacons whose constant eruptions command the abrupt
coast and the distant waters. The others, from New
Zealand to the North of the Philippines, number eighty
still burning, and a countless host that are extinct.
Steering northward, from Japan to Kamschatka, fifty
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
flaming craters dispense their ruddy lights far away to
the gloomy seas of the Arctic. In the whole, there is a
circle of three hundred active volcanoes around the
eastern world.</p>
<p>On the other front of the globe, our Atlantic Ocean
presented a similar appearance, prior to the revolutions
which extinguished most of the volcanoes of Europe
and annihilated the continent of the Atlantis. Humboldt
believes that that great ruin, only too strongly attested
by tradition, was only too real. I may venture
to add that the existence of that continent was in logical
concordance with the general symmetry of the world,
for that face of the globe was thus harmonized with the
other. There rose, with the volcano of Teneriffe, which
alone remains of them, and with our extinct volcanoes
of Auvergne, of the Rhine, &c., those which were to
destroy Atlantis. Altogether, they formed the counterpoise
of the volcanoes of the Antilles, and other
American craters.</p>
<p>From these burning or extinct volcanoes of India
and the Antilles, of the Cuban and the Javanese seas
proceed two enormous streams of hot water, which are
to warm the north, and which we may fitly term the
aortæ of the world. They are provided, beside or beneath,
with their two counter currents which, flowing
from the north, bring cold water to compensate the flow
of hot water and preserve the balance. To the two
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
streams of hot water which are extremely salt, the cold
currents administer a mass of fresher water which returns
to the equator, the great electric furnace, where it
is heated and made salt.</p>
<p>These streams of hot water, narrow at first, some
twenty leagues in breadth, long preserve their force and
their identity, but by degrees they grow weaker as they
widen ultimately to about a thousand leagues. Maury
estimates that the hot water stream which flows from
the Antilles in a northernly course towards us displaces
and modifies a fourth part of the waters of the Atlantic.
These great features in the life of the seas, noticed only
recently, were, however, as visible as the continents
themselves. Our great Atlantic and her sister, the Indian
artery, proclaim themselves by their color. In
each case it is a great blue torrent which traverses the
green waters; so darkly blue is this torrent, that the
Japanese call theirs the <i>black river</i>. Ours is very
clearly seen, as it leaps boilingly from the Gulf of
Mexico, between Cuba and Florida, and flows west, salt,
and distinguishable between its two green walls. In
vain does the Ocean press upon it, on either side, it still
flows on, unbroken. By I know not what intrinsic density,
or molecular attraction, these blue waters are so
firmly held together, that, rather than admit the green
water, they rear their centre into an arch, and they
thus slope to the right and to the left, so that anything
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
thrown into them rolls off into the ocean. Rapid and
strong, this Gulf stream at first flows towards the
north, along the shores of the United States; but, on
reaching the great bank of Newfoundland, its right
arm sweeps off to the eastward, while the left arm,
as an under current, hastens to create, towards the Pole,
the recently discovered open sea where all else around
is fast frozen. The right arm spreading out, and proportionately
weakened, at length reaches Europe,
touches Ireland and England, which again divide the
waters previously divided at Newfoundland. Weaker
and weaker, it yet carries a little warmth to Norway,
and carries American woods to that poor Iceland which,
but for them, would die frozen beneath the very fires of
her volcano.</p>
<p>The Indian and the American streams have this in
common, that, starting from the Line, from the electric
centre of the globe, they carry with them immense
powers of creation and agitation. On the one hand
they seem the deep and teeming womb of a whole world
of living creatures; on the other hand, they are the
centre and the vehicle of tempests, whirlwinds, and
water spouts. So much nursing gentleness and so
much destroying fury; have we not here a great contradiction?
No, it proves only that the fury disturbs only
the exterior and not any considerable depths. The
weakest creatures, shelled atomies, the microscopic medusæ,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
fluid creatures that a mere touch dissolves, availing
themselves of the same current, sail, in all safety,
though the tempest is loud and fierce right above them.
Few of them reach our shores; they are met at Newfoundland
by the cold stream from the Pole, which slays
them by myriads. Newfoundland is the very bone-house
of these frost-stricken voyagers. The lightest
remain in suspension, even after death; but at length
sink, like snowy showers to the depths, where they deposit
those banks of shells which extend from Ireland
to America.</p>
<p>Murray calls the Indian and American streams of hot
water, <i>the two Milky Ways of the sea</i>.</p>
<p>So similar in color, heat, direction, and describing
precisely the same curve, they yet have not the same
destiny. The American, at the very outset, enters an
inclement sea, the Atlantic, which, open to the North,
bears down the floating army of icebergs from the Pole,
and it thus early parts with much of its heat. The Indian
stream, on the contrary, first circulating among
the isles, reaches a closed sea well protected from the
North, and thus for a long time preserves its original
heat, electric and creative, and traces upon our globe
an enormous train of life.</p>
<p>Its centre is the apogee of terrestrial energy, in
vegetable treasures, in monsters, in spices, in poisons.
From the secondary currents which it gives off, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
which flow towards the North, results another world,
that of the Sea of Coral. There, says Maury, over a
space as large as the four continents the polypes are
industriously building thousands of islands, shoals, and
reefs, which are gradually studding and dividing that
sea; shoals which at present are the annoyance and the
dread of the mariner, but which will at length rise to
the surface, join together to form a continent, which,
some day—who knows? may be the refuge of the human
race, when flood, or fire, or earthquake, leave it no
other shelter.</p>
<p>John Reynaud in his fine article in the <i>Encyclopedie</i>,
remarks that our world is not solitary. The infinitely
complicated curve which it describes represents
the forces, the various influences, which act upon her,
and bear testimony to her connection and communication
with the great luminaries of the Heavens.</p>
<p>That connection and communication are especially
visible with the Sun and Moon; the latter, though the
servant of earth, has none the less power over her.
As the flowers of the earth turn their heads sunward,
so does the flower-bearing earth aspire towards him.
In her most movable portion, her immense fluid mass,
she raises herself and gives visible token of feeling his
attraction. She rises as far as she can and swelling her
bosom twice a day gives, at least, a sigh to the friendly
stars.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
<p>Does not our earth feel the attraction of yet other
globes? Are her tides ruled only by the sun and
moon? All the learned world say it, all seamen believe
it; thence terrible errors resulting in shipwrecks.
At the dangerous shallows of Saint Malo the error
amounted to eighteen feet. It was in 1839 that Chazallan,
who nearly lost his life through these errors,
began to discover and calculate the secondary, but considerable
undulations which, under various influences,
modify the general tide. Stars less dominant than the
sun and moon have, doubtless, their share in producing
the alternate rise and fall of the waters of our globe.
But under what law do they produce this effect? Chazallan
tells us;—"the undulation of the tide in a port
<i>follows the law of vibrating chords</i>." A serious and
suggestive sentence, that, which leads us to comprehend
that the mutual relations of the stars are the
mathematical relations of the celestial music, as antiquity
affirmed.</p>
<p>The earth, by great and secondary tides, speaks to
the planets, her sisters. Do they reply to her? We
must think so. From their fluid elements they also
must rise, sensible to the rise of the waters of the earth.
The mutual attraction, the tendency of each star to
emerge from egotism, must cause sublime dialogues to
be heard in the skies. Unfortunately the human ear
can hear but the least part of them. There is another
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
point to be considered. It is not at the very moment
of the passing of the influential planet that the sea
yields to its influence. She is in no such servile haste
to obey; she must have time to feel and obey the
attraction. She has to call the idle waters to herself,
to vanquish their inert force, to attract, to draw to
her the most distant. The rotation of the world, too,
so terribly rapid, is incessantly displacing the points
subjected to the attractive power. To this we must
add that the great army of waves in its combined motion
has to encounter all the opposition of natural
obstacles,—islands, capes, straits, the various curvings
of shores, and the no less potent obstacles of winds,
currents, and the rapid descent of mountain torrents,
swelled by the melted snows;—these, and a thousand
other unforseen accidents occur, to alter the regular
movement into terrible strife. The ocean yields not.
The display of strength which is made by broad and
swift rivers cannot intimidate him. The waters, that
the rivers pour down upon him, he heaps them up into
mountainous masses and drives them back so violently
that he seems bent on forcing them to the summits of
the mountains from whence they have descended.</p>
<p>Obstacles thus numerous and various cause apparent
tidal irregularities, which at once impress and confuse
our minds. None of those irregularities is more surprising
than the difference of their time between two
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
quite closely neighboring ports. One Havre tide, for
instance, equals two of Dieppe,—as is mentioned by
Chazallon, Baude, &c. It is greatly to the honor of
human genius to have subjected phenomena so complex
to even proximately accurate calculation and positive
laws.</p>
<p>But beneath these exterior movements, the sea has
others within; those under currents by which she is
traversed in various directions and at varying depths.
Superposed at different depths, or flowing laterally in
opposite directions, hot currents in one direction, cold
counter currents in another, they, between them, keep
up the circulation of the sea, the exchange of salt and
fresh waters, and the alternating pulsation which is the
result. The hot <i>pulse-beat</i> is from the line to the
pole; the cold, from the pole to the line. Shall we be
warranted in saying, as it has sometimes been said, that
these currents so distinct and unmingling, may be
strictly compared to the vessels, veins and arteries, of
the superior animals? Strictly speaking, we cannot so
compare them; but they have considerable resemblance
to the less determinate circulation which materialists
have lately discovered in some inferior creatures, as
molluscs and annelides. That <i>lacunary</i> circulation
supplies the want of, and at the same time prepares, the
<i>vascular</i>; the blood flows in currents before it has precise
channels.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
<p>Such is the sea. She resembles a vast animal that
has stopped short at the first degree of organization.
Who has developed the currents, those regular fluctuation
of the abysses into which we never descend? Who
has taught us the geography of those dark waters?
Those that live within or float upon those waters;—animals
and vegetables. We shall see how the huge
whale and the minute shelled atomies, how even the woods
of America, floating to bleak Iceland, have concurred
in revealing the flow of hot water from the Antilles to
Europe, and the counter current of cold meeting it at
Newfoundland, passing it beside or below, and thus
getting its ices melted into immense fogs.</p>
<p>A vast cloud of red animalcules, carried by a tempest
from Orinoco to France, explained the great aërial
current of the Southwest which brings to our Europe
the rains that have their birth place in the far Cordilleras
of South America.</p>
<p>But for the constant change of waters which is made
by the currents in the depths of the sea, she would, in
parts, be filled up with salt, sands, animal and vegetable
remains and the like detritus. It would be another
case of the Dead Sea, which, for want of movement,
has its banks loaded with salt, its vegetation incrusted
with salt, and the very winds that cross its surface,
burning, withering, breathing only of famine and of
death.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
<p>All the scattered observations upon currents of the
air and of the water, the seasons, the winds and the
tempests, were long confined to the memory of the fishermen
and sailors, and too frequently died with them.
Meteorology, that guide of navigation, for want of
being systematized and centralized seemed vain, and
was even denied rank and usefulness as a science. The
illustrious M. Biot, demanded a strict account of the
little that she had yet done. However, upon the two
opposite shores of Europe and America, persevering
men founded that neglected and denied science upon
the basis of observation.</p>
<p>The latest and most celebrated of these observers,
Maury the American, courageously undertook what a
whole administration had recoiled from, viz., to extract
from and arrange the contents of I know not what multitude
of log books, those often confused and ill-kept
records of the sea captains. These extracts, reduced
into tables under regular heads, gave, in the result,
rules and generalities. A congress of seamen assembled
at Bruxelles decided that the observations, henceforth
to be logged with more care, shall be sent from
all parts to the observatory at Washington. A noble
compliment, that, paid by Europe to young America
and her patient and ingenious Maury, the learned poet
of the sea. He has not only summed up and exemplified
her laws; he has done much more, for, by the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
force of heart and by the love of nature as much as by
positive results, he has carried the whole world with
him. His charts and his first work, of which a hundred
and fifty thousand copies were printed, are liberally
distributed to sailors of all nations by the United
States government. A number of eminent men in
France and in Holland, Tricot, Jullien, Margole, Zurcher,
and others, have made themselves the interpreters,
the eloquent missionaries, of this apostle of the sea.</p>
<p>Why is it that in this matter America, so young, has
outstripped Europe, so old? It is precisely because
she is young, and burning with a desire to be in close
connection with the whole globe. Upon her superb
continent and in the midst of so many states, she yet
deems herself solitary. So far from her European
brother, she looks towards that centre of civilization as
the earth looks toward the sun, and whatever seems to
draw her into closer and more familiar connection with
the grand old world, thrills her in every nerve. We
have abundant proof of that from the joy, the intoxication,
the perfect frenzy with which she hailed the completion
of the submarine telegraph which joined the two
distant shores, and promised that they should communicate
within the brief space of minutes, in such wise
that the two worlds should have but one thought.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VI" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</p>
<p class="caption3">TEMPESTS.</p>
<p>It is with a very real and masterly genius that Maury
has demonstrated the harmony that exists between air
and water. As is the maritime ocean, so is the aërial
ocean. Their alternating movements and the exchange
of their elements are precisely analogous. The aërial
ocean distributes heat over the world and making dryness
or humidity. The latter, the air draws from the
seas, from the infinity of the central ocean, and especially
at the tropics, the great boilers of the universal
cauldron. Dryness, on the contrary, the air acquires
as it sweeps over the arid deserts, the great continents,
and the glaciers (those true intermediate poles of the
globe), which draw out its last drop of moisture from
it. The heating at the equator and the cooling again
at the pole, alternating the weight and lightness of the
vapors, cause them to cross each other in horizontal
currents and counter currents; while under the line
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
the heat which lightens the vapors creates perpendicular
currents, ascending from sea to sky. Previous to
dispersing they hover in this misty region, forming, as
it were, a ring of clouds around the globe.</p>
<p>Here, then, we have pulsations both maritime and
aërial, different from the pulse of the tide. This latter
was external, impressed by other planets upon ours, but
this pulse of various currents is inherent in the earth,
it is her own veritable life.</p>
<p>To my taste, one of the finest things in Maury's book,
is what he says of salt: "The most obvious agent in
producing maritime circulation, heat, would not alone
suffice; there is another and a no less important agent,
nay, an even more important—it is salt."</p>
<p>So abundant is salt in the sea that if it could be cast
on shore it would form a mountain 4,500 feet thick.</p>
<p>Though the saltness of the sea does not vary very
greatly, it yet, is augmented or diminished somewhat, according
to locality, currents and proximity to the equator
or to the poles. As it is more or less salted, the sea
is lighter or heavier, and more or less mobile. This continued,
with its variations, causes the water to run more
or less swiftly, that is to say, <i>causes currents</i>, so like
the horizontal currents in the bosom of the sea and the
vertical currents from the sea of water upward to the
sea of air.</p>
<p>A French writer, M. Lartique, has ingeniously corrected
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
some deficiences and inexactitudes in M.
Maury's great work "Maritime Annals." But the
American author had anticipated criticism by frankly
pointing out where and why he thought his work and
his science incomplete. On some points distinctly
confining himself to hypothesis, at times he shows
himself uncertain, and anxious. His frank and candid
book quite plainly reveals the mental struggle which the
author undergoes between <i>biblical literalism</i> and the
modern sentiment the <i>sympathy of nature</i>. The
former makes the sea a thing, created by God at once,
a machine turning under his hand, while the latter sees
in the sea a living force, almost a person, in which the
Loving Soul of the World, is creating still, and ever will
create.</p>
<p>It is curious to observe, how, by degrees, as it were
by irresistible proclivity, Maury approaches this latter
view. As far as possible he explains himself mechanically,
by weight, heat, density, &c. But this does not
suffice, and for certain cases he adds a certain molecular
attraction or a certain magnetic action. But even
this does not suffice, and then he has recourse to the
physiological laws which govern life. He attributes to
the sea a pulse, veins, arteries, and even a heart. Are
these mere forms of style, simple comparisons? Not
so; he has in him—and it is one source of his strength—an
imperious, an irresistible feeling of the personality
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
of the sea. Before him the sea was to most seamen a
thing; to him it is a person, a violent and terrible
mistress whom we must adore, but must also subdue.</p>
<p>He loves, he deeply loves the sea; but on the other
hand, he every moment thinks it necessary to restrain
his enthusiasm and to keep within bounds. Like Levammerdam,
Baunet and many other illustrious men at
once philosophical and religious, he seems to fear that
in explaining nature too completely by her own phenomena
we show disrespect to Nature's God. Surely,
a very ill founded timidity. The more we exhibit the
universality of life,—the more we confess our adoration
of the great soul of the universe. Where would be the
danger were it proven that the sea in her constant aspiration
towards organized existence is the most energetic
form of the Eternal Desire which formerly evoked
this globe and still creates in it?</p>
<p>This salt sea, like blood, which has its circulation,
its pulse, and its heart (for so Maury terms the equator)
in which its two bloods are exchanged, is it quite
sure that an entity that has all these is a mere thing,
an inorganic element?</p>
<p>Look at a great clock, or a steam engine which imitates
almost exactly the movement of the vital forces.
Is that a freak of nature? Should we not far rather
imagine that in these masses there is a mixture of animality?</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
<p>One immense fact that he exhibits, but only secondarily,
and as it were in a mere side view, is that the
infinite life of the ocean, the myriads upon myriads of
beings which it at every moment makes and destroys,
absorb its various salts to form their flesh, their shells,
&c., &c. They thus, by depriving the water of its salt,
render it lighter, and, by so much, aid in producing currents.
In the potent laboratories of animal organization,
as those of the Indian ocean and the Coraline,
that force, elsewhere less remarkable, appears as what
it really is—immense.</p>
<p>"Each of these imperceptibles," says Maury, "changes
the equilibrium of the ocean, they harmonize and
compensate it." But is this saying enough? Should
they not be the grand moving powers which have created
the currents of the sea, put the immense machine into
motion?</p>
<p>Who knows whether this vital <i>circulus</i> of the marine
animality is not the starting point of all physical
<i>circulus</i>? If animalized sea does not give the eternal
impulse to the animalizable sea—not organized, indeed,
as yet, but aspiring to be so, and already fermenting
with approaching life?</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VII" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</p>
<p class="caption3">TEMPESTS.</p>
<p>There are occasional commotions of the sea, which
Maury, in his forcible way, calls "the Sea's <i>spasms</i>."
He especially alludes to the sudden movements which
appear to proceed from below, and which in the Asiatic
seas are often equivalent to a genuine tempest. These
sudden outbursts are attributed to various causes, as:
1st, the violent collision of two tides or currents; 2nd,
the sudden superabundance of rain water on the sea's
surface; 3rd, the breaking up and sudden melting of
the icebergs, &c. To these causes, some authors add
the hypothesis of electric movements and volcanic submarine
heavings.</p>
<p>It seems probable, however, that the depths of the
great mass of the waters are quite peaceable; were it
otherwise, the sea would be unfitted for her office of
nursing-mother to her myriads upon myriads of living
beings. If these occasional commotions, so violent at
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
the surface, were equally so at the bottom of the sea,
what could preserve the nurslings of that great nursery
where a whole world of delicate creatures more fragile
even than those of our earth, are cradled in and nourished
by its waters? The myriad-life of the Ocean assures
us that these violent commotions cannot be common
in its depths.</p>
<p>Naturally, the great sea is of great general regularity;
subject to great periodical and uniform movements.
Tempests are the occasional and transient violences into
which the sea is lashed by the winds, by electric
power, or by certain violent crises of evaporation. They
are the mere accidents which reveal themselves on the
surface, but tell us nothing about the real, the mysterious
personality of the sea. It would be sad reasoning
were we to judge of a human temperament by the ravings
of a brain-fevered man; and by what better right
do we judge the sea on account of the momentary and
merely superficial movements which probably do not
make themselves felt to the depth of a very few hundred
feet? Everywhere that the sea is very deep, we
may fairly assume that she is constantly calm, ever producing,
ever nourishing, her quite literally countless
brood. She takes no note of those petty accidents
which occur only at the surface. The mighty hosts of
her children that live, as we cannot too often repeat, in
the depths of her peaceful night, and rise at the most
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
only once a year within the influence of light and storm
must love their great, calm, prolific mother as Harmony
itself.</p>
<p>But these surface-disturbances of the great mother
Ocean have too serious a bearing upon the life of man,
to allow of his sparing any pains towards obtaining a
thorough comprehension of them. And to obtain that
comprehension is no easy matter; in making the necessary
observations, the boldest of us is a little apt to lose
his cool presence of mind. Even the most serious descriptions
give only vague and general features, scarcely
anything of the marked individuality which makes
every tempest a thing of originality, a thing <i>sui generis</i>,
the unforeseen result of a thousand unknown circumstances,
potent in their influence, but obscure far beyond
our power of search. He who safely gazes from
his safe watch-tower on the shore, may, no doubt, see
more clearly, as he is not distracted by his own danger.
But for that very reason, he cannot so well appreciate
the tempest in its grand and terrible entirety, as he can
who is in the very centre of its rage and of its power,
and looks in every direction upon that terrible panorama!</p>
<p>We mere landsmen are indebted to the bold navigators
for at least the courtesy of giving what old Chaucer
calls "faith and full credence" to what they tell us
about what they have actually seen and suffered. It
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
seems to me that there is exceedingly bad taste in that
sceptical levity which men of the study, those stay-at-home
travellers occasionally exhibit in their criticisms
of what seamen tell us, for instance, about the height
of the waves. They laugh at the seaman who tells us
of waves a hundred feet in height. Engineers affect to
be able to measure the tempest, and to assure us that
twenty feet is the utmost height of a wave. On the
other hand, an excellent observer assures us, on the testimony
of his own sight, that standing in safety on the
shore, observing calmly, and in absence of all distraction,
he has seen waves that would overtop the towers
of Notre Dame, and the heights of Montmartre. It is
abundantly evident that these opposing witnesses speak
of two totally different things; and hence their flat
contradiction. If we speak of the lower bed of the
tempest, of those long bowling waves which even in
their fury preserve a certain regularity, probably the
calculation of the engineers is pretty exact. With
their rounded crests alternating with depressed valleys,
it is likely enough that their utmost height does not
greatly exceed twenty or five-and-twenty feet. But
your chopping sea, where cross wave furiously hurls itself
against cross wave, rises far higher. In their
fierce collision they hurl each other to a quite prodigious
height, and fall with a crushing weight, assailed
by which the stoutest craft would open her seams, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
go bodily down into the dark depths of the angry sea.
Nothing so heavy as sea water, in those mighty shocks,
those enormous falls of which sailors truthfully speak,
and of which none but those who have witnessed them,
can calculate the tremendous greatness and power.</p>
<p>On a certain day, not of tempest but of emotion,
when old Ocean indulged only in wild and graceful gaieties,
I was tranquilly seated upon a beautiful headland
of some eighty feet in height, and I enjoyed myself in
watching the waves as upon a line of a quarter of a
league they rushed in as if to assail my rocky seat, the
green crest of each wave rounding and rearing, wave
urging wave as though in actual and intelligent racing.
Now and then a sea would strike so that my very headland
seemed to tremble, and burst as with a thunder
clap at my very feet. Advancing, retiring, returning,
breaking, the wildly sportive waves were for a long
time quite admirably regular in their movements. But
on a sudden this regularity was at an end. Some wild
cross wave from the west suddenly struck my great regular
and hitherto well behaved wave from the south.
Such was the crash that in an instant the very sky above
me was darkened by the blinding spray; and on my
lofty promontory I was covered, not with the many
colored and fleeting mist, but with a huge, dark, massive
wave, which fell on me, heavy, crushing, and thoroughly
saturating. Ah! Just then I should very much
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
have liked the company of those very learned Academicians
and ultra positive Engineers, who are so well
posted up in the combats of the Ocean, and so very certain
that the utmost height of a wave is just twenty
feet! No; tranquilly seated in our studies we should
<i>not</i> lightly question the veracity of so many bold, hardy,
and resolved men, who have looked Death in the face
too often to be guilty of the childish vanity of exaggerating
the dangers which they have often braved—and
are ready to brave again. Nor should we ever oppose
the calm narratives of ordinary navigators on the great
and well known courses to the animated and often thrilling
pictures occasionally presented to us by the bold
discoverers who seek the very reefs and shoals which
the common herd of sailors so carefully avoid. Cook,
Peron, Durville—discoverers such as these incurred
very real dangers in the then unfrequented Australian
and Coraline seas, compelled as they were to dare the
continually shifting sand bank, and the conflicting currents
which raise such frightful commotions in the narrow
channels.</p>
<p>"Without tempest, with only rollers to deal with,
and with a moderate wind right abaft, a cross wave
will give your craft such a shock, that the ship's bell
will strike, and if these big rollers with their sweeping
motion, continue for any time, your masts will go by
the board, your seams will open—you will be a wreck."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
So says the experienced Durville—gallant sailor, if
ever there was one. And he tells us that he has himself
seen waves from eighty to a hundred feet high.
"These waves," he says, "only boarded us with their
mere crests, or the craft must have been swamped. As
it was she staggered, and then for an instant stood still,
as though too terrified to understand what was the matter.
The men upon the deck were for moments completely
submerged. For four long hours that night this
horrible chaos endured; and those hours seemed an
eternity to turn one's hair grey. Such are the southern
tempests, so terrible that even ashore the natives have
a presentiment of their approach, and shelter themselves
in caves."</p>
<p>However exact and interesting these descriptions
may be, I do not care to copy them; still less would I
be bold enough to invent descriptions of what I have
not seen. I will only speak briefly about tempests
which I have seen, and which have, as I believe, taught
me the different characteristics of the Ocean and the
Mediterranean.</p>
<p>During half a year that I passed at about two leagues
from Genoa, on the prettiest shore in the world, at Nervi,
I had in that sheltered spot but one little sudden
tempest, but while it lasted it raged with a quite wonderful
fury. As I could not, quite so well as I wished,
watch it from my window, I went out and along the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
narrow lanes that separate the palaces, I ventured down,
not indeed, to the beach, for in reality, there is none
worthy the name, but to a ledge of black, volcanic rock,
which forms the shore, a narrow path, often not exceeding
three feet in width, and as often overhanging the
sea at varying heights of from thirty up to sixty feet.
One could not see far out; the spray continually raised
by the whirlwind, drew the curtain too closely too allow
of one's seeing far, or seeing much, but all that
was to be seen was sufficiently frightful. The raggedness,
the salient and cutting angles, of this iron-bound
coast, compelled the tempest to make incredible efforts,
to take tremendous leaps, as, foaming and howling, it
broke upon the pitiless rocks. The tumult was absurd,
mad; there was nothing connected, nothing regular;
discordant thunders were mingled or followed by sharp
shrill shrieks, like those of the steam engine; piercing
shrieks, against which one only in vain tried to stop his
ears. Stunned by this wild scene, which assailed sight
and hearing at once, I steadied myself against a projecting
wall of rock, and thus comparatively sheltered,
I was better able to study the grandly furious strife.
Short and chopping were the waves, and the fiercest of
the strife was on this side where the sea broke on the
ragged, yet sharply pointed rocks, as they rose boldly
above, and ran out far beneath the waves, in long,
shelving, reefs. The eye, as well as the ear was vexed,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
for a blinding snow was falling, its dazzling whiteness
heightened by contrast with the dark waves into which
it fell.</p>
<p>On the whole, I felt that the Sea had less to do than
the land in rendering the scene terrible; it is exactly
the contrary on the Ocean.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VIII" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE STORM OF OCTOBER, 1859.</p>
<p>The storm, which of all storms, I had the best opportunity
of observing, was that which swept in fury over
the west of France, from the 24th of October 1859, to
the 31st of the same month, the implacable and indefatigable
storm, which, with but few and very short intervals,
raged furiously for six days and six nights, and
strewed our whole western coasts with wrecks. Both
before and after that storm, the barometer indicated
great disturbances, and the telegraphic communications
were cut off by the breaking of the wires, or the magnetic
falsifications. Very hot seasons had preceded
this tempest, but it brought us a succession of very different
weather; rainy, and cold. Even 1860, up to the
very day on which I write these lines, is marked by
heavy rain storms, and cold winds from the west, and
south, which seem to bring us all the rains of the Atlantic,
and of the great South Sea.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
<p>I watched this tempest from a spot so smiling and
peaceful that tempest was the last thing that one would
anticipate there. I speak of the little port of Saint
George, near Royan, just at the entrance of the Gironde.
I had passed an exceedingly quiet five months there,
meditating what I should say on the subject which I had
treated upon in 1859; that subject at once so serious
and so delicate. The place and the book are alike
filled with memories very agreeable to me. Could I
have written that book in any other place? I know
not; but one thing is quite certain: the wild perfume
of that country; its aspect, at once staid and gentle,
and the vivifying odors of its Brooms, that pungent
and agreeable shrub of the Landes, had much to do
with that book, and will ever be associated with it in
my thought.</p>
<p>The people of the place are well matched with its
aspect and its nature. No vulgarity, no coarseness,
among them. The farming population are grave in
manner, and moral in speech and conduct, and the seagoing
population, consists, for the most part, of pilots,
a little band of Protestants, escaped from persecution.
All around, too, there is an honesty so primitive that
locks and bolts are absolutely unknown there. Noise
and violence are utterly out of the question among people
who are modest and reserved, as seamen seldom
are, and who have a quiet and retiring tact not always
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
to be found among a far more pretentious and highly
placed people. Though well known to and well respected
by them, I yet enjoyed all the solitude which
study and labor demanded. I was all the more interested
in these people and their perils. Without speaking
to them, I daily and hourly watched them in their
heroic labors, and heartily wished them both safety and
success. I was suspicious of the weather, and looking
upon the dangerous channel, I often asked myself
whether the sea, so long gentle and lovely, would not,
sooner or later, show us quite another countenance.</p>
<p>This really dangerous place has nothing sad or
threatening in its aspect. Every morning, from my
window, I could watch the white sails, slightly ruddied
by the morning beams, of quite a fleet of small coasters,
that only waited for a wind to leave the little port.
At this port, the Gironde is fully nine miles wide.
With some of the solemnity of the great rivers of
America, it combines the gaiety of Bourdeaux. Royan
is a pleasure place, a bathing town which is resorted
to by all Gascony. Its bay, and the adjoining one
of St. George, are gratuitously regaled with the wild
pranks of the porpoises, that boldly venture into the
river, and into the very midst of the bathers, leaping,
at once heavily and gracefully, six feet, and more,
above the surface of the water. It would seem that
they are profoundly convinced of the fact, that no one
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
thereabout is addicted to fishing; that at that point of
great daring and great labor, where from hour to hour
all hands may be called upon to succor some imperilled
vessel, folks will scarcely care to slay the poor Porpoise,
for his oil.</p>
<p>To this gaiety of the waters, add the especially harmonious
beauty of the two shores, as the abounding
vineyards of Medoc look across to the varied culture
of the fertile fields of Saintonge. The sky, here,
has not the fixed, and sometimes rather monotonous
beauty of the Mediterranean, but, on the contrary, is
very changeable. From the mingling waters of sea and
river, rise variegated mists, which cast back upon the
watery mirror, strange gleamings of gorgeous coloring,
rod, blue, deepest orange, and most delicately pale
green. Fantastic shapes, "a moment seen, then gone
for ever," "appearing only to depart, and seen only to
be regretted," adorn the entrance to the Ocean with
strange monuments of bold collonades, sublime bridges,
and, occasionally, triumphal arches.</p>
<p>The two crescent-shaped shores of Royan and Saint
Georges, with their fine sands afford to the most delicate
feet a delightful promenade of which one does not
easily grow tired, tempted, and regaled as we are by
the perfume of the pines which so enliven the downs
with their young verdure. The fine promontories
which overlook these shores, and the sandy inland
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
downs send near and far their healthful perfumes. That
which predominates on the downs has a something of
medicinal, a mingled odor, which seems to concentrate
all the sun and the warmth of the sands. The inland
heaths furnish the more pungent odors which stir the
brain and cheer the heart; thyme, and wild thyme, and
marjoram, and sage which our fathers held sacred for
its many virtues, and peppermint, and, above all, the
little wild violet, exhale a mingled odor surpassing all
the spicy odors of the far East.</p>
<p>It seems to me that on these heaths the birds sing
more beautifully than elsewhere. Never have I heard
elsewhere such a lark as I listened to in July on the
promontory of Vallière, as she rose higher and higher,
her dark wings gilded and glinting in the rays of the
fast setting sun. Her notes coming from a height of
probably a thousand feet were as sweet as they must
needs have been powerful. It was to her humble nest,
to her upward gazing and listening nestlings that she
evidently sang her "wood notes wild," her song at
once so rustic and so sublime, in which one might fancy
that she translated into harmony that glorious sunlight
in which she hovered, and called to her nestlings—"Come
up hither my little ones, come!"</p>
<p>Out of all these, perfumes and song, soft air, and sea
made mild by the waters of the beautiful river, proceeded
an infinitely agreeable, though not very brilliant
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
harmony. The moon shone with a softened light, the
stars were quite visible, but not very bright, and the atmosphere
so mild and pleasant, that it would have
been voluptuous, that whole scene and its accessories
had there not mingled with all a something, which
made one reflect, and substituted active thought for
luxuriously idle reverie.</p>
<p>And why so? Do those shifting sands, those many
colored and varying hues of the downs, and that crumbling
and fossiliferous limestone remind you of the
eternal change, that one only rule which here on earth
has no exception? Or, is it the silent but undying memory
of the persecuted Protestants? It is also, and in
still greater power, the solemnity of the roadstead, the
frequency of wrecks, the near neighborhood of the most
terrible of seas, by which the interior becomes so
serious, so suggestive of great and solemn thought.</p>
<p>A great mystery is being enacted here, a treaty, a
marriage infinitely more important than any human and
royal nuptials; a marriage of interest between ill
matched spouses. The lady of the waters of the south-west,
swelled and quickened by Tarn and Dordogne
and by those fierce brethren the torrents of the Pyrenees,
hastens, that amiable and sovereign Gironde, to
present herself to her giant spouse, old Ocean, here,
more than elsewhere, stern and repulsive. The mud
banks of the Charente and the long line of sands which,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
for fifty leagues, oppose him, put him in bad humor;
and when he cannot hurtle fiercely against Bayonne
and Saint Jean de Luz, he pitilessly assaults the poor
Gironde. Her outlet is not like that of the Seine, between
sheltering shores; she falls at once into the presence
of the open and limitless ocean. Generally, he
repels her; she recoils to the right and to the left, and
seeks shelter in the marshes of Saintonge, or among
the Medoc vineyards to whose vines she imparts the
cool and sober qualities of her own waters.</p>
<p>And now imagine the boldness of the men who throw
themselves headlong into the strife between two such
spouses; who go in the frail boat to the aid of the timorous
craft who wait at the mouth of the pass afraid to
venture in. Such is the boldness of my pilots here;
a boldness at once so modest, so heroic, so glorious,
could it but be fully described.</p>
<p>It is easy to understand that the old monarch of shipwrecks,
the antique treasurer and guardian of so much
submerged wealth bears no great good will towards the
bold ones who venture to dispute with him his prey.
If he sometimes allows them to succeed, sometimes
also he avenges himself upon them—more malignantly
delighted to drown one pilot than to wreck two ships.</p>
<p>But for sometime past no such accident had been
spoken of. The exceedingly hot summer of 1859, produced
only one wreck in this neighborhood; but I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
knew not what agitation even then foretold greater disasters.
September came, then October, and the brilliant
crowd of visitors, loving the sea only when it is
calm and smiling, already took its departure. I still
remained, partly kept there by my unfinished work,
partly by the strange attraction which that season of
the year has for me.</p>
<p>In October we had strange eccentric winds, such as
seldom blow there; a burning storm-wind from the
East, that quarter usually so peaceable. The nights
were occasionally very hot, even more so in October
than in August; sleepless, agitated, nervous nights;
nights to quicken the pulse to the fever pace, and without
apparent cause to render one excited and peevish.</p>
<p>One day as we sat among the pines, beaten by the
wind though somewhat sheltered by the downs, we
heard a young voice, singularly clear, piercing, resonant,
and, so to speak, metallic. It was the voice of a
very young girl, small in figure, but austere in countenance.
She was walking with her mother and singing
snatches of an old ballad. We invited her to sit down
and sing us the whole of it. This old ballad, this rustic
little poem admirably expressed the double spirit of
the country. Saintonge is, in the first place, essentially
rustic and home-loving, with none of the wild adventurous
impulses of the Basques. And yet in spite of
her sedentary tastes Saintonge turns sailor and goes forth
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
into not unfrequent dangers. And why? The old
ballad explains:</p>
<p>The lovely daughter of a king while washing, like
Nausica of the Odyssey, loses her ring in the sea; a
young lover dives in search of it, and is drowned. She
weeps his loss so bitterly that she is changed into the
rosemary of the shore, at once so bitter and so odorous.
This ballad, heard in that pine wood already shuddering
and moaning at the threatening storm, touched and
delighted me, but at the same time strengthened my
secret presentiments.</p>
<p>Whenever I went to Royan, I might calculate upon
being overtaken, unsheltered, in a storm, before I could
accomplish that short journey of only a few hours. It
pressed upon me in the vineyards of Saint George and
the heathy table land of the promontory which I first
ascended; and it pressed upon me more heavily still as
I traversed the great semi-circular shore of Royan.
Even now, in October, the heath exhaled all its perfumes
of wild flowers and shrubs, and their perfumes
seemed to me more pungent now than ever. On the
still unvexed shore, the wind, warmly and gently
fanned my cheek, and the no less gentle sea in murmuring
ripples strove to kiss my feet. But for both
caressing wind and gently murmuring wave, I was too
well prepared, too suspicious, to be deceived by them.
By way of prelude to the great change, after so many
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
beautiful and almost effeminating evenings, suddenly, in
the very middle of the night, burst forth a frightful
gale of wind. Again and again this occurred, but
especially on the night of the 26th. On that night I
felt sure that some great damage must needs be done.
Our pilots had gone out on their generous and perilous
errand. During those long fluctuations of the equinoctial
weather they had hesitated somewhat, delayed
some little, then they grew impatient of delay, duty
and business called to them aloud, and they resolved to
put out, at the risk of some sudden and ruinous gust.
I felt that there would be some such; I whispered to
myself, "some one perishes now." And too truly was
it so.</p>
<p>From a pilot boat, which, in face of the bad weather,
put out to rescue a vessel imperilled in the pass, an unfortunate
man was swept from the deck, and the boat,
herself in utmost peril was unable to lie-to for him. He
left three young children and a pregnant wife. What
rendered this calamity especially to be regretted, was
the fact that this excellent young man, with the generous
affection so common among sailors, had married a
poor girl rendered incapable of earning her bread by
an accident which had mutilated her hands. Alas!
How much was she to be pitied, helpless, pregnant,
burdened with a young family—and thus suddenly
widowed!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
<p>A subscription was made for her, and I went to Royan,
with my mite towards it. A pilot whom I met
there, spoke to me, with real grief and emotion, of the
sad accident. "Ah, Sir," said he, "such is our hard
profession; it is precisely when wind and sea are most
angry, and most threatening, that it is especially incumbent
upon us to go forth." The marine commissioner,
who keeps the register of the living and the dead of
that little community, and who, better than any one
else, knows the history and the circumstances of every
family there, appeared to me to be exceedingly saddened
and anxious. It was plain that he thought, as I
did, that this was only the beginning of calamity.</p>
<p>I resumed my journey along the shore, and in the
course of it, I had the opportunity to notice and study
the dark zone of clouds which hemmed me in on every
side, to the extent of, I should judge, not less than
eight or ten leagues. On my left was Saintonge, expectant,
dull, passive; on my right, Medoc, from which
I was separated by the river, lay in a gloomy and misty
stillness. Behind me, coming from the west and brooding
over the Ocean, was a whole world of cloud and
mist, but in my face, and opposing that world of cloud,
blew the fresh land-breeze. Sweeping down the course
of the Gironde, it seemed that the funereal pall that rose
above the Ocean, might be repulsed and dispelled. Still
uncertain, I looked behind me to the shoal of Cordovan,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
from which, pale, fantastic, weird, its tower rose
like some spectre that said—"Woe, woe, woe!"</p>
<p>I was not mistaken. I saw quite plainly that the
land-breeze not only would be conquered, but that it
would be compelled to become the help-mate of its
seeming foe. That land-breeze blew quite low over the
Gironde, swept away from before it all dwarfish obstacles,
but still hovered beneath the high pitched and
inky clouds that swept in from the Ocean, and formed
for those clouds, as it were, a slippery inclined plane
over which they would glide only the more easily and
the more swiftly. In a brief space all was still from
the landward, every breath died away beneath the thick
grey mists; and, unopposed, the upper winds swept the
ominous storm-clouds shoreward.</p>
<p>When I reached the vineyards of Vallière, near St.
George, hosts of people were busily at work, striving
to improve the brief time during which they could hope
to labor. The first heavy drops of rain came down,
solid and smiting as so much molten lead, and in another
instant, one was right glad to find a sheltering
roof.</p>
<p>I had seen my full share of tempests. I had read
my full share of descriptions of them; and I was prepared
to expect anything and everything from their fury
and from their power. But nothing that I had either
seen or read, had prepared me for the effects of <i>this</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
tempest, so fierce, so long-enduring, so implacable in its
unceasing and uniform fury. When, from time to time,
we have a pause, even the slightest mitigation, even a
change, however slight, in the Tempest's moods and
manifestations, our over-distended senses also relax, recuperate,
prepare themselves for the next assault. But
in this case, night after night, day after day, for six
weary and wearying nights and days, the storm-fiend
never winked an eye or spared a blow. Fierce, strong,
angry, implacable; still the storm-fiend raged, untiring,
and unsparing. On mine honor, see ye! it was
something to daunt the boldest, to suggest despair to
the most hopeful. No thunder, no crashing combat of
the positive and negative storm-clouds, no loud and animating
crash of the meeting and contending waves.
All around was one dark, leaden, sinister, ominous, and
mysterious pall of cloud and mist, all above us one
black sky, terminated in the horizon by a sickly and
leaden line brooding over a slowly heaving and mighty
mass of leaden looking sea;—so slowly and monotonously
heaving that one almost wished for the coming
storm-blast to rouse them into a fierce fury, less terrible,
less oppressive, than their horribly oppressive monotony.
No poetry of a great terror could oppress one
like this most prosaic and dark monotony. Still, still
and ever, came from the deep bosom of the coming
storm the same terribly monotonous—"Woe, woe!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
Alas, alas, alas!" Our abode was close upon the
shore. We were no mere spectators of that scene; we
were in it, of it, sharers, actors, thrilled actors in that
sublime scene. Every now and then the wild sea came
within twenty feet of us; at every rush, she made
our very hearth stone quiver beneath our feet. Happily,
the ever-rising and terrible sou' west wind struck
our windows only obliquely, or we should have been
drowned as we gazed, so vast was the torrent, nay the
deluge, which every blast bore upon its mighty bosom,
alike from the clouds above, and from the vexed and
upheaving Ocean below. In haste, and with no small
difficulty, we fastened the shutters, and lighted lamps,
that we might at least look coming fate in the face. In
those apartments which looked out upon the landward,
the noise and the perturbation were no jot or tittle inferior.
I wrote on, curious to ascertain whether this
wild outburst of nature could in reality oppress and
fetter a free intellect, and I thus kept my intellect active,
agile, cool, thoroughly in self-command. I wrote,
I noted, I compared, I drew mine own conclusions. At
length, worn out solely by fatigue, and abstinence, and
the want of</p>
<p class="center">
"Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep,"<br />
</p>
<p>I felt myself deprived of that which I believe to be one
of the most important of the writer's powers, the quick,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
sure, delicate sense of rhythm; I felt that my sentences
became inharmonious. That sense of rhythm was the
first cord in my being to snap, broken, inharmonious,
over-strained,—ruined.</p>
<p>The mighty howling of the Tempest had but one variation,
in the weird and strange tones of the winds that
pitilessly yet mournfully assailed us. The house in
which I was seated was directly in their path; and they
therefore assaulted it in utmost fury and apparently
on every side at once. Now it was the strong, stern
blow of the master, impatient to enter his own house;
anon some strong hand tried to dash open the shutters;
and again came shrill shrieks down the wide chimneys,
wailing for the master's exclusion, fiercely threatening,
if we did not admit him, and, at length, furious and
mighty attempts to force an entry by dislodging the very
roof from its rafters. And all these sounds were occasionally
dominated by the sad, deep, melancholy, <i>Heu,
heu! Alas, alas!</i> Woe, woe, and Desolation. So immense,
so potent, so terrible was that <i>Heu, heu!</i> of
chorusing wind and sky, that even the voice of the bold
storm-blast seemed to us, in comparison, secondary and
mild. At length, the wind managed to clear a way for
the rain; our house—I had almost said our craft—began
to leak; the roof, opening its seams here and there,
admitted the rain in torrents.</p>
<p>Still worse, the fury of the Tempest, by a desperate
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
effort, loosened one of the hinges of a shutter, which
still remained closed, but from that moment shook,
creaked, shrieked, in the most dismal fashion that you
can imagine. To make it fast I had to open the window,
and that moment that I did so, though sheltered
by the shutter, I felt myself in the very centre of the
whirlwind, half-deafened by the frightful force of a
sound equal to that of a cannon fired close to one's ear.
Through the cracks of the shutter I perceived what
gave me a clear notion of the tremendous power that
was raging landward, skyward, seaward, horizontally,
upward, and downward. The waves, meeting and battling,
smote each other so fiercely that they could not
descend again. Gust after gust from beneath them,
carried them landward; mighty and vast as they were,
they were borne landward as though so many feathers,
by the upheaving force of those mighty blasts.</p>
<p>How would it have been, if, shutters and windows
being driven in, our poor room had <i>shipped</i> one of those
vast billows which the storm-wind thus hurled upon the
adjacent heaths? We were, in fact, exposed to the
strange chance of being shipwrecked on the land. Our
house, so close to the shore, might at any moment have
its roof or even its upper story carried right away by
wind and wave. The villagers often told us that that
was, in fact, their nightly thought and their nightly terror,
and they advised us to seek a more inland shelter.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
But we still comforted ourselves with the thought that
the longer this tempest had lasted, the sooner it must
come to an end; and, to the undoubtedly reasonable
advice thus given to us, our reply was, still, "To-morrow,
to-morrow."</p>
<p>The overland news that came to us, told of nothing
but wrecks, still wrecks. Close by us, on the 30th
of October, a vessel from the South Sea, with a crew of
thirty hands, foundered, with a loss of all hands and
her rich cargo—and this at the very entrance of the
roadstead. After having passed through so many
storms and calms, after having safely weathered so
many rocks and shoals, she had arrived within sight,
within hail, almost within touch of a little beach of fine
sand, the fine-weather bathing place of delicate and
timid women. Well! That seemingly gentle little
sandy beach, upheaved into a huge and impassable sandbar—was
the grave of the good ship, which ran upon
it with frightful force, and was crushed, shivered into
small pieces—converted from a "thing of life," into a
mutilated corpse. What became of the crew? Not a
trace of them has ever been found; they were probably
swept, vainly struggling, from the deck, and swallowed
up by the sands.</p>
<p>This tragical event very naturally led us to suspect
that many similar ones had occurred, elsewhere, and
nothing was thought of or talked of but probable calamities.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
But the sea seemed by no means at the end of
her work. We on shore had had quite enough of it.
Not so our enraged sea. I saw our pilots, sheltering
themselves behind a rocky wall from south-west, keep
an anxious look-out seaward, and shake their heads in
ominous doubt of what was even yet to come. Happily
for them, no craft made her appearance in the offing—or
they were there to risk, most probably to lose, their
lives. And I, also, looked anxiously out upon that sea,
on which I looked no less in hate than in anxiety.
True, I was in no real danger, but for that very reason
I was all the more despairingly the victim of <i>ennui</i>.
That sea had a look at once hideous and terrible; her
vagaries were as absurd as her strength was irresistible.
Nothing there reminded one of the fanciful descriptions
of the poets. By a strange contrast, the more I felt
myself depressed, and as it were, lifeless, the more vigorously
and vehemently did she seem to feel and manifest
her life; as though, galvanized by her own furious
motion, she had become animated by some strange, fantastic
soul. In the general rage, each wave seemed animated
by its own special and sentient rage; in the
whole uniformity, (paradoxical as it may seem, it, yet,
is quite true) there was, as it were some diabolical
swarming. Was all this attributable to my worn brain
and wearied eyes? Or were the reality and the impression
alike true? Those waves reminded me of some
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
terrible <i>mob</i>, some horrid rabblement, not of men, but
of howling dogs, a myriad of howling and eager dogs,
wolves—maddened and furious dogs and wolves. Dogs
and wolves, do I say? Let me rather say, a dread concourse
of nameless, and detestable, and spectral beasts,
eyeless and earless, but with hugely yawning jaws, foaming
and eager for blood, blood, still more blood!</p>
<p>Monsters! what more do ye require? Are ye not
surfeited with wrecked ships and slain men? Do we
not from all sides hear of your horrid triumphs? What
more, I ask, do ye demand? And the horrid phantoms
answer—"Thy death, universal Death, the destruction
of the Earth, a return to black Night and ancient
Chaos."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IX" id="BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE BEACONS.</p>
<p>Impetuous is the channel where her strait receives the
full rush of the North sea, and very turbulent is the
sea of Brittany, rushing over basaltic shoals in swift
and furious rapids. But the gulf of Gascony, from
Cordouan to Biarritz, is just one long maritime contradiction,
one enigma of mighty strifes. As she goes
to the southward, she suddenly becomes extraordinarily
deep, as though her waters sank, on the instant into
some vast and fathomless abyss. Passing over that
sudden and immense depth, the onward wave under the
impulse of the terrible pressure leaps upward to a
height and onward with a velocity unequalled by any
other of our seas. The great surge from the north-west
is the motive-power of this huge liquid machinery;
from a little more north it threatens to crush Saint-Jean-de-Luz;
farther west it repels the Gironde, and
crowns with her terrible billows the luckless Cordouan.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
<p>That poor Cordouan, that respectable martyr of the
seas and victim of the tempests, is only too little known.
I believe it is the oldest of all the European beacons.
At all events, only one, the celebrated Genoese lantern,
can rival it in antiquity. But there is a vast difference
between them. The Genoese, crowning a fort and solidly
seated upon solid rock, looks smilingly, almost
scornfully, down upon the impotently furious storms.
But Cordouan is upon a shoal which the water never
wholly leaves. And, in truth, he was a bold man who
conceived the notion of erecting a beacon here, amidst
the waters; what say I? in the eternal wave-combat
between such a river and such a sea. From one or the
other, it, at every instant, receives tremendous blows.
Yes, even the Gironde urged on the one hand by the
winds, and on the other by the rude torrents from the
Pyrenees, assails this stern calm guardian, as though it
were responsible for the assailing and repelling fury of
the ocean.</p>
<p>Yet, Cordouan is the only saving and consoling light
that gleams over this stormy sea. Run before the
north wind, and miss Cordouan, and verily, my storm-tossed
brother, you are in very real danger; you, likely
enough, will fail to sight Arcachon. This sea, most
stormy among seas, is also the darkest. At night,
storm-driven upon that sea, there is no guiding mark, if
you miss the beneficent light.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
<p>During our whole six months stay upon this coast,
our usual contemplation, I had almost said, our almost
sole companion, was the beacon of Cordouan. We felt
that this guardian of the sea, this constant watchman
over the strait became less a mere building than an actually
living and intelligent <i>person</i>. Standing erect
over the vast western horizon, it shows itself under
a hundred various aspects. Now it is gilded, glorified
by the setting sun; anon, pale and indistinct amidst the
shifting mists, it tells us nothing of good augury. At
evening, when suddenly it flashes its ruddy and glowing
light athwart the heaving waters, it looks like
some zealous inspector impressed and anxious in its
conscious and deep responsibility. Whatever happens
from the seaward, our Cordouan is held responsible for
it. Throwing his ruddy beams into the gloom of the
tempest, he, the preserver, is held to be the cause of
that which he only, and savingly, exhibits. Thus, only
too often, it is that genius is accused of evoking the
evils which it exposes only that it may reform them.
We, also, were ourselves thus unjust towards Cordouan.
Was he late in displaying his guiding light? How
ready we were to exclaim: "Cordouan, Cordouan,
pale phantom, can you show yourself only to conjure up
the storm, and the storm fiend?"</p>
<p>And yet I believe, quite firmly, that to Cordouan
thirty of our fellows owed their lives in the great storm
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
of October. Their vessel was a total wreck, but they
escaped with their lives.</p>
<p>It is much that we can see our shipwrecking, to go
down in full light, knowing exactly where we are, what
are our perils, and what chances we have of evading or
overcoming them. "Great God! If we must perish,
give us to perish in the broad, bright light of day!"</p>
<p>When the ship of which I speak, driven by the
strong surge from the open sea, reached this shore in
the deep night, there were a thousand chances to one
against her making her way into the Gironde. On her
starboard the bright point of the Grave warned her off
from Medoc; on her larboard the little beacon of Saint-Palais
showed her the dangerous rock of the Grand'Caute
on the Saintonge side; and between those fixed
white lights, high over the central shoal flashed the
ruddy Cordouan, showing from moment to moment the
only safe channel.</p>
<p>By a desperate effort she got through, but only, and
barely; wind, wave, and current conspired to drive her
on Saint-Palais. The saving light showed the much harrassed,
but still undaunted crew, where only lay their
chance of safety from the driving sea behind and the
terrible sands in front. Fearing, yet daring, they
leaped, fell, I know not how or where, and were saved,
bruised, fainting,—but still living.</p>
<p>Who can even imagine how many ships and how
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
many men are saved by these beneficent beacons?
Light, suddenly dispelling the dense shadows of those
horrible nights when the bravest lose their courage and
their presence of mind, not only points the path, but
clears the head and strengthens the heart. It is a
great moral support to be able to say in some mortal
peril, "Again! Again! Haul away my brothers, be
bold! Though wind and wave are both against us, we
are not alone. See, yonder! Humanity is still watching
over us, and guiding us from yonder lofty tower!"</p>
<p>The seamen of the old times, ever hugging the shore,
and anxiously marking every headland, were still more
in need than we are of the friendly beacon light. The
Etruscans, we are told, first kept the night-fires burning
upon their sacred stones; the beacon was at once an
altar, a temple, a column, and a watch tower. The
Celts, too, had their round towers which were beacons
also; the most important of them were built on
precisely those points where the friendly light could
most widely flash over the dark waters; and the Romans
lit up watch fires from height to height and promontory
to promontory along their whole shores of the
Mediterranean.</p>
<p>The great terror of the Northern sea kings, and the
perilled and trembling life of the dark middle age, put
out all those guiding and saving lights. The people
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
cared not to favor the inroad of the sea rover; the sea
was an object of dread, almost of hatred. Every ship
was an enemy, and, if it ran aground, was deemed lawful
as well as unpitied prey. The pillage of a wreck
was the gain of the noble; the <i>noble</i> and the <i>wrecker</i>
were one! The Count de Leon, made wealthy by the
fatal shoal upon his County's shore, said of that murderous
rock, that it was "a precious stone, far more
precious than any that glitters in a kingly crown."</p>
<p>Even in our own time, innocently, the poor fishermen
have, again and again, by those fires which they have
kindled upon the beach, seduced our poor seamen into
shipwreck and death. The very beacons themselves
have, not seldom, played the bad part of the false
hearted wrecker, alluring, only to betray; so easy is it
to mistake one light for another. Now and then, that
mistake, so readily made, leads to very horrible consequences.</p>
<p>It was France, who, at the close of her great wars,
took the lead in making the lighthouse the great saviour
of the benighted and well nigh wrecked seamen. Provided
with that great refracting lamp of Fresnel, (a
lantern equal to four thousand common ones, and
throwing its ruddy gleam over a dozen, or so, of
leagues), it can cast, that good modern beacon, its directing
and saving light, hither and thither so that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
strait and shoal are made visible and safe in the deep
midnight as in the full broad glow of the bright noon.
To the sailor, who steers by the stars, this invention
gave him, as it were, a new heaven and added constellations.
Planets, fixed stars, all were created anew for
him, and in those newly invented constellations there
was even an improvement upon the celestial lights, in
the variety of color, intensity and duration, of their
glow and of their flashing. To some, we gave the calm,
fixed, pale and steady gleaming which sufficed for the
tranquil night and the comparatively safe sea; to
others, the revolving and flashing, and fierce and ruddy
glow that shone to every point of the compass. These
latter, like the phosphoric creatures of the deep, palpitate
and flash fitfully, now gleaming and anon paling,
now leaping into dazzling glow, and anon dying into
deepest darkness. In the darkest and most tempestuous
nights, they are ever restless as Ocean's self, and
seem to give him back motion for motion, and gleam for
gleam to the lurid and fitful lightnings.</p>
<p>Let us remember that in 1826, and even as late as
1830, our seas were still terrible in their drear darkness.
In all Europe there were but few lighthouses; in
Africa, there was but the single one on the Cape, and, in
all vast Asia there were only those of Bombay, Calcutta,
and Madras, while the whole vast extent of South
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
America displayed not even one. Since the latter date
all nations following, imitating, even rivaling, France,
have said, on every bold headland that overlooks every
dangerous shoal and strait have said "Let there be
light!" and every where the friendly light, gleams
tranquilly, or fitfully flashes.</p>
<p>Just here I should like you to make with me the circumnavigation
of our seas from Dunkirk to Biarritz,
and to take a survey of our lighthouses. But, it would
occupy us too long. Calais, with her four lights of
different colors, throws out her friendly warnings and
hospitable imitations even to distant Dover; and the
noble gulf of the Seine, between Heve and Barfleur,
lights the American seaman on his otherwise perilous
passage to Havre and thence to the very home, the very
heart of France.</p>
<p>And the good heart of France goes to her very
threshold to welcome the coming and sea borne guest;
lighting up, as, with an admirable skill and hospitality
she does, every bold point of Brittany. At the outpost
of Brest, at Saint Matthew, at Penmark, at the isle of
Fen, every headland has its warning and guiding light,
now flashing, now darkening, from minute to minute, or
from second to second, and saying by sudden flash or
momentary gloom, "Seamen! Beware! Luff it is!
give that rock a wide berth! Keep off that shoal!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
Port! Hard aport!—Weather,—it is! Midship
helm! So! Steady! Safe you are,—at your moorings!"</p>
<p>And observe, all these watch towers over the perilous
deep, often built as they are among the breakers, and
as it were in the very bosom of the tempest, solve for
art the difficult problem of absolute solidity or seemingly
treacherous and unsafe foundation. Many of
them are quite enormously high. The architecture of
the middle ages, about which so much is as boastfully
as untruly said and sung, never ventured to build so
high, save on condition of giving their edifices clumsy
buttresses and of clamping with clumsy and costly
clamps of iron, the peaked summits of their towers. A
glance at the much boasted, though really anything but
artistic steeple of Strasbourg, will convince you of this.
Our modern builders resort to no such rude expedients.
The Héaux beacon, recently erected by M. Reynaud on
the dangerous shoal of the Épées de Tréguier, displays
all the sublime simplicity of some gigantic ocean tree.
It has no buttresses, and it needs none; its foundation
is sunk boldly and bodily into the living rock; from its
base of sixty feet, it rears its tall column of twenty-four
feet in diameter, and each of its huge granites is, neatly
as firmly, dovetailed into the other, so neatly, so closely,
so firmly, that cement is a sheer superfluity; and so
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
solidly is all built that from base to summit the tall
tower is solid as, nay, we may almost venture to say,
more solid than, the old rock from which science, and
art, and perseverance and what the American so graphically
calls <i>pluck</i> have hewn each separate stone.
Your wild wave knows not where to find a rent in the
armor of this tall ocean-espying giant. She may smite,
she may rage, but her blows will not harm, her rage
will be spent in vain; from that rounded and great
mass the giant blow glances harmlessly off; the mightiest
thunder strokes of the ever enraged and ever baffled
ocean have only succeeded in giving to this grand
edifice a far slighter inclination than that of the purposely
inclined "leaning tower" of Pisa.</p>
<p>Behold, then, instead of those sad bastions which, in
the olden day, overlooked and threatened old ocean,
like those with which Spain threatened the Moor, our
modern civilization erects peaceful towers of most benevolent
and beneficent hospitality; beautiful and noble
monuments, often sublime as they appeal to art, always
touching as they appeal to sentiment; those towers
which, flashing forth their ruddy or gleaming with their
silvery fires, make upon the confines of our living,
swarming, and much imperilled earth, a new firmament,
saving, and guiding, blessing and blessed, as the firmament
above us. When no star shines upon us from that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
firmament above, the seaman hails this art-created light
as the star of brotherhood;</p>
<p class="p0" style="padding-left:40%">
"Bids its ruddy lustre hail<br />
And scorns to strike his timorous sail."<br />
</p>
<p>Pleasant it is to seat oneself below one of these
noble beacons, those friendly fires, those true and welcoming
homes of the storm tried mariner. Even the
most modern of them is a venerable thing to all who,
for one moment, reflect how many lives the most modern
of them has already saved. With even the most
modern, many a touching memory, many a wild and
beautiful, and no less authentic story is connected.
Two generations, merely, are enough to make your
beacon already ancient, linked with old memories, consecrated,
honorable, hallowed. Often, oh often does
the mother say to her little ones—"Behold! That
friendly beacon saved your grandfather; but for it you
would never have been born."</p>
<p>And how often does our brave beacon receive the loving,
and tender, and pure visits of the anxious wife or
brother who watches for the return of the far husband
or son! In the darkening evening, and even far into
the dark night, the one or the other gazes anxiously up
to the lofty tower, wishing, begging, imploring, for the
first gleaming of the blessed and blessing light that
shall guide the absent one safely back into port.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
<p>Oh! Very justly did the men of the old day, confound
these honored stones with the altars of the man
guiding and man saving gods; to the heart that weeps,
and hopes, and prays and battles amidst the howlings
of the tempest, see ye! they are still one and the
same; they are still the saving guides, the very altars
of the saving and the guiding Deity. For, in very
truth, what are man's best works, but the realization
of the Almighty will and the great directing mercy?</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_SECOND" id="BOOK_SECOND"></a>BOOK SECOND.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE GENESIS OF THE SEA.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a><br /><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_I" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</p>
<p class="caption3">FECUNDITY.</p>
<p>Five minutes after midnight of St. John's—24th to
25th of June, commences the great Herring Fishery, in
the North Seas. Phosphoric lights gleam and flash upon
the waters, and from deck to deck is heard the
hearty hail, "Look out, there! The <i>Herring lightning</i>!"
And a real, and a vast lightning that is, as
from the depths that vast mass of life springs upward in
eager quest of heat, light, and dalliance. The soft,
pale, silvery light of the Moon is well pleasing to that
timorous host; a beacon to guide them to their great
banquet of Love. Upward they spring, one and all;
not one idler or straggler remains behind. Gregariousness
is the fixed rule, the indefeasible law of that race;
you never see them but in shoals. In shoals they lie
buried in the vast dark depths, and in shoals they come
to the surface to take their summer part in the universal
joy, to see the light, to revel—and to die. Packed,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
squeezed, crushed, layer on layer, it seems that they
never can be close enough, they swim in such compact
masses that the Dutch fishermen compare them to their
own Dykes—afloat! Between Scotland, Holland and
Norway, one might fancy that an immense island had
suddenly risen, and that a whole continent was about
to arise. One division detaches itself eastward, and
chokes up the Baltic sound. In some of the narrower
straits you actually cannot row, so dense and solid is
the mass of fish. Millions, tens of millions, tens of
thousands of millions;—who can even guess at the
number of those hosts upon hosts? It is on record that
on one occasion, near Havre, one fisherman, on one morning,
found in his nets no fewer than eight hundred thousand;
and in Scotland, the mighty mass of eleven thousand
barrels was taken in a single night!</p>
<p>They come as a blinded and doomed prey; no
amount of destruction can discourage them. Constantly
preyed upon alike by fish and by men, they still come
on in myriad shoals. And no marvel either; for they
love and multiply, even as they move. Kill them as
fast as we may, they just as fast reproduce; their vast,
deep columns, even as they float along, give themselves
wholly up to the great work of reproduction. The
wave of the sea and the electric wave impel that whole
vast mass at every instant. No weariness, no satiety,
no weakness, not even a pause, take one where you will
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
and it either has just propagated, is propagating, or is
about to propagate. In that vast polygamous host,
pleasure is an adventure and love a navigation. Over
every league of its passage it pours out its torrents of
fecundity.</p>
<p>At some two or three fathoms deep the water is completely
discolored by the incredible abundance of the
Herring-spawn; and at sunrise, far as the eye can
reach, you may see the water whitened with the marvellous
abundance of the thick, fat, viscuous billows in
which life is fermenting into new life. Over hundreds
of square leagues it seems as though a volcano of teeming
and fecund milk had burst forth and overwhelmed
the sea.</p>
<p>Full of life as it is at the surface, the Sea would be
actually choked up with it but for the fierce and eager
union of all sorts of destructions. Let us remember
that each Herring has forty, fifty, or even seventy thousand
eggs. But for the thinning process, each of them
giving the average increase of fifty thousand, and as each
of these in its turn giving the same average increase, a
very few generations would suffice to solidify the Ocean
into a stagnant and putrid mass, and make our whole
globe a desert. Here we see the imperative necessity
to Life, of life's twin sister, Death; in their immense
strife there is harmony; destruction is the handmaiden
of preservation.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
<p>In the universal war carried on against the doomed
race, it is the fierce giants of the deep that prevent the
mass from dispersing, and drive it in dense shoals to
our shores. The whale, and the other cetaceæ, plunge
into the living mass, swallow down whole tons, and
drive shoreward the still vast, the seemingly undiminished,
host. And at the shore commences quite another
and more vast destruction. In the first place, the smallest
of fish devour the spawn of the Herring, swallowing,
like any human spendthrift, the great future for the
small present. And for the present, for the full-grown
Herring, nature has provided a very efficiently gluttonous
foe, dull-eyed, huge appetited, eager, insatiable,—the
whole tribe of fish-devouring fish, Cod, Whiting,
&c. The Whiting gloats, devours, crams itself so with
Herring that it becomes one luscious mass of fat. The
Cod similarly stuffs itself with Whitings, and becomes
fat, fecund, overflowing with fecundity—with a really
threatening superabundance of fecundity. Just consider!
What we have seen of the fecundity of the Herring
is a mere nothing when compared to the fecundity
of the Cod, which not seldom has nine millions of eggs!
A cod weighing fifty pounds has fourteen pounds of
eggs; and its breeding season is nine months of every
year. This is the creature that, unchecked, would soon
solidify the Ocean and destroy the world. And accordingly
we cry "Help! To arms! Launch ships and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
away, to check this too vigorous fecundity." England
alone sends some twenty or thirty thousand seamen to
the Cod Fisheries. And how many are sent from America,
from France, from Holland—from everywhere?
The Cod alone has caused the foundation of whole
towns—of whole colonies! The catching and curing
of the Cod form an art, and that art has its own idiom—the
<i>patois</i> of the Cod fishery.</p>
<p>But what could man do against the enormous fecundity
of the cod? Nature knows well that our petty
efforts of fleets and fisheries would be insufficient and
that the Cod would conquer us; and nature evokes
another and a more efficient destroyer of the superfluous
life that would produce universal death. Down from
its spawning bed in the river, thin, famishing, eager,
fierce with hunger, comes the Sturgeon, that great devourer.
Real rapture it is to the famishing glutton to
find, on his return to the sea, ready fattened for him, the
succulent and unctuous Cod, the concentrated substance
of whole shoals of Herrings! This great devourer of
the cod, though less fecund than its prey, <i>is</i> fecund, producing
fifteen hundred thousand eggs. The danger
reappears. The Herring threatened with its terrible
fecundity, the Cod threatened, the sturgeon threatens
still. Nature, therefore, produced a creature superb in
destroying, almost powerless to reproduce, a monster at
once terrible and serviceable that could cut through
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
this otherwise invincible and ruinous fecundity, an omnivorous
monster, huge of jaw and constant in appetite,
ready for all prey, living or dead, the great, the perfectionated,
the matchless devourer—the Shark.</p>
<p>But these furious devourers are anticipatively kept
down; mighty in destroying, they are very slow in reproducing.
The Sturgeon, as we have seen is less prolific
than the Cod, and the Shark is actually sterile, if
compared to any other fish. Not like them does it
overspread and discolor the sea. Viviparous, it sends
forth its rare youngling, fierce, fully armed, savage and
terrible.</p>
<p>In her dark and teeming depths, the Sea can smile in
scorn at the destroyers to which she gives birth, well
knowing, as the great proud fertile Sea does, that no
might of destruction can surpass her might of reproduction.
Her chief wealth, her most vast and countless
produce, defies all the fury of the devourers, is
inaccessible to their attacks. I speak of the infinite
world of living atoms, of the microscopic atomies that
live and love, enjoy, struggle, suffer and die from the
surface to the utmost depths of the sea. It has been
affirmed that, in the absence of solar light, life, also,
must be absent; yet the darkest depths of the sea are
studded with sea stars, living, moving, microscopic infusoriæ
and molluscs. The dark crab, the phosphorescent
seaworm, and a thousand strange and nameless
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
creatures swarm in those uttermost depths and rise only
now and then, describing long lines of variegated light
upon the heaving surface. In its semi-transparent
density, the sea has its own lucidity, its own glowing
gleam, like that which fish, living or dead, reflect. The
Sea! glorious Sea, hath her own lights, her own Sun,
Moon, and Stars.</p>
<p>Gaze inquisitively and intelligently on a mere salt
well and you at once perceive how prolific the ocean
depths must be; that seeming deposit of dead and inert
matter hath its real life; it is a mass of infusoriæ, microscopic,
but organized and sentient. All voyagers on
the wide Ocean concur in telling us that in their far
wanderings they still and ever traverse living waters.
Freynel saw millions of square yards covered by a
crimson glow—that glow, consisting of living animalculæ
so minute that a myriad is packed into every
square inch. In the bay of Bengal, in 1854, Captain
Kingman sailed for thirty miles through one vast white
blotch which made the sea look like a great snow
field. Not a cloud above, but one unbroken leaden
grey, in strange contrast with the brilliant whiteness
beneath. Look closely and you see that that seeming
snow is gelatinous; bring your microscope into play and
you see that that seeming jelly is a mass of living, moving,
phosphoric animalculæ, flashing forth strange and
marvellous lights.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
<p>Peron, too, tells us that for thirty leagues his good
ship ploughed her way through what seemed a sort of
greyish dust; examined with the microscope, this seeming
dust was seen to be the eggs of some unknown species,
covering and concealing the waters over all that
immense space.</p>
<p>Even along the desolate shores of Greenland, where
we vainly fancy that prolific nature must needs expire,
the sea is enormously populous. Through waves two
hundred miles by fifteen you sail through deep brown
waters, colored by microscopic medusæ, of which, de
Schleiden tells us, more than a hundred and ten thousand
live and love, battle, and die in every cubic
foot. These productive and nourishing waters are supersaturated
with all sorts of fatty atoms adapted to the
delicate nature of the fish which lazily drink in the
nourishment provided for them by the fertile and generous
common mother. Do they know what they thus
swallow? Scarcely. Its minute but abounding nurture,
its nourishing mother's-milk, comes to it without its
care, and is received without its gratitude. Our great
fatality, our sad calamity, fierce and terrible hunger, is
known only on the land. Exertion and want of food
are unknown in the great world of waters. There, life
must glide away like a glad dream. What can the
creature there do with his strength? All use of it is
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
superfluous, impossible;—all save only one; all strength,
all energy, are reserved for the great work of love.</p>
<p>The one great law, the one great work of the seas, is
to increase and multiply. Love fills up the whole of
its fecund depths, and is wealthiest in reproduction
among those which are so small that to our unassisted
eye they are invisible, unknown as though they were
non-existent. We have spoken of mere atomies; but
are there, in reality, any such? When we imagine that
we have got the lowest, the utterly indivisible, we have
but to examine with more earnest and penetrating gaze
and we see that this seemingly frail atomy still loves,
still reproduces itself in miniature. At the very lowest
stages of life you find all the forms of life and reproduction.</p>
<p>Such is the Sea, such the great <i>Female of the Globe</i>,
whose ceaseless yearning, whose permanent conception,
whose production and reproduction, never end.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_II" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE MILKY SEA.</p>
<p>The water of the Sea, even the purest, examined when
you are far away from land, and from all possible admixture,
is somewhat viscuous; take some between
your fingers, and you find it somewhat ropy and tenacious.
Chemical analysis has not yet explained this peculiarity;
there is in that an organic substance which
Chemistry touches only to destroy, taking from it all
that it has of special, and violently reducing it back to
general elements.</p>
<p>The marine plants and animals are covered with this
substance, whose mucousness gives them the appearance
of a coating of jelly, now fixed, anon trembling,
and always semi-transparent. And nothing more than
this contributes to the fanciful illusions presented to us
by the world of waters. Its reflections are irregular,
often strangely variegated, as, for instance, on the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
scales of fish and on the molluscæ, which seem to owe
to it the exquisite beauty of their pearly shells.</p>
<p>It is that which most attracts and enchains the interest
of the child when he first sees a fish. I was very
young when I first saw one, but I still remember how
vividly I felt the impression. That creature with variously
colored lights flashing from its silvery scales,
threw me into an astonishment, a fascination, a rapture,
which no words can describe. I endeavored to catch
it, but found that it could no more be held than the
water which glided through my small weak hand. That
fish seemed to me to be identical with the element in
which it swam, and gave me a confused idea of animated,
organized and surpassingly beautiful water.</p>
<p>A long time after, in my maturity, I was scarcely less
impressed when on a sea beach I saw, I know not what
of shining and transparent substance, through which I
could clearly see the sand and pebbles. Colorless as
crystal, slightly, very slightly solid, tremulous when ever
so slightly touched, it seemed to me as to the ancients
and to Réaumur, that which Réaumur so graphically
named it—<i>gelatinised water</i>.</p>
<p>Still more forcibly do we feel this impression when
we discover in the early stage of their formation the
yellowish white threads in which the sea makes her
first outlines of the fuci and algæ which are to harden
and darken to the strength and color of hides and leather.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
But when quite young, in their viscuous state, and
in their elasticity, they have the consistence of a solidified
wave, all the stronger because it is soft. What
we now know of the generation and the complex organization
of the inferior creatures, animal or vegetable,
contradicts the explanation of Réaumur and the
ancients. But all this does not forbid us to return to
the question which was first put by Borg. de Saint Vincent;
viz: What is the <i>mucus</i> of the Sea? That viscuousness
which water in general presents? Is it not
the universal element of life?</p>
<p>Much engaged with these and the like reflections, I
called upon an illustrious chemist, a man at once positive
and sound, an innovator no less prudent than bold,
and I abruptly asked him this plain question—"What,
in your opinion, is that whitish, viscuous matter which
we find in sea water?" "Nothing else than life," was
his reply, then retracting, or rather explaining his somewhat
too simple and too absolute dictum, he added,
"I should rather say a half organized and wholly organizable
matter. In certain waters it is a dense mass
of infusoriæ, in others a matter which is not yet, but
which is to become infusoriæ. In fact, we have yet to
begin, at all seriously, the study of this matter."</p>
<p>This was spoken on the 17th of May, 1860.</p>
<p>On leaving our great Chemist, I went to a Physiologist,
whose opinion has no less weight with me, and to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
him I put the same question. His reply was very long
and very beautiful. In substance it ran thus: "We
know in reality no more about the composition of water
than we know about that of blood. What we best
know and can most safely affirm about the <i>mucus</i> of sea
water, is that it is at once an Alpha and an Omega, a
beginning and an end. Is it the result of the numberless
deaths which furnish forth materials for new lives?
No doubt, that is the general law; but in the case of
the sea, that world of rapid absorption, the majority of
the creatures there are absorbed while in full life; they
do not slowly linger on towards death, as we on land
do. The sea is a very pure element; war and death
purvey to it. But life, without arriving at its final dissolution,
is incessantly approaching it, exuding and exhaling
all that is superfluous. With us, the animals of
the earth, the epidermis, through its millions of pores,
wastes the body at every instant; we suffer, as it were,
a partial death at every breath we draw. Now this
partial death, this vast exudation, in the case of the marine
world, fills that vast world of waters with a gelatinous
wealth of which the young world has the instant
benefit. It finds in suspension the oily superabundance
of this common exudation, the still living atoms and
liquids which have not had time to die. All this does
not fall back into the inorganic, but enters quickly into
new organisms. Of all the theories on the subject, this
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
seems the most reasonable; rejecting this theory, we
plunge into a sea of extreme difficulties."</p>
<p>These ideas of the most enlightened and earnest
thinkers of the present day, are not irreconcilable with
those which, nearly thirty years ago were promulgated
by Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, upon that general <i>mucus</i>
in which nature seems to find all life. He calls it "the
<i>animalisible</i> substance, the raw material of organic
bodies. Not a creature, whether animal or vegetable,
but both absorbs and produces it from the earliest to
the latest breath; indeed, the weaker the creature, the
more abundant that is."</p>
<p>This remark suggests a broad and bright light upon
the life of the seas. Their tenants seem, for the most
part, fœtuses in the gelatinous stage, which absorb and
produce the mucous substance, permeate and saturate
with it all the waters, and give to them the fecund and
nourishing powers of a vast womb, in whose depths an
infinite succession of generations, perpetually float, as
in warm milk.</p>
<p>Let us make ourselves present in this divine work.
Let us take a drop from the sea; in it we shall be able
to espy the very process of the primitive creation. Nature's
God is ever consistent; he does not work in one
fashion to-day, and in another to-morrow. This drop
of water, I doubt not, will tell us in its transformations,
the tale of the Universe. Let us be patient, and observe.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
Who can foresee or guess the history of this
drop of water? Which will it first produce, the vegetable-animal,
or the animal-vegetable? Will this drop
be the infusoriæ, the primitive <i>monad</i>, which, vibrating,
shall shortly become <i>vibrion</i>, and ascending step
by step, from rank to rank, polypus, coral, or pearl,
may perchance in ten thousand years reach the dignity
of insect? Will it produce the vegetable thread, so
slight and silken that one would scarcely discern it, and
yet already is no less than the first born hair, amorous
and sensitive, which is so well known as <i>Venus's hair</i>?
This is no fable—it is true natural history. This
hair, of double nature, at once animal and vegetable,
is, in fact, the commencement of life.</p>
<p>Look quite down into the depths of a vessel of water; at
first you discover nothing; patience for a few moments
and you perceive drops, atomies, that are moving.
Bring a good glass into the service, and you see a whole
cloud of these atomies. Are they gelatinous or fleecy?
Under the microscope this seeming fleece becomes a
group of filaments, of finest and silkiest threads; a
thousand times finer, it is believed, than the finest hair
that adorns the head of woman. You are now looking
upon the first timid attempt of life that is struggling to
achieve organization. These confervæ, these hair-weeds,
are to be found wherever there is stagnant water,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
whether fresh or salt. They are the commencement
of that double series of the primary vegetation
of the sea which became terrestrial when the earth
emerged from the watery depths. Once above and beyond
the waters, they become the vast, the numberless
Fungus-family; in the water, they are the hair-weeds,
the many-formed and many-named Algæ.</p>
<p>This is the primitive, the indispensable element of organized
vitality, and we find it even where we should,
at the first glance deem it to be impossible. Even in
the dark depths of the ferruginous waters, supersaturated
with iron; even in the all but boiling hot springs,
you find this mucus, this abounding mass of little creatures,
moving, writhing, agitated ever, which to your
first glance, seem only so many lifeless specks. You
need not greatly care into what class our finite and dim
science consigns them. If Candolle honors them with
the title of animals, if Dujardin, on the other hand, degrades
them into the low rank of the lowest vegetation—let
us not stay to heed these mere names. Such as
they are, all that they ask is that they may live and that
their humble existence may open up the long series of
beings which, but for them, would never be. These
atomies, whether we call them living or dead, or passing
from life to death, or vigorously struggling from
death into organic life, are self-supporting, independently
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
struggling, and ever taking and giving from and to
the maternal waters, the life creating and the life supporting
gelatine.</p>
<p>It really is without any approach, even, to probability,
that they show us, as specimens of the first creation,
the primitive organization, the fossil imprints, more or
less complex, whether of animal or vegetable—of the
Trilobites, for instance, already furnished with the superior
organs—eyes, &c.,—or gigantic vegetation,
widely branched and richly foliaged. It is beyond all
computation more probable that these were preceded
and heralded, and prepared, by species far more simple,
but of such yielding and destructible matter that it could
make no impress, leave no mark behind. How can we
expect that those gelatinous, those almost liquid creatures
should <i>not</i> "die and make no sign" when we see
that the hard shells are ground into very dust? In the
South Seas we see fish with teeth so sharp, at once, and
of such iron strength that they browse on the tough
coral, even as the timid sheep browses on the tender
grass-blades. Oh! Depend upon it, generation after
generation of the soft gelatinous germs of life have
breathed before nature put forth its robust Trilobite
and its imperishable ferns.</p>
<p>Let us be just to these conservæ; let us restore to
them their pretty obvious right to eldership in this glad
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
and various world of ours. Be they animal or be they
vegetable, or do they vibrate and struggle between
both—let us at least do them justice, let us speak about
them all that is evidently true.</p>
<p>Upon them, and at their expense, arose the immense,
the really marvellous marine Flora.</p>
<p>At that starting point I will not hesitate to express
my tender sympathy. For three very sound and sufficient
reasons I love and I bless that vast vegetation;
small or large, that vegetation has three lovely qualities:—</p>
<p>Firstly, how innocent are all its members. Not one
of them all is poisonous. Vainly in the whole marine
vegetation shall you search for one poisonous plant.
Seek in every sea, and in every latitude, you will find
the vegetation wholesome, genial, a blessing and a
mercy.</p>
<p>Those innocent plants ask for nothing more than to
nourish or to heal animality. Many of them, the Laminaires,
for instance, contain a luscious sugar; and others,
as, for instance, the Corsican or Irish Moss, have a
health-restoring bitter; and all, without exception,
contain a concentrated and most nourishing mucilage,
not a few of them saviours to the weak, worn, perishing
lungs of presumptuous and ungrateful man. Where
we now exhibit iodide, the English formerly used nothing
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
but a confection of that same Corsican, or Irish,
Moss.</p>
<p>The third characteristic of that vegetation is its marvellous
amorousness. We cannot doubt that if we pay
the slightest attention to its strange hymeneial metamorphoses,
here is the striving to be, beyond being, to be
potent beyond power. We see it in the fire flies and
the like small things, and we see it no less, if we will
only look for it, in the sea weeds which, at the consecrated
moment, seem to quit their merely vegetable life and
leap into animality.</p>
<p>Where do these wonders commence? Where are
these first sketches of animality made? Where are
we to look for the primitive scene of organization?</p>
<p>Formerly these things were hotly disputed; in our
own day there seems to be a certain agreement in the
learned world of Europe. I can find the reply to these
questions in many recognized and authorized volumes,
but I prefer to borrow it from an Essay recently crowned
by the Academy of Sciences, and, consequently,
shielded by its high, unquestionable authority.</p>
<p>Living creatures are found in the hot waters of eighty,
even up to ninety, degrees. It is when the cooled globe
gets down to that temperature that life becomes possible.
The water has then absorbed, at least in part,
that terrible element of death—carbonic acid gas. It
becomes possible to breathe.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
<p>All the seas were at first like those parts of the great
Pacific Ocean, which are comparatively shallow, and
are studded with small, low islets. These islets are extinct
craters of by-gone volcanoes; the seaman knows
them only by the summits which the slow but steadfast
toil of the coral insect has upheaved from the depths.
But the depths between these volcanoes are probably
themselves no less volcanic, and must have been, for the
first essays of primitive creation, so many receptacles
of life.</p>
<p>Popular tradition has, for ages past, attributed to
volcanoes the guardianship of buried treasures, which
from time to time give out to our upper world the gold
that lies buried in the depths.—Poetic fiction, which yet
has its firm foundation in fact. The volcanic regions
have within themselves the treasure of our globe, potent
virtues of fecundity. It is they that most largely
dower the otherwise sterile earth; from the dust of their
lavas, from their still warm ashes, life springs, expands,
glows, and creates new life. We recognize the wealth
of Vesuvius, and of Etna in the long offshoots that they
send far into the Sea, and we know what a lovely paradise
is formed under the Himalayas, by the volcanic
circle of the vale of Cachemire. And the same thing
is repeated in the lovely isles of the far South Sea.</p>
<p>Even under the least favorable circumstances, the vicinity
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
of volcanoes, and the warm currents which are
their concomitants, create and preserve animal life,
even in the most desolate and dreary places. Amidst
all the freezing horrors of the Antarctic pole, not far
from the volcanic Erebus, Captain James Ross found
living coral insects at the depth of a thousand fathoms
below the surface of the frozen sea.</p>
<p>In the early ages of our world, innumerable volcanoes
exerted a submarine action far more powerful than they
exhibit now. Their clefts and their intermediate valleys
allowed the marine mucus to accumulate in places,
and to be electrified into life by the warm currents.
No doubt the <i>mucus</i> affected those parts, fixed itself
there and worked and fermented to the utmost of its
young power. Its leaven was the attraction of the substance
for itself. The creative elements, originally
dissolved in the sea formed combinations, leagues, I had
well nigh written marriages. First appeared, merely
elementary lives—death following almost inseparably,
indistinguishably, upon young life; and other lives following
close upon, and nourished by, those wrecks and
spoils, had firmer hold on life, became preparatory beings,
slow but sure creators, which, thenceforth, began
beneath the waters that eternal labor which, even in our
own day and beneath our own scrutiny, they still continue.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
<p>The sea nourishing them all, gives to each that which
best suits it. Each draws from that great nursing-mother,
in its own fashion, and for its own especial behoof,
that which it most needs, must have, to make it
what we see of naked, or of shelled, of seeming vegetable,
or of fierce, vigorous, and pugnacious life. And
whether in life or in death, whether building actively
or passively decomposing, they clothe the sad nudity
of the virgin rocks, those daughters of the volcanic fires
from which flaming and sterile, they were hurled from
the planetary nucleus.</p>
<p>Quartz, basalt, porphyry, and semi-vitrified flints, each
and all receive from these minute laborers a new, a
more graceful, and a more fecund garb; from the fecund
maternal milk (for such we must call the <i>mucus</i>
of the Sea) they absorb and restore, and thus build up,
and secure, and fructify, and beautify, this, our habitable
earth. It is from these more favoring localities that
have arisen our primal species.</p>
<p>These works must have been commenced among the
volcanic isles and islets, in the depths of their Archipelagoes,
in those sinuous windings, those peaceful labyrinths
where the tides enter timidly and gently, warm
and sheltered cradles for the newly-born.</p>
<p>But the bolder strength of the fully-expanded flower,
is to be sought for in, for instance, the vast depths
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
of the Indian Gulfs. There, the Sea is veritably a
great artist. There she gives to the earth its most
adorable forms, lively, loving, and lovable. With her
assiduous caresses she rounds or slopes the shore, and
gives it those maternal outlines, and I had almost said
the visible tenderness of that feminine bosom on which
the pleased child finds so softly safe a shelter, such
warmth, such saving warmth, and rest.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_III" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE ATOM.</p>
<p>From the bottom of his nets a fisherman one day gave
me three almost dying creatures, a sea hedge-hog, a sea
star, and another star, a pretty ophiure, which still
moved and soon lost its delicate arms. I gave them
some sea water, but forgot them for two days, and when
I again saw them, all were dead. On the surface of the
water a thick gelatinous film had formed. I took an
atom of this on the point of a needle; that atom, when
placed under the microscope, showed me the following
scene. A whirling crowd of short, thick, strongly built
animals—<i>Kolpodes</i>—rushed to and fro as though intoxicated
with their sense of life, delighted, I may say,
that they were born and keeping their birthday with a
perfectly bacchanalian joy, while microscopic eels—<i>Vibrions</i>—swam
less than vibrated to spring forward.</p>
<p>Wearied with the contemplation of such movement,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
the eye, however, soon remarked, that all was not in
motion, there were some vibrions yet stiff and still, and
there were some intertwined in heaps which had not yet
detached themselves and which looked as though expecting
the moment of their deliverance.</p>
<p>In that living fermentation of still motionless creatures,
the disorderly Kolpodes rushed and raged,
hither and thither, regaling and fattening themselves at
will.</p>
<p>And this grand spectacle was displayed within the
compass of an atom of film taken on the point of a
needle! How many such scenes would be enacted in
the whole of the gelatinous film which had so promptly
formed on the surface of the water containing three
dead creatures! The time had been wonderfully put
to profit. In two days the dead had made a world; for
three animals that I had lost I had gained millions,
abounding in youth, absorbed in a real fury of new life!</p>
<p>That infinite world of life which every where surrounds
us was almost unknown until lately. Swammerdam
and others, who formerly recognized it, were
stopped at their first step; and it was as lately as the
year 1830, that the magician Uhrenberg looked, revealed,
and classified it. He studied the figure of
these invisibles, their organization, their manners; he
saw them absorb, digest, chase, and fiercely battle.
Their generation remained a mystery to him. What is
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
the nature of their amours? <i>Have</i> they any amours?
For creatures so elementary, would nature go to the
expense of a complicated generation? Or do they
spring up spontaneously, and, in vulgar phrase, "like
mushrooms?"</p>
<p>A great question! at which more than one naturalist
smiles and shakes his head. One is so certain of having
solved the great mystery of the world and secured,
laid down, once and forever, the true laws of life! It
is for Nature to obey! When, a hundred years ago,
Réaumur was told that the female silk worm could produce
alone and without the male, he denied it in the
brief phrase—"Out of nothing, nothing comes." But
the fact, often denied but always proved, is now thoroughly
established and admitted, not only as to the silk
worm, but as to the bee, certain butterflies, and still
other creatures.</p>
<p>In all times, in every nation, both the learned and
unlearned have said, "Out of death cometh life." It
was especially supposed that the imperceptible animalculæ
immediately sprang up from the wrecks of death.
Even Harvey, who first laid down the law of generation,
did not venture to contradict that ancient belief,
for though he said every body comes from the egg, he
immediately added—<i>or from the dissolved body of a
preceding life</i>.</p>
<p>It is precisely the theory which has been so brilliantly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
revived by the experiments of M. Ponchet. He
has established the fact that from the remains of the
infusoriæ and other creatures, there proceeds a fecund
jelly, the "prolific membrane" from which spring, not
new beings, indeed, but the germs, the eggs from which
new creatures will spring.</p>
<p>We live in an age of miracles. This is not to astonish
us. Any one would formerly have been laughed at
who had ventured to say that some animals, disobedient
to the general laws of nature, take the liberty to
breathe through their paws. The noble labors of
Milne Edwards have brought this to light. And Cuvier
and Blainville had observed, it is said, that other creatures,
destitute of the regular organs of circulation,
supply their place by the intestines, but those great
naturalists deemed the fact so enormous and so incredible,
that they did not venture to publish it. It is now
perfectly established by Milne Edwards, M. de Quatrefages,
&c.</p>
<p>Whatever may be thought of their birth, our atoms,
when once born, present a world infinitely and admirably
varied. All forms of life are there honorably represented.
If they know themselves, they must consider
that they compose among themselves a harmony so
complete as to leave but little to desire.</p>
<p>They are not dispersed species, created apart; they
clearly form a kingdom in which the various species
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
have organized a great division of the vital labor. They
have collective beings like our polypus or coral insect,
engaged in the servitude of a common life; and they
have their minute molluscs which already display their
minute and delicate shells; they have their swiftly
swimming fish and whirling insects, proud crustaceæ,
miniatures of the future crabs, armed, like them, to the
teeth; warrior, atoms that chase and devour inoffensive
atoms.</p>
<p>And all this in an enormous and marvellous abundance,
which shows the comparative poverty of our visible
world. Without speaking of those Rhizopodes
which have made their part of the Apennines and the
Cordilleras,—the Foramineferes, alone, that numerous
tribe of shelled atoms, amount, according to Charles
d'Orbigny, to two thousand species. They are contemporary
with every age of the earth; they present themselves
at all the various depths of our thirty crises of
the globe; sometimes varying a little in form, but
always existing as species; identical witnesses of the
life of the earth. In the present day the cold current
from the south pole which the point of America cuts in
two, sends forty species towards La Plata and forty
towards Chili. But the great scene of their creation
and organization appears to be the warm stream of the
sea which flows from the Antilles. The northern currents
kill them. The great paternal torrent drifts
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
myriads of their dead to Newfoundland in our ocean,
whose bottom is paved with them.</p>
<p>When the illustrious godfather of the atoms, Ehrenberg,
baptised them and introduced them to the scientific
world, he was accused of being too favorable to
them, and of exaggerating the character of those little
creatures. He declared them to be a complicated and
elevated organization. So liberally did he endow
them, that he gave them a hundred and twenty stomachs.
The visible world became jealous of these invisibles, and,
by a violent reaction, Dujardin reduced them to the
lowest degree of simplicity. The asserted organs he
treated as mere appearances; but, as he could not deny
their obvious and great powers of absorption, he granted
them the gift of being able to improvise stomachs
proportioned to what they had to swallow. M. Pouchet
does not coincide with this opinion, but rather inclines
to that of Ehrenberg.</p>
<p>What is incontestable and admirable in these atoms
is the vigor of movement.</p>
<p>Many have all the appearance of a precocious individuality.
They do not long remain subject to the
communistic life led by their immediate superiors, the
true Polypes. Very many of these invisibles are individuals
at the first leap; that is to say, that, at the first
moment of their existence, they can come and go alone
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
and at their own will; true citizens of the world whose
movements depend only upon themselves.</p>
<p>Whatever can be seen or imagined of various modes
of locomotion in the visible world, is equalled, even surpassed,
among these invisibles. The impetuous whirl
of a potent star, of a sun which attracts around him, as
his planets, the weaker one which he meets, the more
irregular course of the eccentric comet, the graceful
undulation of the slender one in the water or upon
the land, the rocking barque that veers right round in
an instant, the rush of the swift shark and the slow
crawl of the wretched sloth—all and every movement,
clumsy or graceful, slow or swift, is to be found in the
various species of atoms. And with what a marvellous
simplicity of machinery! Here you see one, a mere
thread, advancing, twisting, a veritable elastic cork-screw;
there you see one that for oar and rudder has
only an undulating tail or a pair of little vibrating eye-lashes.
The beautiful little polypus-worms, like flowers
in a vase, anchor together upon an isle—a little plant,
or a miniature crab, and then separate and cast off by
detaching their delicate peduncle.</p>
<p>What is even more surprising than the organs of motion,
is what we may term the expression, the attitudes,
the original signs of character and temper. You may
recognize here the apathetic, there the vivacious and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
fantastic, some all alert for war, and others, as it would
seem, fretful and agitated without any apparent cause.
Again, you will occasionally see a whole crowd of remarkably
quiet and peaceable atoms suddenly dispersed
and knocked over by some scapegrace atom, conscious
of superior strength, and spoiling for a fight.</p>
<p>A prodigious comedy is that of our atoms! They
seem to be satirically rehearsing the various farces
which are played in our own noble and serious world,
of atoms of larger growth!</p>
<p>At the head of the infusoriæ, we must make respectful
mention of the majestic giants, the highest type of
motion and of strength, slow, but terrible and great.</p>
<p>Take some moss from a roof, steep it for a few
hours in water, then place it under the microscopic inspection,
and you behold a vast, a mighty animal, the
elephant or the whale of the invisibles, moving with a
youthful grace which those large animals do not always
display. Respect this king of all the atoms, this rotifer,
so called because on either side of his head he has
a wheel; these wheels are his organs of locomotion,
like the paddle-wheels of a steamship, or perhaps they
also serve him as his arms of chase to catch his small
game, the inferior and peaceable atoms! All fly, all
yield to the rotifer, save one; one atom only fears
nothing, yields nothing, but trusts to his superior
weapons. He is a monster, but he is provided
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
with superior senses. He has two great gleaming, purplish
eyes. He is slow, but he can see, and he is admirably
armed. To his strong paws he adds strong,
sharp talons, which serve him to hold on with, and, at
need, to serve him in the fight.</p>
<p>Potent initial essays of Nature, that with such small
expenditure of matter, can create in such majestic fashion!
Sublime first note of the sublime overture. These,—of
what consequence is mere size?—have a colossal
power of absorption and of movement, far beyond that
which will be given to the enormous animals that are
classed so much higher in the animal scale.</p>
<p>The oyster fixed upon its rock, the crawling slug,
are to the rotifers creatures as disproportioned as man
to the Alps or Cordilleras—so disproportioned that
one cannot compare them by glance, hardly by reflection
and calculation. Yet among those animal mountains,
where will you find the vivacity, the ardor of vitality,
displayed by the rotifer? What a fall we have as
we ascend! Our atoms are too vivacious, dazzlingly
agile, and these gigantic beasts are smitten with paralysis.
What if the rotifer could conceive, for instance,
the superb, the colossal starred sponge, which one may
see in the Museum at Paris? It is to the rotifer what
this globe, with its twenty-seven thousand miles of circumference
is to man. Well! If the rotifer could compare
himself to the huge sponge, rely upon it that the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
rotifer would move his wheels in utmost excitement,
and exclaim—"I am great."</p>
<p>Ah! Rotifer, rotifer! we should despise no one, and
nothing.</p>
<p>I am well convinced of your advantages and your superiority.
But who knows if the captive and slumbering
life which you, for instance, despise in the oyster
or the snail, or the slug, be not in truth a progress?
Your wild vertiginous movement, and vivacity, by no
means secure a passage towards higher destinies; for
that passage, nature prefers a motion of less enchantment.
She enters the dark sepulchre of that melancholy
communism in which element reckons but for little;
she teaches how to dominate individual anxieties
and ambitions, and to concentrate substances for the
benefit of superior lives.</p>
<p>She sleeps there, for a time, like the <i>Sleeping Beauty
in the Wood</i>. But sleep, captivity, enchantment, be
it what it may, it is not Death. In the sponge, seemingly
so dead, what life there is! It moves not, breathes
not, has no organs of circulation, or of sense,—and
yet it lives. How know we that, do you ask? Twice
in every year the sponge reproduces. She lives after
her fashion, and even more richly than many others.
At the proper day, small spheres leave the mother
sponge, armed with minute fins, which enable them for
a short time to float about in full liberty, but soon coming
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
to anchor, they remain there, growing, reproducing,
till the sponge-hunter carries them to the habitations
of man, to the service of the greater enslaver, man, the
civilized.</p>
<p>Thus, in the apparent absence of senses, and of all
organization, in that mysterious enigma, at the doubtful
threshold of life, generation opens up to us the visible
world by which we are to ascend. As yet there is
nothing, and in the bosom of that nothingness maternity
already appears. As with the fabled gods of antique
and mysterious Egypt, as with that old Isis and
Osiris, who begat before their birth, here, also, Love
exists before Being.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IV" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</p>
<p class="caption3">BLOOD-FLOWER.</p>
<p>At the heart of the globe, in the warm waters of the
Line, and upon their volcanic bottoms, the sea so superabounds
in life that it seems impossible for it to balance
its multitudinous creations. Overpassing purely vegetable
life, its earliest products are organized, sensitive,
living.</p>
<p>But these animals adorn themselves with a singular
splendor of botanic beauty, the splendid liveries of an
eccentric and most luxuriant Flora. Far as the eye
can reach, you see what, judging from the forms and
colors, you take for flowers, and shrubs, and plants.
But those plants have their movements, those shrubs are
irritable, those flowers shrink and shudder with an incipient
sensitiveness which promises, perception and
<i>will</i>.</p>
<p>Charming oscillation, fascinating motion, most graceful
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
equivoque! On the confines of the two kingdoms
of animal and vegetable life, Mind, under those faëry
oscillations gives token of its first awakening, its dawn,
its morning twilight, to be followed by a glorious and
glowing noon. Those brilliant colors, those pearly and
enamelled flashings, tell at once of the past night and
the thought of the dawning day.</p>
<p>Thought! may we venture to call it so? No, it is
still a Dream, which by degrees will clear up into
Thought.</p>
<p>Already, in the north of Africa, over the other side
of the Cape, the vegetable kingdom, which reigns alone
in the temperate zone, sees itself rivalled, surpassed.
The great enchantment progresses, increases, as we
near the Equator. On the land,—tree, shrub, flower,
weed, are proud and gorgeous, flaming in every bright
color, delicate in every soft shade, and beneath the
waters' slime and the ruddy corals. Beside parterres,
that display rainbow beauties of every color and every
tint, commence the stone plants; the madrepores, whose
branches (should we not rather say their hands and
fingers?) flourish in a rose-tinted snow; like peach or apple
blossoms. Seven hundred leagues on either side of
the Equator, you sail through this faëry land of magical
illusion and wondrous beauty.</p>
<p>There are doubtful creatures, the Corallines, for instance,
that are claimed by all the three kingdoms.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
They tend towards the animal, they tend towards the
mineral, and, finally, are assigned to the vegetable.
Perchance they form the real point at which Life obscurely
and mysteriously rises from the slumber of the
stone, without utterly quitting that rude starting-point,
as if to remind us, so high placed and so haughty, of
the right of even the humble mineral to rise into animation,
and of the deep and eternal aspiration that lies
buried, but busy, in the bosom of Nature.</p>
<p>"The fields and forests of our dry land," says Darwin,
"appear sterile and empty, if we compare them
with those of the sea." And, in fact, all who traverse
the marvellous transparent Indian seas are thrilled,
stirred, startled, by the phantasmagoria that flashes up
from their far clear depths. Especially surprising is
the interchange between animal and vegetable life of
their especial and characteristic appearances. The soft
impressible gelatinous plants, with rounded organs,
that are neither precisely leaves nor precisely stalks,
the delicacy of their animal curves—those Hogarthian
"lines of beauty," seem to ask us to believe that they
are veritable animals, while the real animals, on the
other hand, in form, in color, in all, seem to do their
utmost to be mistaken for vegetables. Each kingdom
skilfully imitates the other. These have the solidity,
the quasi permanence, of the tree; the others alternately
expand and fade like the evanescent flower.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
Thus the sea Anemone opens as a roseate and pearly
flower, or as a granite star with deep blue eyes; but
when her corollæ have given forth an Anemone daughter,
you see the fair mother droop, fade, die.</p>
<p>Far otherwise variable, that Proteus of the waters,
the Halcyon, takes every form and every color. Now
plant, now flower, it spreads itself out into a fanlike
beauty, becomes a bushy hedge, or rounds itself into a
graceful bouquet. But all this is so ephemeral, so fugitive,
so timid, so shrinking, that at the slightest touch
of the softest breath it disappears, and returns on the
instant into the womb of the common mother. In these
slight and fugitive forms you at once recognize the twin
sisters of the sensitive plants of our earth; closing up,
as they close at the first breath of evening.</p>
<p>When you gaze down upon a coral reef, you see the
depths carpeted, many colored flowers with fungi,
masses of snowy brilliancy; every hill, every valley,
of the great deep, is variegated with a thousand forms,
and a thousand colors, from the ruddy and outstretched
branches of the coral, to the deep, rich, velvety green
of the Cariophylles or violets, which seek their food by
the gentle motion of the richly golden stamens. Above
this lower world, as if to shade them from the too
glowing kiss of the ardent sun, waves a whole forest of
giant and dwarf trees and shrubs, and from tree to tree
feathery spirals stretch and interlace like the loving
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
and embracing tendrils of the vine, but finer in tendril
and infinitely more splendid in their variegated and
contrasting, yet singularly harmonizing colors.</p>
<p>This glorious sight inspires, yet agitates us; it is a
dream, a vertigo; that Fay of the shifting mirage, the
Sea, adding to these colors her own prismatic tints,
fading, reappearing, now here, now gone, a capricious
and fitful inconstancy, a hesitation, a doubt. Have we
really seen it, this lovely scene? No, it was not so.
Was it an entity, or a delusion? Yes, yes, it must be
real, there are certainly very real beings there, for I
see whole hosts of them lodged there and sporting
there. The molluscs confide in that reality, for there
you can see their pearly shells reflecting lights, now
flashing and brilliant, and anon of a most tender delicacy;
and the crab, too, believes in it, for see how he
hastens on his sidelong path. Strange fish, vast and
curious monsters of the deep, move hither and thither
in their many colored vesture of purple and gold, and
deep azure and delicate pink; and that delicate star, the
Ophiure agitates his delicate and elegant arms.</p>
<p>In this phantasmagoria the arborescent Madrepore
more gravely displays his less brilliant colors. His
beauty is chiefly that of form.</p>
<p>But the chief attraction of the aspect of this vast
community is in its entirety; the individual is humble,
but the republic is imposing. Here you have the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
strong assemblage of aloes and cactus; there you have
the superbly branching antlers of the Deer; and anon,
you see the vast stretch of the vigorous branches of the
giant cedar stretching at first horizontally, but tending
to advance upward and upward still.</p>
<p>Those forms at present despoiled of the thousands
and tens of thousands of living flowers, which should
cover and enliven them have, perhaps, in that stern nudity
an additional attraction for the mind. I love to
look upon the trees in winter, when their bared boughs
tell us and show us what they really are. And thus it
is with the Madrepores. In their present nudity, when
from pictures they have become statues, it seems as
though they were about to reveal to us the whole secret
of the minute populations of which they are at once
the creation and the monument. Many of them seem
to write to us in strange characters, to speak to us in
strange tones. Their interlacings evidently have a
something to tell us, could we but understand them.
But who shall be their interpreter; who shall give us
the keynote to their harmony, mysterious harmony—but
Harmony doubtless?</p>
<p>How much less significant is the Bee architecture in
its cold, severe, geometry! That is the produce of life,
but here we look upon life itself. The stone was not
simply the base and shelter of this people; it was itself
a previous people, an anterior generation, which,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
gradually overtopped by the younger, assumed its present
consistence. And all the movements of that first
community are still strikingly visible, as details of another
Herculaneum, or Pompeii. But here everything
is accomplished without catastrophe, without violence,
by orderly and natural progress; all testifies to serenity
and peace.</p>
<p>Every sculptor will here admire the forms of a marvellous
art which has achieved such infinite variety of
forms, improving upon all arts of ornamentation. But
we have to reflect upon something far beyond mere
form. The arborescent variety on which the activity
of these laborious tribes has been so wonderfully employed,
is the effort of a thought, of a captive liberty,
seeking the guiding thread in the deep and mazy labyrinth,
and timidly feeling its way upward towards the
light, and gently and gracefully working out its emancipation
from communist life.</p>
<p>I have in my possession two of these little trees differing
from each other, but of like species. No vegetable
is comparable to them. One, purely white as the
most immaculate alabaster, has an inexhaustible wealth
of buds, and blossoms and flowers, on every one of its
many spreading branches. The other, less white and
less spreading, has also its whole world upon its branches.
Exquisitely beautiful are they both; alike yet unlike,
twins of innocence and fraternity. Oh who shall
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
explain to us the mystery of the infant soul that created
these faëry things! We feel that it must be at work,
captive and yet free; captive in a captivity so beloved
that though still tending upward towards freedom, it
yet cares not fully to achieve it.</p>
<p>The arts have not yet seized upon those wonders
from which the world has derived so much benefit.
The beautiful statue of Nature (at the entrance of the
Jardin des Plantes) should have been surrounded by
them; Nature should only be exhibited as she ever
lives, amidst faëry triumphs, enthroning her on a mountain
of her own beauties. Her first born, the Madrepores,
would have furnished the lower strata with their
meanders, their stars and their alabaster branches;
while above, their sisters, with their bodies and their
fine hair would have made a living bed, softly to embrace
with caressing love the divine Mother in her
dream of eternal maternity.</p>
<p>Painting has succeeded in these things no better than
sculpture. Her animated flowers have neither the expression
nor the true, pure, delicate coloring of the
animated flowers, of the nature of which our colored engravings
give but a poor and mechanical idea, altogether
destitute of the unctuous softness, suppleness, and
warm emotion of the flowers of the fields, the woods, the
gardens, or animated flowers of the seas. Enamels,
even attempted as by Palissy, are too hard and cold; admirable
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
for reptiles and the scales of fish, they are
too glaring to resemble these tender and soft creatures
that have not even a skin. The little exterior lungs of
the annelides, the slight net work in which certain of the
Polypes float, the sensitive and ever-moving hairs which
support the Medusæ, are objects not merely delicate to
sight, but affecting to imagination. They are of every
shade, fine and vague, yet warm; as though a balmy
breath had become visible. You see an ever-varying,
ever-moving rainbow that delights your eye; but for
them it is a very serious matter, the creating of that
marvellous rainbow, of various forms and colors; it is
their blood and their weak life converted into changing
hues and tints, and lights and shades. Take care! Do
not stifle that little floating soul, which mutely, but oh
how eloquently, tells you its secret in those varying and
palpitating colors.</p>
<p>The colors do not long survive, and their creators,
the Madrepores, themselves survive only in their base,
which has been called inorganic, but which in reality
is condensed and solidified life.</p>
<p>Women, who have a more delicate and penetrating
sense of the beautiful than we have, do not thus mistake;
they have, at the least, confusedly divined that
one of these trees, the coral, is a living thing, and
thence the just favor in which they hold it. Vainly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
did science tell them that coral was mere stone, and
then that it was a plant, they knew quite differently.</p>
<p>"Madame, why is it that you prefer this tree of a
dubious red, to all the precious stones?"</p>
<p>"Monsieur, it suits my complexion. Rubies are too
vivid, they make me look pale, while this, somewhat
duller, rather more favorably contrasts fairness."</p>
<p>The lady is quite right; the coral and the lady are
related. In the coral, as in the lip and the cheek of
the lady, it is iron, according to Voyel, which makes
the one red and the others roseate.</p>
<p>"But, Madame, these brilliant stones have an incomparable
polish, and dazzling lustre."</p>
<p>"Yes, but the coral has something of the softness
and even the warmth of the skin. As soon as I put it
on, it seems to become a part of myself."</p>
<p>"But Madame, there are much finer reds than that
of your coral necklace."</p>
<p>"Doctor, leave me this, I love it. Why? That I
know not; or if there is a reason, that which will do
as well as any, is that its Eastern and true name is 'the
Blood-Flower.'"</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_V" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE WORLD MAKERS.</p>
<p>Our Museum of Natural History, within its too narrow
limits, contains a faëry palace in every part of which
we see the genius of metamorphoses of Lamarck and
Geoffroy. In the dark lower hall the Madrepores
serve as the base of the more and more living world
that rises, stage above stage, above. Higher up the superior
creatures of the sea display their energy of
organization, and prepare the life of the terrestrials,
and above these, Mammiferæ, over which the lovely
birds spread their wings and almost seem to be still
singing! The multitude of visitors pass quickly and
with small show of interest from the Madrepores, those
elder born of the globe, and hasten to the light and to
the presence of things of brightest beauty, mother of
pearl, the richly painted wings of butterflies, and the
plumage of birds. I, who stop longer below, often find
myself quite alone in that dark little gallery.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
<p>I love that solemn crypt of the great scientific Church.
There I best can feel the sacred soul, the still present
spirit of our great masters, their great, their sublime
effort, and the immortal audacity of our voyagers and
travellers, the intrepid collectors of such a wealth of
whatever is beautiful or instructive. Wherever their
bones may lie they themselves are still present in the
Museum by the treasures which they have bequeathed,
treasures which some of them have paid for with their
lives.</p>
<p>On the 15th of last October, having remained in that
crypt somewhat late, I had some difficulty in reading the
label on some Madrepores—that label bore the name
of "Lamarck."</p>
<p>A sudden warmth, a religious glow, thrilled through
my heart and brain.</p>
<p>"Lamarck!" Great name, and already antique! It
is as though among the tombs of Saint Denis we should
suddenly read the name of Clovis. The glory, the
strifes, the royal triumphs, of his successor, have obscured
somewhat the name of that blind Homer of the
Museum, who, with the instinct of genius created, organized,
and named the previously almost unknown
class of Invertebrates; a class, nay, a whole world,
a vast abyss of soft half organized life still destitute of
vertebræ; that bony centralization and essential support
of personality. These are all the more interesting
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
because they are obviously the earliest of all—those
humble and so long neglected tribes. Réaumur placed
the Crocodiles among the insects. The proud Buffon
deigned not to know even the names of humble Invertebrates,
he excluded them altogether from the Olympus
at Versailles which he erected to Nature. These great
populations, so obscure, so confused, which, nevertheless,
prepared everything and abound every where, remained
exiled from the world of science until the
coming of Lamarck. It was precisely the elders that
were thus excluded, elders so numerous that to exclude
them was, in some sort, to close the eyes and bar the
gate against nature herself.</p>
<p>The genius of the Metamorphoses was emancipated
by botany and chemistry. It was a bold but most precious
thing to take Lamarck, from the Botany in which
he had passed his life, and remove him to the vast world
of animality. That ardent genius, trained in miracles
by the transformations of plants, and full of faith in the
unity of life, next drew the animals, and that vast animal,
the Globe, from the state of petrifaction in which
they so long had lain. Half blind, he intrepidly treated
a thousand things which the clear sighted scarcely
dared to approach. At least, he infused his fire into
them, and Geoffroy, Cuvier and Blainville found them
warm and living.</p>
<p>"All is living, or has been," said Lamarck; "everything
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
is life, either present or past." Great revolutionary
effort, that, against inert matter; effort proceeding
even to suppress and banish the inorganic! No
longer any actual death. That which has lived may
sleep; and yet preserve latent life, the capacity to
revive. Who is really dead? No one. What? Nothing.</p>
<p>This dictum, so novel, and so bold, swelled the sails
of our scientific age with a strong and a favoring
gale; it has urged on enquiries, such as but for it we
should never have dreamed of making. History, or
Natural History, we demand of every thing, who are
you—and every where the answer is, "<i>I am Life</i>,"
and, thus, Death retreats before the bold advance and
eagle glance of science, and Mind moves onward still,
conquering and to conquer.</p>
<p>Among these resuscitations, I first note my Madrepores,
taking the interest of life, though previously
scorned, or unnoticed, as dead stone. When Lamarck
collected and explained them at the Museum, they were
detected in the mystery of their activity, in their immense
creations, and they exemplified how a world is
made. That once known, it was at once suspected that
if the earth makes the animal, the animal also makes
the earth; and that each aids the other in the office of
creation.</p>
<p>Animality is every where, filling every thing and
peopling every thing. We find the remains or the imprint
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
of it even in the minerals, as the statuary marble
and alabaster, which have passed through the crucible
of the most destructive fires. At every advance, in our
knowledge of the existing, we discover an enormous
past of animal life. As soon as our improvements in
Optics enabled us to discover and to watch the Infusoriæ,
we behold them making mountains and paving the
ocean. The hard silex is a mass of animalcules, the
sponge is an animated silex. Our limestones are all
animals; Paris is built with infusoriæ, a part of Germany
rests upon a newly buried bed of coral. Infusoriæ,
coral, shells, chalk and lime. They are constantly
taking from the Ocean, but the fish, which devour the
coral, restore it as chalk, and restore it to the waters
whence it came. Thus the Coral Sea in its labor of
production, of upheaving, in its constructions incessantly
augmented or diminished, built, ruined, and rebuilt, is
an immense fabric of limestone which is continually
oscillating between its two lives;—the <i>acting</i> life of
the day—the other life that <i>will act</i> to-morrow.</p>
<p>Foster quite justly decides that these circular islands
are the craters of volcanoes, raised up by the polypes.
He has been contradicted, but wrongly so. Upon no other
hypothesis can we account for this identity of figure.
There is always the same ring of about a hundred paces
in diameter, very low, beaten on the outside by the
waves, but enclosing a tranquil basin. A few plants of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
three or four species, here and there, crown the basin
with verdure. The water is of the most beautiful green.
The enclosing ring is of white sand, the residue of dissolved
coral, contrasting with the blue of the Ocean.
Beneath the salt water, our little laborers are at work,
the stronger and bolder at the breakers, the weaker
and more timid on the smoother sides.</p>
<p>This is not a very varied world. But wait. The
winds and the currents are constantly at work to enrich
it; come a good tempest, and all the neighboring
isles will be laid under contribution to enrich this rising
one. And in this is one of the most magnificent functions
of the Tempest; the greater, the wilder, and the
more sweeping, the more fecund it is. A water-spout
passes over an island; the torrent that it produces
carries with it slime, rubbish, plants, living or dead,
and even whole forests, which the waves carry to the
neighboring isles, raising, and at the same time enriching,
their soil.</p>
<p>A great messenger of life, and one of the most transportable,
is the solid cocoanut. Not only does it travel
well, but, when thrown upon shoal or rock, if it find only
a little poor white sand, which would support nothing
else, the cocoanut contents itself there, finds brackish
water not a jot less agreeable than the freshest; germinates,
thrives, grows into a robust cocoa tree. A tree
being thus planted, fresh water comes, falling leaves create
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
earth, other trees follow, and at length we see the
noble palm grove, which arrests the vapors, which at
length form a rivulet or river, which, flowing from the
center of the isle, make an opening of fresh water in
the cincture of white sand, and thus keep the polypes,
inhabitants only of salt water, at a respectful distance.</p>
<p>Of the rapidity with which the Polypes do their work,
we have some curious proofs. In forty days' harboring
at Rio Janeiro, boats were wholly destroyed; in a
strait near Australia, there were formerly only twenty-six
islets; there are already a hundred and fifty—well
recognized: and the English admiralty believes that
there are even more; and in twenty years hence the
whole strait, forty leagues in length, will be so completely
blocked up as to be unnavigable.</p>
<p>The eastern shoal of Australia is three hundred and
sixty leagues, (one hundred and twenty-seven without
any interruption,) and that of New Caledonia one hundred
and forty-five leagues; the single shoal of the
Maldives is almost five hundred miles long, and groups
of isles in the Pacific are four hundred leagues long,
by a hundred and fifty wide. To all this work of the
Polypes, we must add, that the banks of the isle of
France, and the shallows of the Red Sea, are continually
rising. Tunis and its environs present a wholly
animal world; and the rocks present forms so strange,
and colors so splendid, that the spectator is amazed and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
dazzled. You see them in a space of several leagues
of shallow sea water—probably not averaging more
than a foot of depth, working calmly, but perseveringly
at their business of creating.</p>
<p>Their first intelligent observer was Forster, companion
of Cook, who found them at work, caught them in
the very fact of their great conspiracy to make, noiselessly
and marvellously, whole chains of islands, to be
by degrees converted into a continent.</p>
<p>All this passed before his eyes, as it might have done
in the first days of the world. From the submarine
depths, the central fire throws up a dome or cone, which
opens, and its lava forms a circular crater. But the volcanic
strength becomes exhausted, and the cooling lava
becomes covered with a living jelly, an animal multitude,
whose perpetual exudation of mucus continually
raises the circle higher and higher, to low water mark;
no higher, or they would be dry; no lower, because they
would lack the light. If they have no special organ with
which to perceive the light, it circumfuses, penetrates,
permeates their whole being. The glowing sun of the
tropics, which traverses right through their transparent
little frames, seems to have for them all the irresistible
attraction of magnetism. When the tide ebbs and
leaves them uncovered, they, nevertheless, remain open,
and drink in the vivid light.</p>
<p>Dumont d'Urville, who so often coasted among their
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
little isles, says:—"It is a real pain to see, so near by
the peace of that interior basin, and to see all around
shallow waters, beneath which are the shelving rocks,
tenanted by the coral insects, in perfect security, while
we are enduring all the shocks of a raging tempest."
But this amiable community and its edifice are a shoal,
a terrible lee shore, scarcely hidden by the shallow waters;
touch upon that shoal and you will be crushed.
Trust not to anchors among those peaked and jagged
rocks; your cables, however good, would soon wear
and snap. The seaman's anxiety is extreme, in those
long nights when the Southern surges drive him among
these shoals, at once so rugged and yet as cutting as razors.</p>
<p>To such accusations as these, our innocent shoal-makers
reply—"Time—give us only time, and these
rocks will become hospitable, tenanted, fruitful. These
banks, joined on to their neighboring banks, will no
longer have these terrible threatenings for the seaman.
We are preparing a spare world to replace your old one
should it perish. Ingrates! Come some great and
overwhelming catastrophe to your old world, if, as some
one among you has said, the sea turns from one pole to
the other in every ten thousand years, and you perchance
will bless us, and hail with joy these southern
isles which we are making, this huge southern continent
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
that we are preparing. Confess, now, that if, unhappily,
ships do occasionally perish on these shoals, our
work here, nevertheless, is useful, and good, and great.
Our improvised world may not unjustly be proud. To say
nothing about the beauty of its triumphant colors, before
which those of your earth grow pale; to say nothing
about the graceful curves and circles on which we
pride ourselves,—how many are the problems, which,
insolvable to you, find their solution among us! The
division of labor, a charming variety combined with a
great regularity, a geometrical order, softened and
made graceful and gracious by a rising liberty—where,
among you men, will you find these so combined as
from the beginning we have combined them among us?
Our incessant labor in relieving the sea-water of its
salts, creates those currents which give it life and healthful
power. We are the very spirits of the Sea, giving,
as we do, her motion."</p>
<p>"And the sea is not ungrateful; she nourishes us at
fixed periods; and not less punctually comes the glowing
sun to caress us and dower us with brilliant colors.
We are the beloved, the favored workers of the Deity,
entrusted by him with the first rude sketches and outlines
of his worlds, and all our juniors upon this globe,
need us, and are indebted to us. Our friend the Cocoa
tree, that inaugurates terrestrial life upon our isle,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
could not do so but from our dust. In its far back origin,
vegetable life is our liberal gift, and, made rich by
us, it nourishes the superior creation."</p>
<p>"But what need of other animals? We are within
our own circle complete, harmonious and sufficing;
with us the circle of creation might be closed. For as
God crowns his isle on his old volcano of fire, he has
created a volcano of life, and expansion of that living
paradise. He has created all that he needs, and now
He may repose."</p>
<p>Not yet, not yet. A creation must rise above yours,
a thing which you do not fear. That rival is not the
tempest, you would brave it; nor the fresh water, you
would build beside it. It is not even the earth, which
by degrees is invading your constructions. What, then,
is that other power? In yourself, in Polypes, there is
an ambition to cease to be one. In your Republic
there is a certain creature who in constant anxiety and
yearning, repeats that the perfection of this vegetating
existence is not real life. It constantly dreams of a
freer and more expanded life, navigating hither and
thither, penetrating and viewing the unknown world
even at the hazard of shipwreck;—that thing is—the
Soul.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VI" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</p>
<p class="caption3">DAUGHTER OF THE SEAS.</p>
<p>I passed the early part of 1858 in the pleasant little
town of Hyères which, from afar, gazes down on the
sea, the islets and the peninsula by which its coast is
sheltered. The sea, seen from this distance, is even more
potently seductive than when one is on its very shore.
The paths leading to it, whether we pass between gardens
with their hedges of jasmin and myrtle, or,
ascending some little, pass through the olive grounds
and a little wood of pines and laurels, are exceedingly
tempting. The wood by no means hinders us from
catching, now and then, a glance of the bright sea.
The place is, by no means unjustly, called Fair-Coast.
Often in the fine days of its gentle winters we met
there a most interesting invalid, a young foreign princess
who had come thither from a distance of five hundred
leagues, in the hope of adding some span to her
fading and failing life. That life, short as it was, had
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
been a hard and sad one. Scarcely had she become a
glad wife when she found herself rudely threatened by
Death. And now she dragged on from day to day of
suffering, supported and most tenderly treated by him
who lived only for her and hoped not to survive her.
If wishes and prayers could have preserved her she
would still live; for all prayed for her, especially the
poor. But spring came, and bloomed and ended, and
on one of those April days whose genial influence revives
every thing we saw the two shadows pass, pale as
the wandering Elysian spectres of Virgil.</p>
<p>Sad at heart with sympathy, we reached the gulf.
Between the bold rocks, the pools left by the sea contained
some little creatures that had not been able to
accompany the retreating tide. Some shelled creatures
were there, self-concentrated and suffering from want
of water, and amongst them, unshelled, unsheltered, lay
the living parasol, that for some, anything, rather than
good reason, we call the <i>Medusa</i>. Why has that name
of terror been given to a creature so charming? Never
before had my attention been attracted to those wrecked
beauties, which we so often see high and dry upon the
sea shore at low ebb tide. This especial one was
small, not larger than my hand, but singularly beautiful,
in its delicate colors, passing so lightly from tint
to tint. It was of an opal whiteness, into which passed,
as in a light cloud, a crown of the most delicate lilac.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
The wind had turned it over, so that its lilac filaments
floated above, while the umbrella, that is to say, its
proper body, lay upon the rock. Much bruised in that
tender body, it was also wounded and mutilated in its
fine filaments, or hairs, which are its sensitive organs
of respiration, absorption, and even love. And the
whole creature thus thrown upside down was receiving
in full force the rays of the Provençal sun, severe in its
first awakening and rendered still more severe by the
dryness of the occasional gusts of the south-westerly
winds, the <i>Mistral</i> of our Provençal coasts. The
transparent creature was thus doubly pierced, doubly
tormented, accustomed as it was to the caressing sea,
and unprovided with the resisting epidermis of land
animals.</p>
<p>Close to her dried up lagune were other lagunes still
full of water, and communicating with the sea. Within
a few paces of her, then, was safety, but for her who
had no organs of locomotion, excepting her undulating
hairs, it was impossible to traverse even that petty distance,
and it seemed that remaining under that fierce
sun and exposed to the arid blasts of that wind she very
speedily must faint, die, and be actually dissolved.</p>
<p>Nothing more ephemeral, more delicate than these
daughters of the sea. Some of them are so fluid that
they dissolve and disappear as soon as taken from the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
sea. Such is that slight band of azure called the
<i>Girdle of Venus</i>. The Medusa, a little more solid has
all the more trouble in dying. Was she dying or
already dead? I do not readily believe in death, and
believing that she still lived I resolved to convey her to
a lagune of salt water. To say the truth I felt some
repugnance to touching her. The delicious creature
with her visible innocence, and rainbow of tender colors,
looked like a trembling jelly which must slip from
one's touch or dissolve in one's grasp. However, I
conquered this repugnance, slid my hand gently beneath
her and as I turned her over her hairs fell down into
their natural position, when used in swimming. I
thus carried her to the water, where she sank without
giving the slightest sign of life. I walked about the
shore, but in about ten minutes returned to look after
my Medusa. She was swimming under water, her hairs
undulating gracefully beneath her; and slowly, but
safely, she had left the rock far behind her.</p>
<p>Poor creature, perhaps she got wrecked or stranded
again, ere long, for it is impossible to navigate with
weaker means or in a fashion more dangerous. The
Medusæ fear the shore where so many hard substances
hurt them, and in the open sea they are liable to be
overturned at every gust of wind, in which case, their
swimming-feathers being above instead of below their
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
bodies, they are carried hither and thither, at random,
upon the waves, as the prey of fish or the delight of
birds who find sport and profit in seizing them.</p>
<p>During a whole season which I spent on the banks of
Gironde I saw them cast ashore to perish miserably by
hundreds. On their arrival they were white and brilliant
as crystal. Alas! How different was their aspect
in the course of a couple of days. Very happily they
sank beneath the sand and were lost to my pitying view.</p>
<p>They are the food of every thing marine, and have
themselves scarce any aliment, none that we know of,
but the, as yet, scarce organized atoms floating in the
sea which they, etherialize, as we may say, and suck in
without making them suffer. They have neither teeth
nor weapons; no defence, excepting that some species,
Forbes says not all, can secrete, when attacked, a liquid
which stings somewhat like the nettle, but so faintly
that Dicquemare with impunity received some of it in
his eye.</p>
<p>Here we have, indeed, a creature little provided and
in great peril. She is superior already; she has senses,
and, if we may judge from her contractions, a great
sensibility to suffering. She cannot, like the Polypus,
be divided and live. Divide him and you double his
existence; divide her and she dies. Gelatinous as the
polypus, the Medusa seems to be an embryon cast away
too soon from the bosom of the common mother, torn
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
from the solid base and the association to which the
Polypus owes his safety, and launched into adventure.
How has the imprudent creature set out? How, without
sails, or oars, or helm, has she left her port? What is
her point of departure?</p>
<p>Ellis, as long ago as 1750, saw a little Medusa produced
from the campanular polypus, and many later
observers have ascertained that she is a kind of polypus
that has left the society. To speak more simply, she is
an escaped polypus.</p>
<p>And the learned M. Forbes who has so deeply studied
them, very aptly asks, what is there astonishing in
that? It only shows that to that extent the animal
still obeys the vegetable law. From the tree, the collective
being, proceeds the individual, the detached
fruit which fruit will make another tree. A pear tree
is a sort of vegetable polypus of which the pear, (the
emancipated individual) can give us a pear tree.</p>
<p>In like manner, adds Forbes, as the leaf laden tree,
stops in its development, contracts, and becomes an
organ of love—i. e. a flower, the <i>Polypier</i>, contracting
some of its polypes and transforming their contractions,
forms the placenta, the eggs from which proceeds
the young and graceful Medusa.</p>
<p>One would guess as much from her hesitating grace,
that weakness at once so unarmed and so fearless,
which embarks without instruments of navigation, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
trusts too much to life. It is the first tender and
touching adventure of the new soul going forth without
defence from the security of the common life, to be
itself, an individual acting and suffering on its own
account—soft sketch of free nature; an embryon of
liberty.</p>
<p>To be oneself, oneself alone, in a little complete
world, was a great temptation for all. A universal seduction!
a beautiful folly, which causes all the effort
and all the progress of the world, from our earth upward
to the very stars. But in her first attempts the
Medusa, seems especially unjustified. One would say
that she was created on purpose to be drowned. Laden
above, and ill-ballasted below, she is formed in
conditions exactly opposite to those of her parent, the
Physalie. This latter displays on the surface of the
water, only a little balloon, an insubmersible membrane
and below has infinitely long tentaculæ, of twenty feet
or more, which steady her, sweep the waters, stupefy
the fish, make prey of him. Light and careless, inflating
her pearly balloon of blue or purple tints, she darts
from her long hairy tentaculæ a subtle and murderous
poison. Less formidable, the Velelles are no less secure.
They have the form of <i>radeaux</i>, their minute
organization is already somewhat solid, and they can
steer and trim their oblique sail to every wind. The
Porpites, that seem to be only a flower, a sea Margaret,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
have their own peculiar levity; even after death, they
continue to float. It is the same with many other fantastic
and almost aërial beings, garlands with golden
bells or with rosebuds—such as the Physopheres, Stephanomie,
&c., azure girdles of Venus. All these
swim and float invincibly, fear only the shore, and sail
boldly out on the open sea, and when it is ever so rough
are perfectly safe there. So little do the Porpites and
Velelles fear the sea, that, being able to rise at pleasure,
they exert themselves to sink to the concealing
depths when the weather is bad.</p>
<p>Not such is our poor Medusa. Fearing the shore,
she is also in danger at sea. She could sink into the
depths at will, but the watery abyss is forbidden to her;
she can live only on the surface, in the broad light and
in full peril. She sees, she hears, and her sense of
touch is very delicate, to her misfortune, too much so.
She cannot guide herself; her most complicated organs
overload and overbalance her.</p>
<p>And so we are tempted to believe that she must needs
repent of so perilous a search after liberty; and desires
to be back in the inferior state, the security of the
common life. The polypier made the Medusa, she in
turn makes the polypier, and returns to the life of community.
But this vegetating state wearies her, and in
the next generation she again emancipates herself and
goes forth again to the perils of her vain navigation.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
Strange alternation, in which she floats incessantly;
moving, she dreams of repose; in rest, she sighs for
movement.</p>
<p>These strange metamorphoses, which by turns raise
and abase the undecided creature, keeping her alternating
between two lives so different, are apparently the
case of the inferior species, of the Medusa which have
not been able to enter decidedly into the irrevocable career
of emancipation. For the others, we can easily
suppose that their charming varieties mark the interior
progress of life, the degrees of development, the sports,
the smiling graces of their new liberty. This latter
class, admirably artistic, won this so simple theme of a
disk or parasol which floats, of a light lustre of crystal
which reflects the sun's glowing and coloring lights, has
made an infinity of variations, a deluge of little marvels.</p>
<p>All these beauties floating on the green mirror of the
sea in their gay and delicate colors, and in the thousand
attractions of an infantine and unconscious coquetry,
have puzzled Science, which to class and to name
them, has been obliged to call to its aid both the Queens
of History and the Goddesses of Mythology. Here
we have the waving Berenice, whose rich hair floats
another and brighter flood upon the flood; there we
have the little Orithya, the fair spouse of Eölus, who,
at the breathing of her husband, displays her pure,
white urn, uncertain, and scarcely supported by her fine
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
hair, which she often entangles beneath, or the weeping
Dionea, looking like an alabaster cup, from which, in
crystalline streamlets, flow splendid tears. Such, when
in Switzerland, I saw spreading themselves the wearied
and idle cascades, which, having made too many
turnings, seemed dropping with drowsiness and languor.</p>
<p>In the great faëry of the illumination of the sea on
stormy nights, the Medusa has her separate part.
Bathed, like so many other beings, in the phosphoric
fluid with which they are all penetrated, she returns it
in her manner, with a peculiar charm.</p>
<p>How dark is the night at sea when we do not see
that phosphoric gleam or a fitful flashing! How vast
and formidable are those dark depths, on such gloomy
nights. On land, the shadows are less dense and impenetrable,
we see, if dimly, and make out forms, if
imperfectly, so that we get so many directing marks.
But at sea, how vast, unbroken, infinitely dense is the
darkness of the dark nights. Nothing, still nothing; a
thousand dangers to be imagined, but not one to be
seen and avoided!</p>
<p>We feel all this, even when living on the coast. It
is a great gladness, an exciting pleasure, when, the air
becoming electric, we see in the distance, a slight line
of pale fire. What is it? We see it even at home, on
the dead fish, the Herring, for instance. But, living in
his great sea, he is still more luminous in the long trains
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
that he leaves behind him. That phosphoric brilliancy
is by no means the exclusive privilege of Death. Is it
an effect of Heat? No, for you find it at both poles,
in the Antarctic Seas, in the Siberian Seas, in ours—in
all.</p>
<p>It is the common electricity which the half-living waters
throw off in stormy weather; the innocent and
pacific lightning of which all marine creatures are then
so many conductors. They inhale it, and they exhale
it, and they restore it largely when they die. The sea
gives it, and the sea takes it back again. Along the
coasts and in the straits, the currents and the collisions,
cause it to circulate the more powerfully, and each creature,
according to its waters, takes more or less of it.
Here, immense surfaces of peaceable infusoriæ appear,
like a milky sea, of a mild, white light, which, when
more animated, turns to the yellow of burning sulphur;
there their conical lights pirouette upon their own bases,
or roll in red balls. A great disc of fire (Pyrosome)
commences with an opaline yellow, becomes for a moment
greenish, then bursts into red and orange, and at last
darkens down into blue. These changes occur with an
approach to regularity that would indicate a natural
function, the contraction and dilatation of some vast
creature, breathing fire.</p>
<p>Then on the horizon, fiery serpents writhe and glide
along an immense length—sometimes to the extent of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
twenty-five or thirty leagues. The Biphores and the
Salpas, transparent alike to sea and sulphur, are the
performers in this serpentine spectacle, an astonishing
company which disport themselves in this frantic dance,
and then separate. Separated, its free members produce
free little ones, which, in their turn light up the
horizon with their dancing and wild lights. Great
fleets, more peaceful, float over the waves of lights.
The Velelles, at night, light up their little craft. The
Beroes are triumphant as flames. None more magical
than those of our Medusæ. Is it in part a physical effect
like that which gives their serpentine motion to the
Salpas, injected with fire? Is it, as others think, and
as some observations would lead us to believe, an act
of aspiration? Is it a caprice, as with so many beings
that throw out their sparkles and flashes of a vain and
inconstant joy? No, the noble and beautiful Medusæ,
such as the crowned Oceanique, and the lovely Idonea,
seem to express gravest thoughts. Beneath them,
their luminous hair, like some sombre watch-light, gives
out mysterious lights of emerald and other colors,
which, now flashing, anon growing pale, reveal a sentiment,
and, I know not what of mystery; suggesting to
us the spirit of the abyss, meditating its secrets; the
soul that exists, or is to exist some day. Or should it
not rather suggest to us some melancholy dream of an
impossible destiny which is never to attain its end?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
Or an appeal to that rapture of love which alone consoles
us here below?</p>
<p>We know that on land our fire flies, by their fire give
the signal of the bashful yet eager lover who thus betrays
her retreat, and decoys her mate. Have the Medusæ
this same sense? We know not; but thus much
is certain, that they yield at once their flame and their
life. The fecund sap, their generative virtue, escapes
and diminishes at every gleam. If we desire the cruel
pleasure of redoubling this brilliant faëry, we have only
to expose them to warmth. Then they become excited,
flash, and become beautiful, oh, so exquisitely
beautiful—and then the scene is at an end. Flame,
love, and life, all are at an end—all evanish for ever.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VII" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE STONE PICKER.</p>
<p>When the excellent Doctor Livingstone visited the poor
Africans who have so much difficulty in defending
themselves against the Lion and the slave merchant,
the women, seeing him armed with all the protecting
arts of Europe, invoked him as their friend and providence
in these touching words—"Give us sleep!"</p>
<p>And such is the prayer which all beings in their
own language address to Nature. All desire, and all
dream of, security. We cannot doubt of that when we
note the ingenious endeavors which are made to obtain
it. Those efforts have given birth to the arts. Man
has not invented one, which animals had not previously
invented, under that strong and abiding instinct, the
desire of safety.</p>
<p>They suffer, they fear, they desire to live. We must
not assume that creatures little advanced, and as it were
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
embryonic, have, therefore, but little sensibility. The
very contrary is certain. In every embryon, that which
first appears, is the nervous system, that is to say, the
organ and capacity of feeling and of suffering. Pain
is the spur by which the creature is urged to foresight
and expedients. Pleasure serves the like purpose, and
it is already observable even in those which seem the
most cold. It has been observed that the snail, after
the painful researches of his love, is singularly happy
on meeting again the loved object. Both of them with
a touching grace wave their swan-like necks, and bestow
upon each other the most lively caresses. Who is
it that tells us this? The rigid, the very exact Blainville.</p>
<p>But alas! how largely and how widely is pain distributed!
Who has not noted with pity the painful efforts
of the shell-less mollusc, as he grovels along on his
unguarded belly? Painful but faithful image of a fœtus
untimely torn from the mother by some cruel chance,
and cast upon the ground naked and defenceless. The
poor mollusc thickens and indurates his skin as well as
he can, softens the asperities of his road, and renders
it slippery. But at every contact with the ragged or
pointed stones, his writhings and contractions only too
plainly show how great is his sensibility to pain.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding all this, she loves, does that great
Soul of Harmony which is the unity of the world; she
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
loves all beings, and by alternations of pleasure and of
pain, instructs them and compels them to ascend. But
to ascend, to pass into a superior grade, they must first
exhaust all that the lower one can furnish of trials more
or less painful, of instinctive art, and of stimulants to
invention. They must even have exaggerated their
species, perceived its excesses, and, by contrast, be inspired
with the craving and the need of an opposite
one. Progress is thus made by a kind of oscillation
between contrary qualities, which by turns are separated
from life, and incarnated with it.</p>
<p>Let us translate these divine things into human language,
familiar, indeed, and little worthy of the grandeur
of such things, but which will make them understood:</p>
<p>Nature, having long delighted to make, unmake, and
remake the Medusæ, thus infinitely varying the theme
of infant liberty, smote her forehead one morning, and
said—"I have a new and a delicious idea. I forgot
to secure the life of the poor creature. It can continue
only by the infinity of number, the very excess of its
fecundity. I must now have a creature at once better
guarded and more prudent. It shall if need be, be
timid, even to excess, but above all, it is my will that
it shall survive."</p>
<p>These timid creatures, when they appeared, were of
a prudence carried to its extremest limits. They shut
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
themselves in, shunning even the light of day. To save
themselves from the rude contact of sharp and ragged
stones, they employed the universal means, a glutinous
mucus from which they secreted an enveloping tube,
which elongated in proportion to the length of their
journey. A poor expedient, that, which kept these
miners, the Tarets out of the light and out of the
free air, and which compelled an enormous expenditure
of their substance. Every step cost them enormously;
a creature thus ruining itself that it may live, can only
vegetate—poor, and incapable of progress.</p>
<p>The next resource was not much better, temporarily
to bury themselves, going below the sands at low water,
and rising to the flood-tide; the resource of the Solen.
A varying life that, fugitive twice a day, and consequently
full of anxiety.</p>
<p>Among very inferior creatures a thing as yet obscure,
which was in time to change the world, began to appear.
The simple sea stars had in their fine rays a certain
support, a sort of jointed carpentry, and on the outside
some thorns, suckers, which could be thrust forward
or withdrawn at will. An animal very humble,
but timid and serious, seems to have profited by this
coarse specimen. It said, I imagine, to Nature:</p>
<p>"I am quite without ambition. I do not ask for the
brilliant gifts of the molluscs; I covet neither pearl
nor mother of pearl, much less the brilliant colors, the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
gorgeous array which would discover and betray me;
least of all do I envy your silly medusæ, with the fatal
charm of their waving and fiery hair, which serves only
to drown them, or give them a helpless prey to fish below
or birds above. Oh, mother Nature, I ask but one
thing, <i>to be</i>, to exist, to have life; to be one, self concentrated,
and without compromising external appendages;
to be strongly and solidly built, self centred,
and of rounded figure, as that is the figure that is least
easily taken hold of. I have but little desire to travel;
sometimes to roll from high to low water will suffice me.
Fastened to my rock, I will solve the problem which
your future favorite, man, will vainly brood over, the
problem of safety; <i>the strict exclusion of enemies, and
the free admission of friends</i>, especially water, air, and
light. I know that to achieve this, I must work hard
and work long. Covered with movable thorns, I shall
be avoided, I shall live a strictly retired life; and my
name shall be oursin, little Bear, or sea hedge-hog."</p>
<p>How superior is that prudent animal to the Polypes,
in their own stone, which they make from their own secretion,
without hard labor, indeed, but also without affording
them any safety; how superior, even to his superiors
themselves, I mean to so many <i>molluscs</i>, who
have more various senses, but are destitute of the unity
of his vertebral provision, of his persevering labor, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
of the skillful tools with which that very labor has provided
him.</p>
<p>The great marvel, however, of this poor rolling ball,
which we might mistake for a thorny chestnut, is that
he is at once <i>one and multiple</i>, <i>fixed and movable</i>, and
consists of two thousand four hundred pieces, which
separate at his will and pleasure.</p>
<p>Let us see his history of creation.</p>
<p>It was in a narrow creek of the Sea of Brittany,
where there was no soft bed of polypes and of Algæ,
such as the sea hedge-hogs of the Indian Sea enjoy, in
addition to their exemption from labor. Our Breton,
on the contrary, was in presence of great peril and difficulty;
like Ulysses, in the Odyssey, who, cast ashore,
and anon washed seaward again, endeavored to fasten
himself to the rock, with his torn and bleeding fingers.
Every ebb and flow of the tide was to our little Ulysses,
as bad as a mighty tempest; but his iron will and potent
desire made him cling so closely and lovingly to
the rock, that he became fastened to it as though the
air had been expelled from between them by the cupping
glass. At the same time his strong thorns scratched
and scratched, and endeavored to get a hold, and
one of them subdivided and formed a triple and real anchor
of safety in aid of the cupping glass, if this latter
should fail to act quite perfectly on a by no means
smooth surface.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
<p>After he had thus doubly secured himself to his rock,
he gradually comprehended that he would be a great
gainer if he could form a concavity in it, gradually dig
himself out a hole, and thus form himself a snug nest,
for the day of sickness or of age. For, in fact, one is
not always young and strong. And how pleasant it
would be, if, some day, the veteran oursin could relax
somewhat of the effort necessitated by this constant
holding on, this anchorage by day and night.</p>
<p>So he worked and worked, to make a hollow; it was
for dear life that he was working, and you may be sure
that he never relaxed. Formed of detached pieces, he
worked with five claws, which, always pushing together,
united and formed an admirable pick. His pick of
five teeth, of the finest enamel, is attached to a frame
work, delicate, but very strong, and consisting of forty
pieces, which work in a sort of sheath, playing in and
out, in the most perfect and regular manner, with an
elasticity preventing too violent shocks, and self-repairing,
in case of any accident.</p>
<p>Rarely, in the softer stone, which he holds in contempt,
but almost always in the solid rock, in the hardest
granite, it is that this heroically laborious sculptor goes
to work. The harder the rock, the firmer he feels himself
secured. And, then, in fact, what does it matter
about the length of the task? Time is of no consequence
to him, centuries are before him; supposing that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
his tools and his life should end to-morrow, another
would take his place and continue his work. During
their life, they hold but little communication, these hermits;
but in death a brotherhood exists, even for them,
and the young survivor, who shall find the work half
done, will bless the memory of the good workman who
has preceded him.</p>
<p>Do not fancy that he strikes, and strikes continually.
He has an art, a labor-saving art of his own. When
he has well attacked the layers of the rock, and well
cleaned it, he tears away the asperities as with little
pincers. A work of great patience, and one which requires
long intervals, too, in order that the water may
aid in doing the work upon the denuded parts. He then
proceeds to the second layer, then to the next, and so
on till the long, long labor is at length completed.</p>
<p>In this uniform life, however, there are occasional
crises, even as in the life of the poor human laborer.
The sea retires from certain shores; in the summer,
this or that rock becomes quite insupportably hot; and
our oursin must have two houses, one for summer, and
one for winter. A great event, that, of moving from
place to place, for a creature without feet and covered
all over with points. M. Cailland had an opportunity
of observing the conduct of the creature under those
circumstances. The weak and movable scoops which
play backward and forward, are by no means insensible
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
though he protects them somewhat by covering them
with a little soft gelatine. At length he steadies himself
on his thorns, as on so many crutches, rolls his Diogenes'
tub, and attains his port as he best may. Arrived
there, he shuts himself up again, and in the little
nest which he almost always finds partly made, he concentrates
himself in the enjoyment of his solitary and
thrice blessed security. Let a thousand enemies prowl
without, let the storm-lashed wave moan or rage, all
that is for his pleasure. Let the very rock tremble
at the dash of the breakers; he well knows that he has
nothing to fear, that it is only his kind nurse that is
making all that noise; he is safe in his cradle, and with
a glad good night, he sleeps.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VIII" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</p>
<p class="caption3">SHELLS, MOTHER OF PEARL, AND PEARL.</p>
<p>The oursin has carried the genius of defence to its utmost
limit. His cuirass, or, preferably, his fortress of
pieces, is at once movable and resisting, yet sensitive, retractile,
and capable of being repaired in case of accident;
this fortress is fast-joined and anchored to the rock,
and still farther lodged within a hollow of the rock, so
that the enemy has no means of attacking the citadel;—it
is a system of defence so perfect that it can never
be surpassed. No shell is comparable to it; far less
are any of the works of human industry.</p>
<p>The oursin is the completion of the starred and circular
creatures; in him they have their highest and
most triumphant development. The circle has few variations;
it is the absolute form; in the globe of the
oursin, at once so simple and so complicated, is the
perfection and completion of the first world.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
<p>The beauty of the world next to come, will be the
harmony of double forms, their equilibrium, the gracefulness
of their oscillation. From the molluscs even
up to man, every being in this next world is to be made
up of two corresponding halves; in every animal is to
be found (far better than <i>unity</i>) <i>Union</i>.</p>
<p>The master piece of the oursin had gone even beyond
what was needed; that miracle of defence had
made him prisoner; he was not only shut in but buried;
he had dug his own grave. His perfection of isolation
had banished him, deprived him of all connections, and
of all possibility of progress.</p>
<p>To have a regular ascent, we must commence from a
very low stage, from the elementary embryon, which at
the outset will have no other movement than that of
the elements. The new creature is the mere serf of
the planet; so completely so, that even in the egg, it
turns as the earth turns, with its double turning on its
own axis, and the general rotation.</p>
<p>Even when emancipated from the egg, growing up,
become adult, it will still remain the embryon, the soft
mollusc. It will vaguely represent the progress of the
superior lives; it will be as the fœtus, as the larvæ or
nymph of the insect, in which, folded and hidden, there
yet are the organs of the winged creature which is yet
to come.</p>
<p>One trembles for a creature so weak; even the polypus
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
though not less soft is less in danger. Having life
equally in all its parts, wounds, even mutilations will
not kill the polypus: wounded and mutilated he still
lives on, apparently forgetful of the excised parts. But
the centralised mollusc is far more vulnerable. What
a door in his ease is open to death!</p>
<p>The uncertain motion of the Medusa, which sometimes,
perchance, may save her; the mollusc, at least at
the outset, possesses but very slightly. All that is
granted to him is his sloughing or exuding a gelatine
matter, which walls him in, and replaces the cuirass of
the oursin and the oursin's rock. The mollusc has the
advantage of finding his defence within himself. Two
valves form a house, light and fragile, indeed, so much
so that those which float are transparent; in the case
of those which are to be stationary, the mucus forms a
filamentary anchoring cable, called the hyssas. It is
formed exactly as silk is from an element originally
quite gelatinous. The gigantic Iridacne, moors so fast
by that cable, that the Madrepores mistake it for an
islet, build upon it, envelope it, and strangle it.</p>
<p>Passive and motionless life. It has no other event
than the periodical visit of the sun and light, and no
other action but to absorb what comes, and to secrete
the jelly which makes the house, and will by degrees do
the rest. The attraction of the light, always in the
same direction, centralizes the view; and behold the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
eye. The secretion fixed by a constant effort, becomes
an appendage, an organ which lately was a cable, and
which by and bye will become the foot, a shapeless and
inarticulated mass, which will bend itself to anything.
It is the fin of those that swim, the pick of those that
burrow in the sand, and the foot of those who at first
rather crawl than walk. Some species arch it so that
they can make a clumsy essay at leaping.</p>
<p>Poor tribe, terribly exposed, pursued by many enemies,
tossed by the waves and bruised on the rocks.
Those of them which do not succeed in building a house,
seek a shelter in living beds; they find a tent with the
polypes, or with the floating Halcyons. The pearl-bearing
Avicule, tries to find a quiet life in the hollows
of the sponge. The Pholade, tries in his stony retreat,
to imitate the arts of the oursins, but with what inferiority!
Instead of the admirable chisel of the oursin,
which might be envied by our stone cutters, the Pholade
has but a little rasp, and to dig out a shelter for her
fragile shell, she wears out the shell itself.</p>
<p>With but a few exceptions, the moluscs know themselves
the prey of everything, and are therefore the
most timid of creatures. The Cone so well knows that
he is sought after, that he dares not leave his shelter,
and dies there, from fear of being killed. The Volute
and the Porcelain drag slowly along their pretty houses,
and conceal them as well as they can. The Casque, to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
get along with his palace, has only a little Chinese foot,
so small and so useless that he scarcely attempts to
walk.</p>
<p>Such the life, such the dwelling; in no other species
is there more complete identity between the inhabitant
and the habitation; taken from his own substance, his
house is but a continuation, a supplement of his own
body; alike it even in form and tints. The architect,
beneath the edifice, is himself its very foundation-stone.</p>
<p>A very simple thing it is for the sedentaries to remain
sedentary. The oyster, regularly fed by the sea,
has only to gape when he would dine, and sharply to
close his shells, when he has any suspicion that he may
become himself a dinner for some hungry neighbor. But
for the travelling mollusc the thing is more complicated.
He can travel, but he cannot leave behind him his beloved
house which he will need for defence as well as
shelter; and it is precisely while on his journey, that
he is most liable to be attacked. He must shelter,
above all, the most delicate part of his being, the tree
by which he breathes, and whose little roots nourish him.
His head is of little consequence, often it is lost without
the destruction of life; but if the viscera were left
uncovered and wounded, he must die.</p>
<p>Thus, prudent and cuirassed he seeks his livelihood.
Come nightfall, he asks himself whether he will be quite
safe in a wide open lodging? Will not some inquisitives
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
intrude a look—who knows—may not some one find
the way in with claw and tooth as well as glance?</p>
<p>The hermit reflects. He has but one instrument, his
foot, from that he developes a very serviceable appendage
with which he closes the aperture and behold him
safe at home for the night. His great and permanent
difficulty is this, to combine safety with connection
with the outer world. He cannot, like the oursin, utterly
isolate himself; without the aid of his instructors
and nurses, light and air, he cannot strengthen his soft
body and make his organs. He must acquire senses;
he needs scent and hearing, those guides of the blind;
he must acquire sight, and above all, he must be able to
breathe freely. Great and imperative function, that!
How little we think of it while it is easy; but what
terrible pain and agitation if it become too difficult!
Let our lungs become congested, let the larynx even be
embarrassed for a single night and our agitation and
anxiety are so extreme, so unendurable, that often, at
all risks, we have every window thrown open. With
the asthmatic, the anxiety and torture are so extreme
that when they cannot breathe freely through the natural
organ, they create a supplementary means. Air,
air, air, or death!</p>
<p>Nature, when thus pressed, is terribly inventive.
We not wonder if the poor sedentaries, stifling in their
houses, have discovered a thousand means, invented a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
thousand sorts of pipes through which to admit the vital
air. One admits air between plates around his feet,
another by a sort of comb, another by a disc or buckler,
and others by extending threads, some with pretty side
plumes, and lastly, some have on their back a little
tree, a pretty miniature aspen, which trembles continually
and at every movement inhales or exhales a breath.</p>
<p>Sometimes those most sensitive and important organs
affect the most elegant and fanciful forms; we would
say that they wish to plead, to melt, to secure mercy,
taking every form and every color. These little children
of the sea, the molluscs, in their infantine grace,
in their rich variety of colors, are their ocean mother's
eternal ornament and joy. Stern as she may be, she
has but to look on them, and she must smile.</p>
<p>But a timid life is full of melancholy. One cannot
doubt that she greatly suffers from her severe seclusion,
that fairest of the fair, that queen beauty of the seas,
the Haliotide. She has a foot, and could, if she chose,
get along, though slowly; but she dares not. Ask her
why, and she will reply: "I am afraid. The Crab is
continually watching me, and a whole world of voracious
fish are continually swimming over my head. My
cruel admirer, man, punishes me for my beauty; pursuing
me from the Indies to the Pole, and is now loading
whole ships with me at golden California."</p>
<p>But the unfortunate, though unable to go out, has discovered
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
a subtle means of procuring air and water; in
her house, she has little windows, which communicate
with her little lungs. Hunger at length compels her to
risk something, and towards evening she crawls a little
around, and feeds on some sea-weed, her sole nourishment.</p>
<p>Here let us remark, that those marvellous shells, not
only the Haliotide, but the Widow (black and white)
and the Golden Mouth (of mingled pearly and gold
color,) are poor herbivori, inoffensive, temperate,
feeders. A living, and decisive refutation, that, of
those who fancy that beauty is the daughter of Death,
of blood, of murder, of a merely brutal accumulation
of animal substance.</p>
<p>But to these, our beautiful shell-tenants, the merest
modicum of subsistence suffices. Their chief aliment
is the light which they drink in, by which they
are permeated, by which they color and tint, with more
than rainbow beauty, and variety of tint, their inner
dwelling, in which they conceal and cherish their solitary
love. Each of them is double, hermaphrodite; lover
and loved, in one. As the palaces of the East are
concealed by dark and repulsive outer walls, so, here,
also, without, all is rude, within, all is of the most dazzling
beauty; the hymeneal seclusion is lightened up by
the gleaming and many-hued reflections of a little sea of
mother of pearl, which, even when the house is closed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
to the outer light, create a faëry, a mysterious, and a
most lovely twilight.</p>
<p>It is a great consolation that when our poor prisoners
cannot have the sun, they can at least have a moon of
their own, a paradise of soft and trembling lights, ever
changing, yet ever renewed, and giving to that sedentary
life, that little variety which is absolutely needed by
every creature.</p>
<p>The poor children who work in the mines, ask visitors,
not for food, or sweetmeats, or money, or toys—all
they ask for is the means of getting more light.
And it is the same with our Ocean children, the Haliotides.
Every day, blind though they be, they feel, and
greedily welcome, the return of the light, receiving it,
and contemplating it, with the whole of their transparent
bodies; and when the light has departed, from
without, they still preserve and nurse some portion of
it within themselves. They watch, they wait, they hope
for its return; their whole little soul consists of that
hope, that watching, that eager desire, that incessant
yearning. Who can doubt that the return of the glad
light is as delightful to them as it is to us, nay, even
more so than it is to us, who have the manifold distractions
of so busy and varied a life?</p>
<p>Their whole lives pass in thinking, wishing, divining,
hoping, or regretting; their great lover, the Sun. Never
seeing him, they yet, in their own fashion, certainly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
comprehend that that warmth, that glorious light comes
to them from without, and from a great centre, powerful,
fecund and beneficent. And they love that great
deeply felt, though never seen, central light, which caresses
them, fills them with joy, floods them with life.
Had they the power, they no doubt would rush to seek
his rays. And, at least, attached as they are to their
abode, they, like the Brahmin at the door of the Pagoda,
silently offer him up their homage, at once meditative
and thrilling. First flower of instructive worship.
Already they love and pray, who say the little word
which the Holy prefers to all prayer—that <i>Oh!</i> that
heart utterance, which contents and pleases Heaven.
When the Indian utters it at sunrise, he well knows that
all that innocent world of mother of pearl, pearl, and
humblest shells, utters it with him, from the depths of
the seas.</p>
<p>I fully understand what the sight of the pearl suggests
of feeling and fancy to the charmingly untutored
heart, the woman heart, that dreams, and fancies, and
is stirred by a sweet, and strange, and uncomprehended
emotion. That pearl is not exactly a person, but
neither, on the other hand, is it exactly a thing. What
adorable whiteness; no, call it not mere whiteness, but
<i>candor</i>, virginal candor; no, not virginal, but better
still. For your young virgins, sweet and modest as they
are, have always a slight dash of young tartness, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
verdancy. No, the pearl's candor rather resembles that
of the innocent young bride, so pure, yet so submissive
to love.</p>
<p>No ambition to shine. Our pearl softens, almost suppresses,
its lights. At first, you see only a dull white;
it is only when you have taken a second and a closer
glance that you discover its mysterious iris, its exquisitely
glancing and pure light.</p>
<p>Where lived it? Ask the deep Ocean. On what?
Ask the sunbeams; like some clear spirit it lived on
love and light.</p>
<p>Great mystery! But our beautiful pearl herself explains
it. We cannot look upon her without feeling
that this creature, at once so lovely and so meek, must
for a long time have lived in quietude, waiting and
waited for, willing nothing and doing nothing, but the
will of the beloved one.</p>
<p>The son of the sea put his beautiful dream into his
shell, the shell into the mother of pearl, and she into
the pearl, which is but a concentration of herself.</p>
<p>But the pearl we are told only comes to her mother
in consequence of some wound, some continued suffering,
which withdraws or absorbs all vulgar life into that
divine poetry.</p>
<p>I have been told that the great ladies of the East,
more delicate and tasteful than our vulgar rich, shun
the diamond and allow their soft skin to be touched only
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
by the pearl. And in truth, the brilliancy of the
diamond is not in accord with the light of love. A
necklace and a pair of bracelets of fine pearls are the
harmonious and true decorations for woman; instead
of diverting the glance of the lover, they move him,
make tenderness more tender—say to him—"No
noise—let us love!" The pearl seems amorous of
woman, and woman of the pearl. The ladies of the
North, when they have once put on pearl ornaments,
never afterwards remove them, but carry them day and
night concealed beneath their attire. On very rare occasions,
if the rich fur cape, lined with white satin,
chances to slip aside, we may catch a momentary glance
of the happy ornament, the inseparable necklace. It
reminds one of the silken tunic which the Odalisque
wears close to her person, and loves so much that she
will not part with it until it is worn and torn beyond
all possibility of repair; believing it as she does to be
a talisman, an infallible love charm.</p>
<p>It is just so with the pearl; like the silk, it drinks in
and is impregnated with the very life of the wearer.
When it has slept so many nights upon her fair bosom,
the ornament is no longer an ornament, it is a
part of the person, and is no longer to be seen by an
indifferent eye. One alone has a right to know it, and
to surprise upon that necklace the mystery of the beloved
woman.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IX" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE SEA ROVERS (POULPE, &C.)</p>
<p>The Medusæ and the Molluscs are generally innocent
creatures, and I have thus far dwelt, as it were, with
them in their amiable and peaceful world. Thus far I
have met with few carnivora; and even those few killed
only in the stern necessity of hunger, and even of those
part fed only on atoms, animal jelly, life unorganized,
and scarcely commenced. As a consequence, pain,
anger, cruelty were absent. Their little souls had,
nevertheless, a ray, the aspiration towards the light
alike of Heaven and of Love, revealed in the changing
flame which illumines and rejoices the seas.</p>
<p>But, now, I have to enter into quite another world:
a world of war, slaughter, fierce pursuit, and greedy
devouring. I must confess that from the beginning,
from the first appearance of life, death also appeared;
a rapid and useful purification of the globe from the
weak and slow, but prolific tribes whose fecundity
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
would otherwise have been mischievous. In the oldest
strata we find two wondrous creatures, the <i>Devourer</i>
and the <i>Sucker</i>. The first is made known to us by the
imprint of the Trilobite, a species no longer existing,
an extinct destroyer of extinct species. The second is
known to us by a frightful remnant, a beak of almost
two feet pertaining to the great Sucker, the Leiche or
Poulpe of Dujardin. Judging from that immense beak,
this monster must have had an enormous body, and
sucking-arms of twenty or thirty feet, like a prodigious
spider.</p>
<p>Sad reflection, these murderous creatures are those
which we earliest find in the depths of the earth. Are
we then to suppose that death preceded life? No
doubt; but the soft creatures upon which these monsters
fed have perished utterly, not leaving remains or even
imprint of themselves.</p>
<p>The devourers and the devoured, were they two nations
of different origin? The contrary is more probable.
From the mollusc, form undecided, matter still fit
to be converted to any form, the superabundant strength
of the young world, richly plethoric, abounding in
alimentation, there must at an early period have proceeded
two forms, contrary in appearance, but tending
and qualified to the same end. Swelling and breathing,
and measurelessly inflating itself, the Mollusc became
an enormous balloon, an absorbing bladder, absorbing
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
all the more as it stretched the more, ever craving
and ever consuming, but toothless,—and we have the
<i>Sucker</i>. On the other hand, by the self-same force,
the Mollusc gradually developing articulated members
of which each had its shell, and hardening this shelled
creature everywhere, but especially at the claws and
mandibles formed for gnawing and grinding, to pulp or
powder, the very hardest substances became—the <i>Devourer</i>.
Let us in the first place, in this chapter, speak
of the first, the <i>Sucker</i>.</p>
<p>The Sucker of the soft gelatinous world, was himself
soft and gelatinous. Warring upon and devouring the
molluscs, he himself none the less, remained mollusc,
that is to say, still a mere embryon. There would be
something absurd, caricatural, were it not so terrible, in
this sight of a mere fœtus, soft and transparent, yet
cruel, raging, eager, breathing nothing but murder.
For he, see you, goes not to war for the mere sake of
food. He has a real passion for destroying, for destruction's
sake; whenever he has gorged himself, well
nigh to bursting, he will destroy still. Destitute of
defensive armour, his threatening snortings disguise, but
by no means quiet, his real anxiety; his real, his only
safety, is an attack. He is the veritable bully of the
young world; really vulnerable himself, and yet so terrible
to others; he sees in everything that he meets
only enemy or victim. At all risks he casts hither and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
thither his long arms, or rather his whip-lashes, tipped
with cupping glasses, and upon enemy or victim, before
the fight or the capture commences, he sends out his
stupefying, paralysing effluvia.</p>
<p>Double power. To the mechanical strength of these
outstretched arms, add the magical force of that mysterious
fluid, and a singularly acute hearing and quick eye.
You see in all these, a creature to alarm you.</p>
<p>What must it have been, then, when the early world
so lavished its wealth of alimentation, that these monsters
of the deep could feed and swell indefinitely?
They have decreased now, both in number and in size.
Yet, even lately, Rang tells us that he has seen them
big as a hogshead; and Peron has seen them quite as
large in the South Sea. The creature rolled, and
snorted in the rolling wave, with a noise to terrify, to
astonish, all meaner creatures. His arms, six or seven
feet in length, turning, twisting, writhing, and grasping
in every direction, imitated some furious pantomime,
some fantastic dance of at once furious and eccentric
serpents.</p>
<p>After these matter of fact statements, it seems to me,
that we should not be quite so incredulous, not quite so
scornful, when we read the accounts of the old voyagers;
we should not curl the lip <i>quite</i> so insolently as we
read, in Denis de Montford, that he saw a monstrous
Poulpe, grasp, with his enormous arms, lash, scourge,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
smite, stupefy with his electric lashes a fierce and
strong mastiff which, in spite of all his efforts, and his
terrible howlings, had to succumb, did succumb, <i>did</i> die
in that giant and terrible embrace.</p>
<p>The Poulpe, that terrible and living steam machine,
can accumulate such incalculable force and elasticity,
that, as d'Orbigny tells us (see his article <span class="smcap">Cephal</span>.)
it can leap from the sea to the deck of a ship. This at
once relieves our old voyagers from the charge so often
and so lightly made against them, of exaggeration and
mere romance. They told us, and it now seems quite
truly told us, that they came athwart a gigantic Poulpe
that leaped inboard, twining its prodigious arms around
masts and shrouds; and the monstrous creature would
have had possession of the craft, and would have devoured
all hands, but that these latter cut away its arms with
their axes, as they would have cut away masts in a
case of impending wreck, and the mutilated but still
threatening creature fell into the sea.</p>
<p>Some have given this creature credit for arms of sixty
feet in length; and others have reported that while
cruising in the North seas, they fell in with the Kraken,
a monstrous creature, half a league in circumference, no
doubt, one of our terrible <i>Poulpes</i>, able to embrace,
stupefy, and devour, a whale a hundred feet long.</p>
<p>The prolonged existence of these monsters, would
have endangered Nature herself, would have absorbed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
our very globe. But, on the one hand, gigantic birds
(perhaps, for instance, the <i>Epiornis</i>) made war upon
them; and on the other hand the exhausted earth destroyed
the monster by cutting off its supply of alimentation.</p>
<p>Thank Heaven, our existing Poulpes are somewhat
less terrible. Their elegant species of the present day,
the Argonaut, that graceful swimmer in its wavy shell,
the Calmar, good sailor, if ever there was one, and the
handsome Seiche, blue-eyed, and beautiful to look upon,
traverse the Ocean, hither and thither, annoying
nothing but the small creatures that they need for their
support.</p>
<p>In them we see exhibited the first approach to the
vertebral bone; they display, too, a perfect rainbow of
changing colors, that come and go—shine, fade, dazzle
and die. We may quite fairly call them the Chameleons
of the sea. They have the exquisite perfume,
ambergris, which the whale only owes to the countless
multitudes of Seiches which it has absorbed. And the
porpoises, too, make an enormous destruction of them.
Your Seiches are very gregarious. About the month
of May, they seek the coast to deposit their eggs, and
the Porpoises await them there, sure of a splendid banquet.
And your Porpoise is somewhat of a <i>gourmet</i>
though sufficiently <i>gourmand</i>; he feeds delicately,
though we cannot deny that he feeds largely. The
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
head and the eight arms are his tid-bits, tender and easy
of digestion; the rest of the carcass they may have
who come for it. Tens of thousands of these mutilated
Seiches you find upon the coast at Royan; and there,
too, you will see the Porpoises making their mighty
bounds when in chase of their coveted prey, the Seiches,
or in bacchanal enjoyment and revelling when the
prey has been taken and the banquet is over.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the strange, not to say grotesque,
appearance of its beak, the Seiche is decidedly an interesting
creature. All the various shades of the most
brilliant and various rainbow, come and go, die and reappear
on his transparent skin, according to the play
of the light as he turns now hither and now thither,
and as he dies his azure eyes look upon you with an
expression, now flashing and now fading, which seems
to rebuke you for your cruelty in killing, or to express
a regret at parting with life.</p>
<p>The general decrease of that class, so immensely important
in the past ages, is less remarkable as to the
navigators (Seiches, &c.) than in the Poulpe, properly
so called, the sad frequenter of our shores. It has not
the same firmness as the Seiche, strengthened as the
latter is by an interior bone, and it has not, like the
Argonaut, a resisting exterior, a shell to protect the
most vulnerable organs. Neither has it the kind of
sail which aids its navigation and spares it the labor of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
<i>rowing</i>. It paddles about along our shores, hugging
the shore like some timid coaster. And its conscious
inferiority teaches it habits of treachery; it is at once
timid and bold—lying in ambush until quite sure that
it can devour without the preliminary necessity of a
fight. Lying in wait in some rocky crevice, it awaits
its prey. That having passed in unsuspicious security,
your Poulpe throws out the terrible lashes, the weaker
of the prey are devoured, the stronger get loose and
escape. A man when swimming, if thus attacked, finds
no difficulty in mastering his at once insolent and imbecile
assailant. Disgusted, but not alarmed, he handles
the creature without gloves, crushes, collapses him,
and feels actually vexed with himself for having even
for an instant been provoked by an enemy so contemptible.
"Bah!" one is tempted to exclaim, on having so
easily vanquished such a thing—"Bah! You came
swelling, blowing, threatening, and after all you prove
to be only a sham, a mask rather than a being. Without
fixity, without substance, a blown-up bladder, now
collapsed, to be to-morrow a mere drop, a nameless portion
of the dark blue waters of the Sea."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_X" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</p>
<p class="caption3">CRUSTACÆ—BATTLE AND INTRIGUE.</p>
<p>If, from some rich collection of armor, of the middle
ages, immediately after examining the mighty masses
of iron in which our knights of old oppressed and half
stifled themselves, we go to the Museum of Natural
History, and examine the armor of the Crustacæ, we
shall actually feel something very like contempt for our
human skill. The former are a mere masquerade of
absurd disguises, that seem especially designed for encumbering
their warlike wearers, and rendering them
impotent. But these latter, especially the armor of the
terrible <i>Decapodes</i>, the ten-footed warriors of the waters,
are so marvellously armed that had they but the
stature and bulk of our human warriors, none of us
could dare even to look upon them. The <i>veni vidi</i> of
Cæsar, would be eternally followed by his soon-ended
<i>Vici</i>; they would not need to seize, or to strike; their
very aspect would thrill, magnetise—utterly stupefy
and subdue us.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
<p>There they are, all ready for the fight, armed at all
points. Within that terrible arsenal, offensive and defensive,
how lightly, yet how strongly are they armed.
There are the strong nippers, mandibles, ready to craunch
through iron itself, and the cuirasses, furnished with the
thousand darts, every one of which cries aloud to the foe
<i>Noli me tangere</i>. We ought to be very thankful to Nature,
that has made them thus diminutive. If only the
stature and bulk of man were given to them, who, who,
and by what means, could engage with them? Fire
arms would be in vain; the Elephant, vast and mighty,
and intelligent as he is, would have to hide; the fierce
Tiger, with lashing tail, blood-shotten eyes and fatal
paw, would seek shelter on the topmost branches of the
tallest trees, and the trice solid hide of the Rhinoceros,
would no longer be invulnerable.</p>
<p>We perceive at once that the interior agent, the motive
power of that machine, centralized within an almost
invariable convex, has, even from that single peculiarity,
a perfectly enormous force. The slender and
delicate elegance of man, his longitudinal figure, divided
into three parts, with four great and diverging appendages,
distant, all, from his centre, make him, whatever
we may say to the contrary, an essentially weak
animal. In those armors of the old knights, in the
great, telegraphic arms, and in the heavy, pendant legs,
we, at a glance, see, and sadden, as we see, the unsteady,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
uncentralized creature; halting and staggering, that
the slightest collision will beat to the earth. In the
crustacæ, on the contrary, the appendages are at once
so firmly, so neatly, and so closely, conjoined to the
short, rounded, and compacted body, that every blow,
every touch, every grasp, has the whole weight, and the
whole force and impetus of the entire mass. Even to
the extremity of its claws, every inch is instinct with
nervous energy, mighty with the whole physical force.</p>
<p>It has two brain systems, head and body; but to concentrate
its power thus, it must have no neck; head
and body must be undivided, a dual unity. Marvellous,
perfectly marvellous, simplification! The head
combines eyes, feelers, claws and jaws. When the
quick eye has discerned the enemy, or the prey, the
feelers touch, the claws grasp, the jaws crush, and, immediately
behind them, the stomach, which is itself furnished
with a strong crushing machinery, triturates and
digests whatever enters it. In an instant the prey
is seized, crushed, digested, and disappears.</p>
<p>In this creature, every organ is superior.</p>
<p>The eyes can discern, both in front, and in rear.
Convexed, exterior, and <i>en facettes</i>, they can, at a
glance, sweep almost the entire horizon.</p>
<p>The antennæ, the feelers, organs of touch and trial,
of warning and of guiding, have the sense of touch at
their extremities, of hearing and of scent, at their base.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
An immense advantage, such as we do not possess.
How would it be if the human hand could hear and
smell? How rapid and concentrated would then be
our power of observation. Divided among three senses,
each of which works independently of the other, our
impressions are, for that very reason, very often inexact
or evanescent.</p>
<p>Of the ten feet of the Decapodes, six are hands, hard,
griping pincers, and, moreover, are, at their extremeties,
organs of respiration. And in this last particular
our singularly armed warrior, by a quite revolutionary
expedient, solves the problem which so much embarrassed
our poor mollusc; how to breathe, in spite of the shell.
To this he calmly replies: "I breathe through hand
and foot. This great, this fatal difficulty of breathing,
which would so surely overcome me, I overcome by the
very same weapon with which I smite, the very same
implement by which I seize and masticate my food."</p>
<p>The chief and most potent enemies of the Crustacæ,
are the tempest and the rock. Little in the deep sea,
they almost constantly lurk along shore in waiting for
their prey. Often, as they lurk there waiting for
the oyster to open and furnish them with a breakfast, a
hard gale drives them from their ambush, and then their
armor becomes their fatality. Hard, and destitute of
elasticity, it receives the full and unmitigated shock of
every collision; dashed upon the rocks, they leave it,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
if alive, only with broken weapons and rent armor.
Happily for them, they, like the Oursin, can replace an
organ, lost or mutilated. So well do they know that
strange power, that they voluntarily shake off a claw,
if confined by it. It would seem that Nature especially
favors servants so useful. To counterbalance the infinite
fecundity of other species, the crustacæ have an
infinite power of absorption. And they are everywhere;
on every coast; ubiquitous as the seas themselves. The
Vultures, and other carrion birds, share with the crustacæ
the essential office of health preservers. Let
some large animal die, and, on the instant, the bird
above, and the crab below and within, are at work to
prevent it from polluting the atmosphere.</p>
<p>The Talitre, that small and skipping crab that we
might almost mistake for an insect, burrows in the
sands of the sandy shores. Let a tempest drive a quantity
of Medusæ or other such prey upon the beach, and
you will immediately see the sands all in motion, and
myriads of crabs swarming, leaping, hungry, and apparently
determined to clear away the spoil before the
next flood tide.</p>
<p>Large, robust, and full of wiles, the great crabs are
a very combative race. So highly are they gifted with
the instinct of war that they even resort to noise in
order to intimidate their enemies; advancing to the
fight they clash their claws together with a noise like
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
that of castanettes. Yet, they are very prudent when
they have to do with a stronger enemy. I remember
to have watched them from the top of a high rock, when
the tide was out. But, high above them as I was, they
perceived that they were watched, and speedily beat a
retreat; the warriors hurrying sidelong, as is their
wont, into their secure ambush. They resemble Achilles
far less than Hannibal. When they feel that they
are the stronger, they will attack both the living and
the dead, and the helplessly wounded man may well
dread them. It is related that, on some desert isle,
several of Drake's sailors were attacked and devoured
by these greedy creatures.</p>
<p>No living creature can fight them with equal weapons.
The gigantic Poulpe who should enlace the
smallest of the crab family, would do so at the risk of
losing his antennæ, and the greediest of fish would not
venture to swallow so hard a morsel.</p>
<p>When the Crustaceæ are large they are the tyrants and
the terror of both land and sea; their impregnable armor
enables them to attack everything. They would
multiply to such an excess as to disturb the balance of living
creatures, but that their armour itself is their great
peril and destroyer. Hard and inelastic, it will not yield
to the increasing growth of the animal and thus becomes
its prison always, and at certain periods its torture.</p>
<p>To find, despite this solid wall, the means of breathing,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
it is obliged to place the organ of respiration in
that very organ, the claw, which it most frequently
loses. To allow for the growth of its interior substance,
it is obliged—most perilous obligation!—to
submit that the hard cuirass shell shall at times be discarded;
that the creature shall have its seasons of <i>moulting</i>;
that the eyes, and the claws, and the tentacles, which
supply the place of lungs shall suffer with all the
rest.</p>
<p>A strange and pitiful sight it is to see the Lobster
writhing, twisting, struggling, to get out of its too confining
armor. So violent is the struggle that he sometimes
actually casts off his claws. Then he remains
soft, weak, exhausted. In two or three days a raw
shell covers the naked body; but the Crab does not so
easily repair damages; it takes him much longer to
renew his armor, and during that time he is the victim
of all that previously were his unspared and unpitied
prey. Even handed justice now becomes terrible to
him. The victims now have their revenge; the strong
is subjected to the law of the weak; falls, as a species,
to their level, and pays full share in the great balance
between Life and Death.</p>
<p>If one died but once in this world, there would be
less of sadness, but every living thing must partially die
daily; daily suffer moulting, that partial death which
is essential to the continuance of life. Hence, a weakness
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
and a melancholy to which we do not readily
confess. But what is to be done? The bird in its
moulting time is sad and silent; still more sad is the
poor snake when it casts its skin. We, also, in every
month, every day, every instant, are parting with portions
of our living frame, but as gently as constantly,
and only feel weakened, in those moments of dreamy
melancholy, when the vital flame is weakened, that it
may become stronger and more vivid.</p>
<p>How far more terrible it must be for the creature
whose whole external frame work must be rent asunder
and cast off. It is weak, timorous, crushed;—at the
mercy of the first comer.</p>
<p>There are crustacæ of the fresh water that must thus
partially die a score of times in every two months.
Others (the crustacean suckers) succumb to this terrible
operation, are unable to renew their armor, and
lose all power. So to speak, they resign their piratical
commission, and, coward-like, take shelter in the viscera
of the larger animals, which, in spite of themselves,
have to forage for them and to feed them.</p>
<p>The insect in its Chrysalis seems utterly to forget
itself, not only does it not suffer, but it even seems to
enjoy that semblance of death, that unconscious life,
which the infant enjoys in its warm cradle. But the
crustacæ, in their moulting time, see themselves and
feel themselves as they are, suddenly hurled from energetic
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
and terrible life and power to the most complete
impotency. They are alarmed, helpless, lost, and can
but creep under some sheltering stone, seeing nothing,
hearing nothing, feeling nothing but the terror of the
coming foe and the unpitied death. Never having encountered
terrible foe, or even serious obstacle, and
relieved from all necessity of industry by their potent
armor, they no sooner lose that than they find themselves
utterly without resource. Each might protect
the other, but they are all defenceless at the same time.
Yet it is said that, in certain species, the male does
strive to protect the female, and that if we take one we
take both.</p>
<p>That terrible necessity of moulting, and the eager research
of man, more and more lord of the shores, and
the extinction of the old species that afforded them
such abounding alimentation, have necessarily kept
down the increase of the crustaceæ. Even the Poulpe
which, being good for nothing, is neither hunted after
nor eaten, has considerably decreased in number. How
much more so, then, the crustaceæ whose flesh is so excellent
and so coveted by all creatures. They actually
seem to be aware of this. The weaker among them
resort to the grossest little rogueries to protect themselves;
they are ingenious, intriguing. This latter
epithet is the true one; they really resemble intriguers
who, without visible means, contrive to support themselves
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
upon the means of others. A kind of bastards,
neither quite fish, nor quite flesh, they make increment
alike of the living, the dying and the dead; occasionally
even of land animals.</p>
<p>The Oxystome makes himself a kind of miser, and
thieves by night; the Birgus at nightfall quits the sea
on a marauding expedition, and, for want of better,
even ascends the cocoa tree and eats the fruit. The
Dromios disguise themselves, and Bernard the Hermit,
unable to harden his exterior, seizes a Mollusc, devours
the body, and clothes himself in the shell. Thus
fitted out, he prowls at evening in search of food, and
we detect the furtive pilgrim by the noise which he
cannot avoid making as he halts and staggers along,
under the load of his ill acquired and ill fitting
armor.</p>
<p>Others, at most times, but especially in the winter,
seek the land, and burrow. Perhaps they would
change their nature altogether and become insects,
were the sea not so dear to them. As once in every
year the twelve tribes of Israel were wont to wend their
way to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles,
there are certain shores to which these faithful children
of the sea repair to pay her their homage and to consign
to her tender care their eggs, thus recommending
their offspring to her who nursed their ancestry.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XI" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE FISH.</p>
<p>It was inevitable that the free element, the Sea, should,
sooner or later, produce a creature like unto herself,
eminently free, undulating and fluid, gliding like the
wave, but with a marvellous mobility founded on an interior
miracle greater still, on an internal organization
at once delicate and strong, and very elastic, such as
no creature had previously ever approached to.</p>
<p>The Mollusc, crawling on its belly, was the poor serf
of the glebe, and the Poulpe, with all his swelling and
threatening pride, swimming badly and unable to walk
or crawl at all, was still more completely the serf of
chance. The warlike crustaceæ, by turns so high and
so low, alternately the terror and derision of all, were at
times the slave, the prey of even the weakest creatures.</p>
<p>Great and terrible servitudes those; how were they
to be remedied?</p>
<p>Strength is the very soul of liberty. From the very
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
beginning, Life seems gradually but confusedly to have
sought the creation of a central axis which should give
the creature unity, and enormously increase its strength
of motion. The rayed family and the molluscs exhibit
a presentiment, a partial sketch of it, but they were too
much led away by the insoluble problem of the exterior
defence. The covering, always the covering, was that
which constantly occupied the attention of these poor
beings. As to that one point, they produced masterpieces;
the thorny ball of the Oursin, the shell at once
open and closed of the Haliotide, and, finally, the armors
of jointed pieces of the Crustaceæ, are the very
perfection of armor at once defensive and terribly offensive.
What more could be required? It would
seem, <i>nothing</i>.</p>
<p><i>Nothing?</i> Say, rather, everything. Let us have a
creature who shall trust entirely to motion, a creature
of freedom and audacity, that shall look down upon
all these creatures as infirm, or miserably slow; a creature
that shall consider the envelope as a merely secondary
matter, and concentrate his whole strength within
himself.</p>
<p>The crustaceæ shroud themselves, as it were, in an
exterior skeleton. The fish has his skeleton within, to
which nerves, muscles, and all organs are attached.</p>
<p>This seems a fanciful invention, and one quite contrary
to good sense; to place the hard and the solid beneath
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
the thick covering of the soft! To place the bone,
so useful without, precisely where it seems it must be so
useless! The crustaceæ must needs have laughed in
derision when they first saw the short, thick, soft fish
of the Indian Ocean, for instance, without defensive armor,
having no strength save inwardly, protected only
by its oily fluidity, by the exuberant mucus that surrounds
it, and which by degrees consolidates into elastic
scales, a slight cuirass, which ever yielding, never
yields entirely.</p>
<p>It was a revolution comparable to that of Gustavus
Adolphus, when he relieved his soldiery of their heavy
iron armor, and covered their breasts only with the at
once stout and yielding buff leather. A late revolution,
but a wise one.</p>
<p>Our fish, being no longer confined like the crab or lobster,
imprisoned in armor, is at the same time relieved
from the cruel condition inseparable from that armor, the
<i>moulting</i>, with its attendant danger, weakness, struggle,
and enormously wasteful expenditure of strength. Like
the superior animals and man, he moults slowly. He economises
and hoards up strength, and creates for himself the
treasure of a powerful nervous system, with numerous
telegraphic threads that connect spine and brain. Even
when the bone is soft or absent, and the fish preserves
its embryonic appearance, he has nevertheless his great
harmony in that abundant provision of nervous threads.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
<p>We do not find in the fish the elegant weakness of
the reptile and the insect, so slender that in those parts
one can cut through them as through a thread; his segments
are within, and well protected. He uses them
for contractile power, but does not, as the less perfect
reptile and insect do, expose them to external injury.</p>
<p>Like the crustaceæ, the fish prefers strength to beauty,
and for this end has no neck; head and trunk form
one mass. Admirable principle of strength, which enables
him, in cleaving through so yielding an element as
water, to strike, at will, with a thousand fold more force
than is necessary, and then his motion is as the flight of
an arrow or the flash of lightning!</p>
<p>The interior bone, single in the Seiche, is in the fish
at once one and multiple; one for force of unity, multiple
for elasticity, enabling the muscles alternately to
contract and expand, and thus create swift motion.
Marvellous, really marvellous is that formation of the
fish, so solid without and contractile within, that inward
keel to which are attached the motor muscles which
work with an alternating shock. Exteriorly, he exposes
only his auxiliary oars, short fins which are but little
in danger, being strong, slippery, and sharp to wound,
or to scrape. How superior in all this is the fish, to
the Poulpe and the Medusa, which present to all comers
soft flesh, a tempting morsel for the crustaceæ or the
porpoise.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
<p>This true son of the water, gliding and mobile as his
mother, glides by means of his mucus, cleaves with his
head, impelled by his contractile muscles, and finally,
with his strong fins rows and steers.</p>
<p>The least of these powers would suffice, but he unites
them all; a perfect model and absolute type of swift
motion.</p>
<p>Even the bird is less mobile, seeing that he has to
perch. He is fixed for the night, but the fish, never;
even asleep, he still floats.</p>
<p>So extremely mobile, he at the same time is in the
highest degree strong and lively. Wherever there is
water, there is the fish: he is the universal creature of
the globe. In the loftiest lakes of Asia and of the
Cordilleras, where the atmosphere is so rarefied that no
other creature can endure it, the fish lives and thrives.
It is the red fish of the Gudgeon species, which thus
looks down upon all the earth. In like manner, in the
great depths, beneath the most enormous weights, live
the Herring and the Cod. Forbes, who divides them
into ten superposed beds or stages, finds them all inhabited,
and in the lowest of all, supposed to be so dark,
he finds a fish provided with eyes so admirable that he
finds sufficient light in that which seems to us the uttermost
darkness of night.</p>
<p>There is yet another privilege of the fish. Many
species, as Salmon, Shad, Eels, Sturgeon, &c., can live
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
equally in fresh water or sea water, and regularly migrate
from one to the other. Many families of fish include
both sea fish and fresh water fish, as for instance,
the Thornback.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, peculiar degrees of heat, peculiar food,
and peculiar habits, seem to confine them within certain
limits in the seas, free as that element is. The warm seas
are as a confining wall beyond which the polar species
cannot pass; and on the other hand, the fish of the warm
seas are stopped by the cold currents at the Cape of
Good Hope. We know of only two or three species
that can be properly called cosmopolitan. Few of them
frequent the open sea; most of them hug the shore, and
have favorite shores to frequent. Those of the United
States are not those of Europe. Then, too, fish have
peculiarities of taste which attach them to certain localities,
though they do not actually confine them there.
The Thornback grovels in the mud, Soles in sandy bottoms,
the Bullhead loves the high bottoms, and the Sea
Eel the rocks. The Scorpene, or flying fish, swims and
flies by turns; when pursued by fish, she darts from the
water, and for some distance sustains herself in the air;
and when pursued by birds she drops back into the
water.</p>
<p>The popular phrase, "As happy as a fish in water,"
is founded on a truth. In fine weather he floats at his
ease, enabled as he is to rise or sink at pleasure, to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
make himself a balloon more or less filled with air, and
therefore lighter or heavier. He moves in peace, rocked
and caressed by the wave, and, if he so chooses, even
sleeps as he floats. He is at once surrounded and isolated
by the unctuous substance which renders his skin
and his scales slippery and impenetrable by the water.
His temperature varies but little and is neither too hot
nor too cold. What a difference between a life so convenient,
and that which is allotted to us dwellers upon
the land; where at every step we meet with asperities
and obstacles, which fatigue and exhaust us as we toil
up or down our hills and mountains! The atmosphere
varies, and often most cruelly, with our various seasons.
For days and nights together, the cold rains pour pitilessly
down, penetrating us; at times frozen, and piercing
us with its sharp crystal points.</p>
<p>The felicity and fullness of life of the fish is shown
at the Tropics by the splendor of his colors, and at the
North by the swiftness of his motion. In Oceania and
the Indian Sea they rove and sport in the oddest forms
and colors, taking their pleasure among the corals,
and living flowers. Our fish, of the temperate and
cold seas, are potent rowers; thorough sailors. Their
slender and elongated figures give them an arrowy
swiftness and grace of movement, which might serve as
ensample to our ship builders. Some of them have as
many as ten fins which serve them, at will, as sails or
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
oars, and may be kept wide spread or close-reefed.
Their tail, that marvellous rudder, is also the principal
oar. The best swimmers have it forked, the entire
spine ends there and which contracting its muscles
gives the fish his swift motion. The Thornback has
two immense fins, two great wings to cleave the waves.
His long, supple, and slender tail is a weapon with
which to lash and divide the waters. So slender and
displacing so little water, this fish has no need of the
air bladder which supports the thicker fish. Thus
each has the peculiar provisions that fit it for its peculiar
locality and surroundings. The Sole is oval and
flat that it may glide in the sand, the Eel long and
slender that it may glide through the mud, and the
Lophies, that they may cling to the rocks, have hand
like fins that remind one rather of frogs than fish.</p>
<p>Sight is the great sense of the bird; scent is that of
the fish. The Hawk, from above the clouds, pierces,
with his glance, the deep space and marks the scarcely
visible prey below; in like manner the Shark, from the
depths of the water, scents his tempting prey, and darts
upward upon it. Those that, like the Sturgeon, rummage
the mud for food have exquisite touch. In the
watery world half darkened, and having only uncertain
and delusive lights, scent, and, in some cases, touch, must
be relied on. The Shark, the Thornback and the Cod,
with his great eyes, see badly, but have an exquisite
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
sense of scent. The Thornback has that sense in such
excess that he is provided with a veil for the express
purpose of deadening it at will, when it probably affects
his brain unpleasantly. To this powerful means of
chasing their prey, we must add admirable teeth, sometimes
like those of a saw. Some species have several
rows of them, lining the mouth, the palate, the throat,
and even the tongue. These teeth being so fine are,
therefore, fragile; and behind, therefore, are others
ready to replace them if they break.</p>
<p>At the commencement of this second book, we said
that it was necessary that the sea should produce these
terrible and mighty destroyers to combat her own too
great fecundity. Death by persevering excision and
bleedings relieved her of a plethora which, otherwise,
would have destroyed her. Against that alarming torrent
of production which we have instanced in the case
of the Herring and the Cod, those frightful multiplying
machines which would have choked up the ocean and
desolated the earth, she defends herself by the machine
of Death, the armed swimmer, the fierce and
voracious fish. Great, splendid, impressive spectacle!
The universal combat between Death and Life, which
we witness upon the land, fades into insignificance
when we compare it to that which is going on in the
depths of the sea. There, its surpassing grandeur, at
first, almost alarms us, but when we examine more
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
closely we see that all is harmonious and in marvellous
equilibrium. That fury is necessary; that dazzlingly
rapid exchange of substance, that prodigality of slaughter,
are safety. Nothing of sadness, but a wild fierce joy
seems to reign in all this. In this opposition in the sea
of two forces, that seem so inevitably destructive of
each other, the sea finds her marvellous health, her incomparable
purity, and a beauty at once sublime and
terrible. She triumphs alike in the living and in the
dead, giving to them and receiving from them the electricity,
the light which beams, flashes, sparkles everywhere,
even in the long, dark, polar night.</p>
<p>What is melancholy in the sea is not her carelessness
to multiply death, but her impotence to reconcile progress
with the excess of movement.</p>
<p>She is a hundred times, a thousand times richer, and
more rapidly fecund than the earth. She even builds
up for earth. The increase of the land, as we have
seen in the case of the Corals, is given by the sea; the
sea is no other than the parturient and laboring womb
of the globe. Her sole obstacle is in the rapidity of her
births; her inferiority appears in the difficulty, which,
so rich in generation, she finds in organizing Love.
It is melancholy to reflect that the myriads upon myriads
of the inhabitants of the sea have only a vague,
elementary, and imperfect, Love. Those vast tribes
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
that, each in its turn, ascend and go in pilgrimage towards
pleasure and light, give in floods the best of
themselves, their very life, to blind and unknown
chance. They love, and they will never know the beloved
creature in which their dream, their desire, was
incarnated; they produce multitudes, but never know
their posterity. A few, a very few of the most active,
warlike, and cruel species love after our human manner.
Those terrific monsters, the Shark and his female,
are obliged to approach each other. Nature has imposed
upon them the peril of embracing. A terrible
and suspicious embrace. Habitually they devour, eagerly
and blindly, everything that comes in their path—animals,
wood, stone, iron—anything, but in their
fierce love, they restrain their hunger. They approach
each other with their sawlike and fatal teeth, and the
female intrepidly allows the male to seize her with his,
and thus fastened together, they sometimes roll furiously
about for weeks, unwilling to separate, even though
famishing, and invincible in their fierce embrace, even
by the fiercer tempest.</p>
<p>It is affirmed that even after they have separated,
they lovingly pursue each other, the faithful male following
his mate till the birth of his heir presumptive,
the sole fruit of that marriage, and never, never devours
him, but follows and watches over him. In fact,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
in case of peril to the sharkling, the excellent farther
takes him into his vast throat, but to shelter, not digest
him.</p>
<p>If the life of the sea has a dream, a wish, a confused
desire, it is that of fixity. The violent and tyrannical
embrace of the Shark, the fury of his union with the
female give us an idea of a perfectly desperate love.
Who knows if in other species, gentler and better fitted
for families, who knows if this impotence of union, this
eternal fluctuation of an objectless voyage, is not a
cause of sadness? These children of the sea become
owners of the land. Many of them ascend the rivers
amorous with the fresh water, which they find so poor
and possessed of so little nutriment, that they may deposit
there, far from the raging waves, the hope of their
posterity. At the very least they approach the shore
in search of some sinuous and land locked creek. At
this time they even become industrious, and with sand,
mud, and grass endeavor to make little nests. A
touching effort! They have none of the implements of
the insect, that marvel of animal industry. They are
far more destitute than the bird. By sheer dint of perseverance,
without hands, or claws, or beak, and solely
with their poor bodies, they yet pass and repass over it
till they have pressed it into a sufficient cohesion, as
Coste informs us in his description of the Sticklebacks.
And what obstacles still await them! The female,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
blind and greedy, threatens the eggs, the male will not
quit them, but guards and protects them, more motherly
than the mother herself. This instinct is found in several
species, especially in the humblest, the Gobies, a
small fish, unfit for food, held in such contempt that
if, by chance, caught, it is thrown back again to the
water. Well, this lowest of the low is a tender father.
Weak, small, destitute as he is, he, nevertheless, is the
ingenious architect and laborious workman of the nest,
and constructs it unaided, save by his tenderness and
his strong will.</p>
<p>It moves one to pitying reverie, to perceive that such
an effort of the heart is arrested at the first effort of art,
and by the fatality of the world, in which its nature detains
it. We feel that that world of waters is not all
sufficient for itself.</p>
<p>Great mother that hath commenced life, thou canst
not perfect it; allow thy daughter, the Earth, to continue
the work. You see it, even in your bosom; your
children think of Earth and long for its fixity; they
approach her, offer her their homage.</p>
<p>It is for thee still to commence the series of new
beings, by an unexpected prodigy, a grandiose rough
draft of the warm amorous life, of blood, of milk, of
tenderness which will have its development in the
terrestrial races.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XII" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE WHALE.</p>
<p>"The fisherman belated at night in the North Sea," says
Milton, "saw an isle, a shoal, which, like the back of
an enormous mountain, lay upon the water, and in that
isle or shoal he fastened his anchor. The isle fled and
carried him away. That isle was Leviathan."</p>
<p>An error only too natural. D'Urmont Durville was
similarly though not so fatally deceived. He saw at a
distance what seemed a bank with breakers and eddies
all around it, and certain patches upon it looked like
rocks. Above and around this seeming bank the swallow
and the stormy petrel raced and sported. The
bank looked venerably grey, covered as it was with
shells and madrepores. But the mighty mass suddenly
moved, and two enormous columns of water which it
threw high into the air, revealed the awakened Whale.</p>
<p>The inhabitant of another planet who should descend
towards ours in a balloon and survey it from a vast
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
height would say to himself, "The only creatures that
I can discover there are from one hundred to two hundred
feet long, their arms are only twenty feet long,
but their superb tail, thirty feet, magnificently beats the
Sea, and enables them to advance with a speed and a
majestic ease which make it very evident that they are
the sovereigns of that planet."</p>
<p>And by and bye he would add: "It is a great pity
that the solid part of that globe should be deserted, or
at best peopled only by creatures so small that they are
invisible. The sea alone is inhabited and by a kind
and gentle race. Here the family is held in honor, the
mother nurses and suckles her young ones with tenderness,
and although her arms are very short she contrives
during the raging of the tempest to protect her
little one by pressing it to her vast body."</p>
<p>Whales are given to companionship. Formerly they
were seen sailing along not only in pairs, but occasionally
in large families of ten or twelve in the solitary
seas. Nothing exceeded the grandeur of those vast
and living fleets, sometimes lighted up by their own
phosphorescence, and throwing to the height of thirty or
forty feet in the Polar seas columns of water which smoked
as it rose. They would approach a vessel, peaceably
and in evident curiosity; looking upon her as some specimen
of a new and strange species of fish; and they
sported around and welcomed the visitor. In their joy
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
they raised themselves half upright and then fell down
again with a huge noise, making a boiling gulf as they
sank. Their innocent familiarity went so far that they
sometimes touched the ship or her boats. An imprudent
confidence which was most cruelly deceived! In
less than a century, the great species of the Whale have
almost disappeared.</p>
<p>Their manners and their organization are those of
our herbivora. Like our ruminating animals they have
a succession of stomachs where their nourishment is
elaborated; they need no teeth and have none. They
easily graze the living prairies of the sea, I mean the
gigantic, soft, and gelatinous, fucus, the beds of infusoriæ,
the banks of the imperceptible atoms. For such
aliments the chase is not necessary. Having no occasion
for war, they have no necessity for the sawlike
teeth or the frightful jaws of the Shark and other destructive
creatures. Boitard tells us that they never
pursue. Their food is borne to them on every wave.
Innocent and peaceable, they engulf a world of scarcely
organized creatures which die ere they lived, and
pass unconsciously into the crucible of universal
change.</p>
<p>Not the slightest connection between this gentle race
of mammiferæ, which, like our own, have milk and red
blood, and the monsters of an earlier age,—horrible
abortions of the primitive mud! The Whale, of far
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
more recent origin, found a purified water, a free Sea,
and a peaceful globe.</p>
<p>He had finished, the Globe had, his old discordant
dream of lizard-fishes, and flying dragons, the frightful
reign of the reptile; he had got out of the sinister fogs
and mists into the lovely dawn of harmonious conceptions.
Our carnivorous creatures were not yet in existence.
There was a brief time (a hundred thousand
years, perhaps,) of great gentleness and innocence, when
the Opossum and other pouched animals were on the
earth; excellent creatures, that tenderly loved their
families, that carried their young, and, in case of the
fatigue or danger of those little creatures, sheltered
them in their pouches. In the Sea appeared vast and
gentle giants.</p>
<p>The milk of the sea, its superabundant oil, its warm
animalized mucus, saturated with a marvellous power
tending to life, swelling at length into those gigantic
creatures, those spoilt children of nature which she endowed
with an incomparable strength, and with the yet
greater gift of the beautiful and warm red blood, which
now for the first time appeared.</p>
<p>That is the true flower of the world. All the pale
and cold blooded creation is languid and seemingly
heartless, when compared with the generous and exulting
life which boils with anger or love in the rich purple.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
<p>The strength of the superior creation, its charm, its
beauty, reside in that blood. With it commenced a new
youth in nature, a flame of desire, of love, and the love
of family and race; to be completed and crowned in
man by divine Pity.</p>
<p>But with this magnificent gift of red blood, the nervous
sensibility was enormously increased; the being
became more vulnerable, more sensitive alike to pleasure
and to pain. The Whale having scarcely any sense
of scent or hearing, every thing in his organization is
favorable to the sense of touch. The thick blubber
which so well protects him from the cold, does not at
all guard him against hurts. His finely organized skin
of six tissues shudders and vibrates in them all at every
blow, and their papillæ are most delicate instruments
of touch. And all this is animated and made vivid by
rich, red blood, which, even allowing for difference of
bulk, is infinitely more abundant than that of the
terrestrial mammiferæ. The Whale, when wounded,
ensanguines the ocean to a great distance; the blood
that we have in drops, is lavished upon him in torrents.</p>
<p>The female is pregnant nine months. Her milk is
sweetish and warm, like that of the human female. But
as she has always to breast the wave, her front mammæ,
if placed on the chest, would be exposed to all
shocks; they are, therefore, placed a little lower on the
belly. Here the young one is sheltered and safe from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
the shock of the wave, which is already broken, ere it
reaches him. The form, inherent to such a life, contracts
the mother, at the waist and deprives her of that
adorable grace of woman, that beauty of settled and
harmonious life, where all is tenderness. But the
Whale, the great woman of the sea, however tender she
may be, is forced to conform, in every thing, to her
continual battle with the waves. For the rest, beneath
that strange uncouth disguise, the organization, and
the sensitiveness, are the same; fish above, the Whale is
woman beneath. She is infinitely timid, too; the mere
flight of a bird will sometimes terrify her so much that
she dives so violently as to hurt herself by striking the
bottom.</p>
<p>Love with the Whale being subject to difficult condition
requires a profoundly peaceful place. Like a
noble elephant, who fears profane eyes, the Whales
love only the desert. Their meeting place for pairing
is towards the poles, in the solitary bays of Greenland,
among the fogs of Behring, and, also, no doubt, in the
warm sea which is known to exist close to the pole
itself. A solitude they must have to mate in, be it
arctic or antarctic.</p>
<p>Will that warm sea be found again? It is only to
be reached by traversing the horrid defiles which open,
close, and change, with every succeeding year, as though
to prevent the return. The Whale, it is believed, pass
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
under the ice from one sea to the other; a bold and
perilous journey by that dark road. Compelled to
rise to breathe every quarter of an hour, though they
have reserves of air which will last them a little longer,
they are much endangered as they pass through that
enormous crust with only here and there a breathing
hole. If one of these cannot be reached in due time,
the ice is so thick and solid every where else, that no
strength of the Whale could break through it; and he
would be as helplessly drowned as Leander in the
Hellespont. But the Whales know nothing about the
fate of Leander; so they boldly venture, and for the
most part pass safely.</p>
<p>The solitude is great, it is a strange scene of death
and silence for this festival of ardent and passionate
life. A white Bear, a Seal, or, perhaps, a blue Fox,
respectful and prudent, looks on from a distance. Fantastically
brilliant chandeliers and mirrors are not
wanting. Bluish crystals, huge and dazzling peaks of
ice, and masses of virgin snow, are all around.</p>
<p>What renders this Elephantine Hymen the more interesting,
is, that it is one of express consent. They
have not the tyrannous weapons of the Shark by which
he subdues his female, for on the contrary their slippery
skins separate them. In their struggle to overcome
this desperate obstacle to their happiness, one might
suppose them to be fighting. The whale-men assert
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
that they have seen this strange spectacle. The couples
in their burning transports rear themselves upright
like two vast towers, and endeavor to embrace with
their short arms. They fall down again with an immense
crash; and Bear and Man alike retreat, astounded
by the deafening sobs of the vast creatures.</p>
<p>The solution is unknown; those explanations, which
have been given, are simply absurd. What is certain
is, that, whether in the act of love or of suckling, or of
defence, the unfortunate Whale suffers under the double
oppression of its weight and its difficulty of breathing.
She can only breathe with her head above water; if she
remain below she will be choked. Is the Whale, therefore,
a terrestrial animal? Not so. If by chance she
be stranded on the coast, the enormous weight of her
flesh and blubber overwhelms her respiring organs and
she is strangled.</p>
<p>Placed wholly in the only element in which she can respire,
she is asphyxiated just as surely as if kept beyond
a certain space of time wholly beneath the water.</p>
<p>Let us speak plainly. This vast mammiferous giant
is an incomplete creature, the first poetic offspring of
creative power, which first contemplates the sublime
and then reverts to the possible and the durable. The
admirable animal was well provided as to size, strength,
warm blood, sweet milk, and good disposition. It
needed nothing but the means of living. It was made
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
without respect to the general proportions of this globe,
without respect to the imperative law of weight. In
spite of his enormous bones, beneath, his gigantic sides
were not strong enough to keep his chest sufficiently
expanded and free. Escaping from his enemy, the
water, he found another enemy in the land, and his
mighty lungs were overwhelmed, and collapsed. His
magnificent blowing apertures throwing up columns of
water thirty feet into the air, are, in themselves, proofs
of an organization infantine and rude. In throwing up
that column towards the sky the <i>panting blower</i> seems
to say, "Oh, nature, why hast thou made me a serf?"</p>
<p>The life of this creature was a problem, and it
seemed that this splendid but imperfect first draft
of the vast and the warm-blooded could not endure.
Their furtive and difficult love, their suckling amidst
the roar and the rush of the tempest, in the hard choice
between shipwreck and strangling; the two great acts
of their life rendered almost impossible, and performed
only by mightiest effort and most heroic will;—what
conditions of existence are these!</p>
<p>The mother has never more than one little one, and
that is much for her to achieve. Both she and it have
three great annoyances, the difficulty of breasting the
waves, the suckling, and the fatal necessity of rising to
the surface to breathe. The education of the young
one is a real combat. Tempest-tossed and sorely
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
beaten by the waves, the young one sucks, as it were,
by stealth, when the mother can throw herself on her
side. Here the mother is admirable. She knows that
the young one in endeavoring to draw the teat will be
forced to leave its hold; and, therefore, seizing the
favorable moment, she, as from a piston, discharges a
tun of milk into the gaping and craving mouth.</p>
<p>The male seldom quits the female. Their embarrassment
is great when the eager and cruel fishers attack
them in the person of their young one. The whale-men
harpoon the young one, well knowing that the parents
will follow it. And, in fact, they do make almost incredible
efforts to save it and carry it off; they rise to
the surface and expose themselves to the utmost danger.
Even when it is dead, they still defend it; though
so well able to dive and save themselves, they remain
upon the water in full peril to follow the floating body
of their little one.</p>
<p>Shipwrecks are common among them, for two reasons.
In the first place they cannot, like the fishes, remain
during tempestuous weather in the lower and peaceable
depths; and in the next place, whatever the danger,
they will not separate; the strong nobly share the
fate of the weak; the whole family drowns together.</p>
<p>In December, 1723, at the mouth of the Elbe, eight
females perished, and near their carcasses were their
eight males; and a similar scene was witnessed in 1784,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
at Andierne in Brittany. In the latter instance, fish
and frightened porpoises were driven on shore by the
tempest, and strange and terrible bellowings were
heard from a great family of Whales, tempest-driven,
and struggling for life. There, again, the males perished
with the females. Many of the latter were with
young and defenceless against the pitiless waves; they
were cast upon the shore to die. Two of them, in this
situation, brought forth their young with piercing
shrieks, and groans most harrowingly human.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XIII" id="BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE SYRENS.</p>
<p>Behold me once more on shore. I had enough, and to
spare, of shipwreck. I want durable races. The Cetaceæ
must disappear. Let us moderate our conceptions,
and, of that gigantic faëry of the first-born mammalia,
of milk and warm blood, let us preserve all except the
giant.</p>
<p>Above all, let us preserve the gentleness, the love,
and the love of family. Let us preserve them completely
in those humbler but kindly races into which
both elements infuse their spirits.</p>
<p>The benedictions of the Earth already begin to be
felt. On quitting the life of the fish, many things impossible
to it, easily become harmonized.</p>
<p>Thus the Whale, tender mother if ever there was
one, could grasp her nursling, but could not press it to
her breast, the arms being too high and short, and the
breast, as we have already shown, being, perforce, placed
far back. In the new creatures, which swim, but which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
also creep upon the land, such as seals, sea cows, &c.,
the breast, lest it should be hurt by the ground, is placed
upon the chest, thus foreshadowing woman, and giving
to the form and attitude, a grace most illusive at a
distance.</p>
<p>In reality, even closely examined, if it has less of
charming whiteness, the breast of the new creatures is
a true feminine breast; that globe which, swelling with
love, and with the sweet necessity of giving suck, exhibits,
in its gentle heavings, all the sighs of the heart
beneath, and invites the child to nourishment and soft
repose. All this is denied to the mother that swims and
floats, but is enjoyed by her who rests. The fixity of
the family, the constant tenderness, let us at once say,
Society, all these commence from the moment that the
child reposes on the maternal breast.</p>
<p>But how is organization to pass from creatures of the
sea to creatures of both sea and land? Let us try to
divine that transition.</p>
<p>At the outset, the parentage of the amphibious race
is evident. Many, amphibious still, to their great inconvenience,
have the heavy tail of the Whale. And
this latter, in one species, at least, conceals in its tail
the rude outlines and distinct commencements of the
two hind feet of the highest of the amphibious creatures.</p>
<p>In the seas studded with islands, continually interposing
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
land, the cetaceæ, so frequently interrupted in their
passage, had to modify their habits accordingly. Their
less rapid motion, and confined life, diminished their
bulk, and from the Whale they were reduced to the
sea Elephant, and reserving the memory of the superb
which had armed certain of the cetaceæ, in their grand
sea life, the sea Elephant still has strong, but very
harmless fore teeth. Even its masticating teeth are not
precisely either herbivorous or carnivorous. They are
but ill adapted to either diet, and must needs operate
but slowly.</p>
<p>Two things tended to lighten the Whale; his mass
of blubber, that vast mass of concentrated oil, which
floated him on the water, and that powerful tail whose
alternate strokes to right and left, urged him onward.
But all this was unfitted for the amphibious creature,
grovelling in shallow waters, or crawling on the rocks.
The fish, so agile, scorns a creature that cannot catch
him, and he consequently gets little other prey than the
molluscs, as slow as himself. By degrees, he learns to
eat the abundant and gelatinous sea wrack, which nourishes,
and fattens, but without giving the strength of
animal food.</p>
<p>Such a one we may see in the Red Sea, the Malay
isles, and those of Australia. Crawling or sitting, that
rare collossus, the Dugong, displays its chests and
breasts. He is sometimes called the Dagon of the Tabernacles,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
an inert idol, which in spite of its imposing
aspect, cannot defend itself, and which will soon disappear,
and enter into that region of fable which already
contains so many realities, at which we as stupidly, as
presumptuously, laugh. What has caused this great
change, created the terrestrial Dugong, and his brother
the Walrus? The plentiful alimentation of the generous
and fertile earth, truly pacific before the coming of
man, and doubtless, also, Love, so difficult to the Whale,
so easy in the quiet and settled life of the amphibious.</p>
<p>Love, to these latter, is no longer a thing of flight
and danger; the female is no longer the shy giant
that must be followed to the end of the world, but is
content, on her bed of sea-weed, to obey the will of her
master, whose life she makes pleasant. Few mysteries
here. The amphibious live frankly and honestly in the
face of day. The females being very numerous, voluntarily
form a seraglio. From wild, fierce poetry, we
descend to patriarchal manners and pleasures too facile.
The male, good patriarch, notable for his large head,
his moustaches, and his great front teeth, sits proudly
between his Sarah and Agar, Rebecca and Leah, and
his little flock of young ones, to all of which he is most
kind. In his quiet life, the great strength of this sanguineous
creature, turns wholly to family tenderness;
he embraces all his family, and is willing to die, if
need be, in their defence. But, alas! his strength and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
his fury serve him but feebly for even his own defence:
his enormous mass delivers him over to the enemy. He
bellows, and crawls, and is willing to combat, but unable—gigantic
failure as he is; an abortion belonging
to neither world, a poor disarmed Caliban.</p>
<p>Weight, so fatal to the Whale, is still more so to
these. Let us, then, still farther reduce the bulk, make,
the spine more supple, and above all, either do away
with that tail, or rather, let us fork it into two fleshy
appendages, which will be much more useful. This new
being, the Seal, lighter, a good fisher, getting his subsistence
in the sea, but living on the land, will employ
his life in endeavoring to return to it, to climb the rock
to which his females and their offspring await his return
from fishing. Having no tusks, like those with which
the Walrus assists himself in climbing, he presses into
the service his front and back members, clings to the
sea-weed, distending his members continually, until they
form into fingers.</p>
<p>What is finest in the Seal, what strikes you the moment
you catch sight of his round head, is the great
capaciousness of brain. Boitard assures us that, with
the exception of man, no creature has so fine a cerebral
development as the Seal. We are strongly impressed
by the aspect of the Seal, far more so than by that of
the ape tribe, whose grimaces never fail to revolt us.
I shall never forget the Seals in the Zoological Garden
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
at Amsterdam, admirable museum, so rich, so beautiful,
so well organized, decidedly one of the finest establishments
in the world. I was there on the twelfth of
last July, just after a great rain fall. The atmosphere
was heavy and sultry, and two Seals sought shelter and
coolness, swimming and playing in their pond. When
they rested they looked up at me with their velvety
eyes, and there was a mixed intelligence and melancholy
in their fixed gaze. There was no language
which we could mutually understand. Pity that, between
soul and soul, there should be that eternal
barrier!</p>
<p>The earth is the world of their greatest affection.
There they are born, there they love; thither, when
wounded, they retire to die. Thither they take their
pregnant females, form for them their beds of sea-weed,
and provide them with fish. They are very affectionate,
good neighbors, mutually defending each other;
only at their season of amours they are a little apt to
fight. Each male has two or three females that he
finds a home for on some mossy rock of sufficient extent.
That is his estate, and he suffers no intrusion
upon it. He knows how to maintain his right of proprietorship.
The females are gentle and defenceless.
If ill treated, they weep, are agitated and cast despairing
glances upon the assailant.</p>
<p>They are parturient during nine months, and nurse
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
their young during five or six months, teaching them to
swim, fish, and select the best food. No doubt they
would keep them still longer, but the husband is jealous
of his own progeny, fearing that the too weak mother
will give him a rival.</p>
<p>No doubt this brevity of education has limited the
progress which the Seal would otherwise have made.
Maternity is only complete when we come to the Sea
Cow, an excellent family in which the parents have not
the sad courage to drive away their young. The
mothers nurse them for a long time; even while suckling
a second, the mother still keeps by her the eldest,
which, though it be a male, the father never ill treats,
but seems to regard him with a love only second to
that of the mother.</p>
<p>This extreme tenderness, peculiar to that species, is
exemplified in the physical progress made in the organization.
In the Seal, a great swimmer, and in the
heavy and clumsy sea Elephant the arms still continue
to be fins; closely attached to the body are incapable
of extension. But at length the Sea Cow, the <i>Sea
Mama</i> as the negroes call her, accomplishes the miracle.
All extend and becomes pliant by a continuous
effort. Nature exerts all her ingenuity upon the fixed
idea of holding, pressing, caressing the young. The
ligaments yield and extend, the fore arm appears and
by and by appears the hand.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
<p>And then the mother has the great, the supreme
pleasure to press her young one to her breast. Here,
then, are two things which may enable these amphibious
creatures to make great progress. Already they
have the hand, that organ of industry, that essential instrument
of future toil. It must be supplied, must aid
the work of the teeth as with the Beaver, and the Ant,
will commence, at the outset, with building a home for
the family.</p>
<p>On the other hand, education, also, has become possible.
The young one rests on the maternal bosom
and, slowly drinking in her life, remains there a long
time, and to an age when he can learn every thing,—all
this depends on the kindness of the father who protects
the innocent rival. And it is that which allows
of progress.</p>
<p>And, if we might give credence to certain traditions,
progress did marvellously continue. The developed
amphibious creatures, according to those traditions, approached
nearer and nearer to the human form and
became Tritons and Syrens, men and women of the
Sea. Only, in contradiction to the fables of the melodious
Syrens, these are dumb in their utter impotency to
find a language in which to address themselves to man
and obtain his pity. These races will have perished, as
has the unfortunate Beaver which cannot speak, but
weeps.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
<p>It has been very lightly affirmed that these men and
women of the Sea were Seals. But how is it possible
that such a mistake could be made? Every species of
the Seal has been known from very early times; even as
early as the seventh century the Seal was hunted, not
only for his skin, but also for his flesh, which was then
eaten.</p>
<p>The men and women of the Sea which are spoken of
in the writings of the sixteenth century, were seen, not
merely for an instant, and on the water, but brought to
land, shown, and kept in the great cities of Antwerp
and Amsterdam in the time of Charles V. and Philip
II., and, therefore, under the very eyes of Vesale and
other learned men and eminent naturalists. Mention
is made of a marine woman who, for several years,
wore the dress of a nun and lived in a Convent where
any one might see her. She could not speak, but
worked, and could spin, knit, and sew. Only one peculiarity,
they could not cure her of,—her great love of
the water, and her incessant efforts to return to it.</p>
<p>But it will be asked—"If these creatures really
existed, how is it that we do not see them now?"
Alas! We need not seek far for the reply. They were
so generally killed! It was considered a sin to let
them live, "for they were <i>monsters</i>." This we are
expressly told by the old writers.</p>
<p>Whatever had not the known form of animality, and,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
especially, whatever approached to the form of man
passed for a <i>monster</i>, and was pitilessly dispatched.
Even the human mother of a greatly deformed child,
could not protect it; the poor creature was smothered, as
being a child of the Devil, an invention of his malice to
outrage the creation and calumniate the Deity. On
the other hand, those Syrens, too analogous to humanity,
were all the more taken and detested for a
diabolic mockery. In such horror and hate were they
held in the eyes of the middle ages that their appearance
was considered a prodigy, an omen that God permitted
to terrify sinners. People scarcely dared to name
them, and made haste to get rid of them. Even the bold
sixteenth century still believed them to be men and
women in shape, but Devils in reality, and not even to
be touched, excepting with the harpoon. They had
become very rare when miscreants made a profit of
keeping and exhibiting them.</p>
<p>But do there now exist any remains, any whole, or
even partial, skeletons of these creatures? We shall
know that, when the Museums of Europe shall throw
open to our view the whole of their immense collections.
I am aware that room is wanting for that; and
it is always likely to be wanting, if we need a palace.
But the most simple building, if it only be sufficiently
spacious and weather tight, would serve to hold such
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
collections, and needs not to be at all costly. Hitherto,
we have only seen mere specimens and selections.</p>
<p>Let us add that stuffed amphibious creatures, to give
us a real idea of them, should be so placed as to exhibit
<i>these monsters</i> in the attitudes of their actual life.
Let the maternal Seal, or the Sea Cow, be seen on its
rock, as a Syren, in the first use of her hand and
pressing her little one to her breast.</p>
<p>Is this to affirm that these creatures might have ascended
to us? Or that we have descended from them?
Mallet supposed so, but I cannot see the least probability
in either.</p>
<p>The Sea, no doubt, commenced everything. But it
is not from the highest marine animals, that has proceeded
the long parallel series of terrestrials that is
culminated and crowned in Man. They were already
too fixed, too special, to form the first rude sketch of a
nature so different. They had carried far, almost exhausted,
the fecundity of their species. In that case
the elders perish; and it is very low down in the obscure
juniors of some parent class that the new series
commences that is to ascend so much higher. [See
notes at the end of the volume.]</p>
<p>Man was not their son, but their brother—a terribly
tyrannical brother.</p>
<p>See him at length arrive, the active, the ingenious,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
the cruel monarch of the world! My book grows
brighter, clearer. But what does it now proceed to
exhibit? Alas! What sad things must I now draw
into that broad, bright light! This creature, this
tyrannical sovereign, can create a second nature within
Nature. But what has he done with the first, with his
mother, and his nurse? With the very teeth that she
has given him, he has cruelly gnawed her bosom!</p>
<p>How many animals that lived peaceably, were becoming
civilized, began even to practise some of the arts,
are now hunted and terrified into the condition of mere
brutes? The Ape-kings of Ceylon, whose sagacity
was so well known in India, and that Brahmin of the
creation, the Elephant, have been chased, subdued into
the state of mere beasts of burthen.</p>
<p>The freest of beings, that formerly sported so joyously
and harmlessly in the sea, those affectionate Seals,
those gentle Whales, the pacific pride of the Ocean,
have fled to the polar seas, the terrible world of ice.
But they cannot all support, for long, so hard a life;
in a brief time they will all have disappeared.</p>
<p>An unfortunate race, the Polish peasants, have learned
to understand the intelligence of the dumb exile
which has taken refuge in the lakes of Lithuania. The
Poles say—"Woe to him who makes the Beaver
weep."</p>
<p>That artist-animal has become a timid beast, which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
knows nothing and can do nothing. The few that still
survive in America, still retire farther and farther from
the vicinage of man. A traveller lately found one, far,
very far off, beyond the great lakes. It was timidly
resuming its traditional labors, and had commenced
building a house for its family. When it saw a man, it
dropped the wood on which it was working; it did not
even dare to escape, but burst into tears.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_THIRD" id="BOOK_THIRD"></a>BOOK THIRD.</p>
<p class="caption3">CONQUEST OF THE SEA.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a><br /><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_I" id="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE HARPOON.</p>
<p>"The Sailor who sights Greenland," says Captain John
Ross, with a grave simplicity, "finds nothing to delight
him with the sight." I can very well believe it. In
the first place, it is an iron-bound coast of most pitiless
aspect, whose dark granite does not even preserve a
vestment of snow. Everywhere else, Ice; not a trace
of vegetation. That desolate land which hides the
Pole from us, seems a veritable land of Famine and of
Death.</p>
<p>During the brief time when the water remains unfrozen,
one might contrive to live there; but the place
is frozen up for nine months in the year, and during all
that time, what is to be done? And what can one get
to eat? One can scarcely even search for food. The
night lasts for months together, and at times the darkness
is so dense that Kane, surrounded by his dogs,
could only discover them by the humid warmth of their
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
breath. In that long, long, darkness, on that sterile
land, clothed in impenetrable ice, there wander, however,
two Hermits, who persist in living in that land of
horror. One of these is the fishing Bear, a bold and
eager prowler, in rich fur, and in so thick an under
vestment of fat, that he can for a long time defy both
cold and hunger. The other, a grotesque creature,
looks, when seen from a distance, like a fish reared upwards,
standing on the tip of its tail; a fish clumsily
and awkwardly built, and having long hanging fins.
But this seeming fish is a man. Each scents the other,
the brute and the man; both are fierce with hunger,
yet the Bear sometimes declines the combat, and retreats
before the fiercer, and still more famished, man.</p>
<p>A famishing man is very terrible in his cruel courage.
With no other weapon than a sharpened bone, our
Greenlander pursues the enormous Bear. But he would
have long since perished of famine, had he no other
food than his terrible compatriot. He saved himself
from death only by a crime. The earth affording nothing,
he turned his attention to the Sea, and as it was
closed by the ice, he found nothing there to kill except
his gentle acquaintance the Seal. In him he found the
oil without which he would be dead of cold, even sooner
than of hunger.</p>
<p>The day dream of the Greenlander is that at his
death he will pass to the Moon, where he will have
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
wood, fire, the light of the hearth. Here below, in
Greenland, oil supplies the place of all these. He
drinks it, in huge draughts, and is at once warmed and
nourished.</p>
<p>A great contrast between that man and the somnolent,
amphibious creatures, that, even in that climate,
can live without any very severe suffering! The gentle
eye of the Seal, sufficiently indicates that. Nursling of
the Sea he is always, in connection with her, and there are
always clefts in the ice, at which the excellent swimmer
knows how to provide himself with food. Heavy and
clumsy as we may take him to be, he can adroitly mount
on a piece of ice and steer himself in search of a convenient
fishing place. The water, thick with molluscs,
and fat with animated atoms, richly nourishes the fish,
for the use of the Seal, who, having well filled himself,
returns to his rock, and sleeps too soundly to feel the
cold, or to fear anything.</p>
<p>The man's life in Greenland, is the very contrary of
this. He seems to be there in spite of Nature, an accursed
being, upon whom everything makes pitiless war.
Looking upon the photographs that we have of the Esquimaux,
we can read their terrible destiny in the fixity
of their gaze, and in the harsh, dark eye; black as
midnight. They look as though petrified by perpetually
seeing before them the vision of an infinite wretchedness.
That gazing upon eternal terror, has hidden
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
beneath a mask of iron the man's strong intelligence,
which, however, is rapid and full of the expedients suggested
by the endless dangers and sufferings of such a
life.</p>
<p>What was he to do. His family was famishing, his
children cried for bread, and his wife shivered upon
the snow. The North wind, pitilessly assailed them all
with mingled hail and snow, that horrid pelting which
blinds, stupefies, deprives one of sense and voice. The
Sea was frozen up; so, fish was out of the question.
But the Seal was there, and how many fish there were
in one Seal; what an accumulation of the richest oil!
The Seal was there, defenceless, sleeping. Nay, had he
even been awake, he would not have tried to escape.
He is like the Sea Cow; you must beat him if you wish
to drive him away. Take one of their young and it is
in vain that you throw him into the Sea, he will get out
and still follow you, gentle and attached as your favorite
dog. This facile, this affectionate, trait in the creature's
character, must have terribly troubled the man
who first thought of killing such a creature; must have
made him hesitate and resist the temptation. But at
length cold and famine got the upper hand, and he
committed the assassination; from that moment he was
rich.</p>
<p>The flesh nourished the famishing people, the oil
served to warm and cheer them, and the bone and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
sinews served for many domestic uses, while the skin
served to clothe them. And what was still more useful
was, that by industriously sowing the skins together
they made a vehicle, at once light, and strong, and
water proof, which the man called his canoe, and in
which he dared to put out to sea.</p>
<p>A miserable little vehicle it was; long, slender, and
weighing scarcely anything. But it was every where
very firmly closed up, except an opening in which the
rower seated himself, drawing the skin tightly around
his waist. One would suppose that such a craft must
upset and be swamped; but nothing of the sort occurs.
It darts like an arrow over the crest of the wave, disappears,
reappears, now in the eddies, now between the
icebergs.</p>
<p>Man and boat are one; a marine entity; an artificial
fish. But how inferior is this artificial fish to the
true one! He has not the floating bladder, which
enables the fish to make itself lighter or heavier as the
occasion may demand. Still more, the man has not
the vigorous motion, the lively contraction and expansion
of the spine to communicate such power to the strokes
of the tail, nor has he the oil which, being so much
lighter than water, will always ride above the waves.
What the man best imitates is the fin, but even that
only imperfectly. The man's fins, his oars, are not attached
to his body, but, moved by his long arms, are
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
weak compared to the fin, and, moreover, soon fatigue
the rower. What is it that makes amends for so much
of inferiority in the means of the man? His terrible
energy, his vivid reason which, from beneath that fixed
and melancholy countenance, flashes out from time to
time, invents, resolves, and finds an instant remedy for
all the deficiences which, in this floating skin, momentarily
threaten him with death.</p>
<p>Frequently our rower is stopped by a mass of ice
which peremptorily refuses him a passage. Then comes
a new expedient, the parts are changed on the instant.
Hitherto the canoe has carried the man; now the man
carries the canoe. He takes it on his shoulder and
traverses the icy portage till he comes again to open
water, the ice crackling beneath him as he crosses it.
Occasionally icebergs, floating, and terrible mountains,
are so close that they leave between them only a narrow
passage which our man passes through at the risk
of being in an instant crushed, flattened between them.
Those icy walls now widen, now contract, the space between
them; they may, at any moment, come together
with a force that would crush a seventy-four, to say
nothing about our poor Greenlander in his poor skin
canoe. Such a fate did, in fact, once occur to a tall
ship; she was cut in two, flattened, crushed; by the
coming together of two icebergs.</p>
<p>These Greenlanders tell us that their ancestors were
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
Whale fishers. They were less wretched then, more
ingenious, and better provided. No doubt they had iron;
procured probably from Norway or Iceland. Whales
have always been very numerous in the Greenland seas.
A grand object of desire to those to whom oil is a
thing of the very first necessity! The fish give it by
drops, the Seal in waves—the Whale in mountains!
He was truly a man, and a bold one, who first, with his
poor weapons, with the sea howling at his feet, and the
darkness closing around him, dared to pursue the
Whale! A bold man, he, who trusting to his courage,
the strength of his arm and the weight of his harpoon,
first believed that he could pierce that mighty mass of
blubber and flesh and convert it to his own profit!—the
man who first imagined that he could attack the Whale
and not perish in the tempest that would be raised by
the plunges and terrific tail-blows of the astonished
and suffering monster! And, as if to crown his audacity,
the man next fastened a line to his harpoon, and
braving still more closely the frightful shock of the
agonized and dying giant, never once feared that that
giant might plunge headlong into the deep, taking with
him harpoon, line, boat,—and man!</p>
<p>There is still another danger, and no less terrible. It
is that instead of meeting the common Whale, our man
should fall in with the Cachalot, that terror of the seas.
He is not very large, perhaps not more than from sixty
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
to eighty feet. But his head alone measures about a
third; from twenty to twenty-five feet. In case of
such a meeting, woe to the fisher; he would become the
chased instead of the chaser, the victim instead of the
tyrant. The Cachalot has horrible jaws, and no fewer
than forty-eight enormous teeth; he could with ease devour
all; both boat and man. And he seems always
drunk with blood. His blind rage so terrifies all the
other Whales that they escape, bellowing, throwing
themselves on the shore, or striving to hide themselves
in the sand. Even when he is dead they still fear him
and will not approach his carcass. The fiercest species
of the Cachalot is the Ourque or Physetene of the ancients,
which is so much dreaded by the Icelanders,
that when they are on the sea they will not so much as
name him lest he should come and attack them. They
believe, on the other hand, that a species of Whale, the
Jubarte, loves and protects them, and provokes the
monster in order to save them from his fury.</p>
<p>Many think that the first who undertook so perilous
a task as that of Whale fishing must have been eccentric
hot heads. According to those who think so, that
perilous chase could never have originated with the
prudent men of the North, but must have been initiated
by the Basques, those daring hunters and fishers who
were so well accustomed to their own capricious sea,
the Gulf of Gascony, where they fished the Tunny.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
Here they first saw the huge Whales at play and pursued
them, frenzied by the hope of such enormous prey,
and pursued them still, onward and onward, no matter
whither; even to the confines of the pole.</p>
<p>Here the poor Colossus fancied it must needs be
safe, for it could not fancy any one would be desperate
enough to follow it thither, and so it went tranquilly
to sleep. But our Basque mad-caps approached it
stealthily and silently. Tightening his red belt around
his waist, the boldest and most active of the Basque
sailors leaped from the deck right on to the back of the
sleeping monster, and, fearlessly or carelessly, drove the
harpoon home to the very eye. Poor Whale!</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_II" id="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</p>
<p class="caption3">DISCOVERY OF THE THREE OCEANS.</p>
<p>Who opened up to men the great distant navigation?
Who revealed the Ocean, and marked out its zones and
its liquid highways? Who discovered the secrets of
the Globe? The Whale and the Whaler!</p>
<p>And all this before Columbus and the famous gold
seekers, who have monopolized all the glory, found
again, with much outcry about their discovery, what
had so long before been discovered by the Whalers.</p>
<p>That crossing of the Ocean which was so boastfully
celebrated in the fifteenth century, had often been made,
not only by the narrow passage between Iceland and
Greenland, but also by the open sea; for the Basques
went to Newfoundland. The smallest danger was the
mere voyage, for these men, who went to the very end
of the then world, to challenge the Whale to single
combat. To steer right away into the Northern seas,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
to attack the mighty monster, amid darkness and storms,
with the dense fog all around and the foaming waves
below, those who could do this, were, believe it well,
not the men to shrink from the ordinary dangers of the
voyage.</p>
<p>Noble warfare; great school of courage! That Fishery
was not then, as it is now, an easy war to wage,
made from a distance, and with a potently murderous
machine. No; the fisher then struck with his own strong
hand, impelled and guided by his own fearless heart;
and he risked life to take life. The men of that day
killed but few Whales, but they gained infinitely in
maritime ability, in patience, in sagacity, and in intrepidity.
They brought back less of oil; but more, far
more, of glory.</p>
<p>Every nation has its own peculiar genius. We recognize
each by its own style of procedure. There are
a hundred forms of courage, and these graduated varieties,
formed, as it were, another heroic game. At the
North, the Scandinavian, the ruddy race from Norway
to Flanders, had their sanguine fury. At the South,
the wild burst, the gay daring, the clear-headed excitement,
that impelled, at once, and guided them over the
world. In the center, the silent and patient firmness of
the Breton, who, yet, in the hour of danger could display
a quite sublime eccentricity. And lastly, the Norman
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
wariness, considerately courageous; daring all, but
daring all for success.</p>
<p>Such was the beauty of man, in that sovereign manifestation
of human courage.</p>
<p>We owe a vast deal to the Whale. But for it, the
fishers would still have hugged the shore; for almost every
edible fish, seeks the shore, and the river. It was
it that emancipated them, and led them afar. It led
them onward, and onward still, until they found it, after
having almost unconsciously, passed from one world
to the other. Greenland did not seduce them, it was
not the land that they sought, but the sea, and the
tracks of the Whale. The Ocean at large is its home,
and especially the broad and open Sea. Each species
has its especial preference for this or that latitude, for
a certain zone of water; more or less cold. And it was
that preference which traced out the great divisions of
the Atlantic.</p>
<p>The tribe of inferior Whales, that have a dorsal fin,
(Baleinopteres) are to be found in the warmest, and in
the coldest seas; under the line, and in the polar seas.
In the great intermediate region, the fierce Cachalot
inclines towards the South, devastating the warm waters.
On the contrary, the Free Whale fears the warm
waters; we should rather say that they did, formerly,
fear them;—they have become so scarce! Especially
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
affecting, for their food, the molluscs, and other forms
of elementary life, they sought them in the temperate
waters, a little to the northward. They are never
found in the warm, southern current; it was that fact
that led to the current being noticed, and thence to the
discovery of the <i>true course from America to Europe</i>.
From Europe to America, the trade winds will serve
us.</p>
<p>If the Free Whale has a perfect horror of the warm
waters, and cannot pass the Equator, it is clear that he
cannot double the southern end of America. How
happens it, then, that when he is wounded on one side
of America, in the Atlantic, he is sometimes found on
the other side of America, and in the Pacific? <i>It
proves that there is a north-western passage.</i> Another
discovery which we owe to the Whale, and one which
throws a broad light alike on the form of the globe, and
the geography of the seas!</p>
<p>By degrees, the Whale has led us everywhere. Rare
as he is at present, he has led us to both poles, from the
uttermost recesses of the Pacific to Behring's strait,
and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic waters. There
is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war
ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees
beyond the southern points of America and Africa. No
one visits that region but the Whalers.</p>
<p>Had they chosen, the magnates of the earth might
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
much earlier have made the discoveries of the fifteenth
century. They should have addressed themselves to
the sea rovers, to the Basques, to the Icelanders, to the
Norwegians, and to our Normans. For very many reasons,
they could not venture to do so. The Portuguese
were unwilling to employ any but men of their
own nationality, and formed in their own school.
They feared our Normans, whom they chased and dispossessed
from the coast of Africa. On the other hand,
the kings of Castile always felt suspicious of their subjects,
the Basques, whose privileges rendered them a
kind of republic within a monarchy, and who, moreover,
were well known to be both bold and dangerous.
It was this feeling which caused these princes to fail, in
more than one enterprise. We need mention only one
of them, the miserably ruined Armada, so proudly and
absurdly called the <i>Invincible</i>. Philip II, who had two
veteran Basque Admirals, gave the command of the Armada,
to a Castilian. The advice of the veterans was
neglected, and thence the disaster.</p>
<p>A terrible disease broke out in the fifteenth century.
The hunger, the thirst, the raging thirst for gold.
Kings, priests, warriors, people, all cried aloud for
gold. There was no longer any means of balancing income
and expenditure. False money, cruel persecutions,
atrocious wars, all and every thing, were employed,
but still the cry was for gold, and the gold was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
not forthcoming. The alchemists confidently promised
that they would soon make it; but it was to be waited
for, that gold; still, still, it was not forthcoming. The
treasury became furious as a hungry Lion, devoured the
Jews, devoured the Moors, and of all that mighty devouring
there was not a morsel left between the teeth
of the still gold-hungry nations.</p>
<p>The peoples were quite as eager as the kings. Lean
and sucked to the very bone, they begged, they prayed,
they implored, for a miracle that would bring down
gold from Heaven.</p>
<p>We all know the story of Sinbad the Sailor, that
capital story in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. The poor porter,
Hindbad, bending under a load of wood, stops before
the doors of Sinbad's palace, to listen to the music, and
bitterly complains of the contrast between the lot of
the poor porter Hindbad, and that of Sinbad, the returned,
renowned, and magnificently rich Sinbad. But
when the enriched sailor related all the perils he had
undergone, and all the sufferings he had endured,
Hindbad stood aghast at the tale. The entire effect of
the story is to exaggerate the dangers of the great
game, the vast lottery of travelling, but also to exaggerate
the profits that may be made by it, and to discourage
steady and humble industry.</p>
<p>The legend, which, in the fifteenth century, influenced
so many hearts, and turned so many brains, was a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
rehash of the fable of the Hesperides, an Eldorado, a
land of gold, which was located in the Indies; a terrestrial
paradise, still existing here below. The only
difficulty consisted in finding that same golden land.
They did not care to seek it in the North, which was
the reason why so little use was made of the discovery
of Newfoundland and Greenland. In the South, on the
contrary, gold dust had already been found in Africa.
That was encouraging.</p>
<p>The learned dreamers of a pedantic century heaped
up texts and commentaries, and the discovery, by no
means difficult in itself, was rendered so, by dint of
lectures, reflections, and utopian dreams. Was this
land of gold, Paradise, or was it not? Was it at our
antipodes? and, in fact, have we any antipodes? And
at this last question all the Doctors, all the men of the
black robe, stopped the learned quite short, and reminded
them that upon that point, the Church was quite positive;
the heretical doctrine of the Antipodes having
been formally and expressly condemned. Behold a
serious difficulty! Our learned dreamers were stopped
short.</p>
<p>But why was it so difficult to discover the already
discovered America? The reason seems to be that the
discovery was at once hoped for and dreaded.</p>
<p>The learned Italian bookseller, Columbus, felt quite
satisfied upon the subject. He had been in Iceland to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
collect traditions, and on the other hand the Basques
told him all that they knew about Newfoundland. A
Gallician had been cast away there and had lived
there. Columbus selected for his associates the Pinçons,
Andalusian pilots, who are with much probability
supposed to be identical with the Pinçons of Dieppe.
We say that this is very probable because our Basques
and Normans, subjects of Castile, were intimately connected.
They are the same who, under the name of
Castilians, were led by the Norman Bethencourt to the
famous expedition of the Canaries. Our kings conferred
privileges on the <i>Castilians</i> settled at Honfleur and
Dieppe; and, on the other hand, the men of Dieppe had
trading establishments at Seville. It is not certain that
a Dieppois found America four years before Columbus,
but it is about certain that these Pinçons of Andalusia
were Norman privateers.</p>
<p>Neither Basques nor Normans could obtain authority
to act under the commission of Castile. It was an
able and eloquent Italian, a persistent Genoese, who
seized upon the fitting moment, and used it, and set all
scruple aside,—that moment when the ruin of the
Moors had cost so dear to Castile, and when the cry of
Gold, Gold, or we perish, became louder, more piteous,
and more unanimous, than ever. That moment
was when victorious Spain shuddered as she counted
the cost, paid and unpaid, of her wars of the crusade
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
and the Inquisition. The Italian seized upon that lever
and used it most unscrupulously; becoming most devout
among the devout. More apparently bigoted than
the Bigots themselves, he pressed the very Church into
his service. Isabella was reminded of the great sin and
scandal of leaving whole nations of Pagans still in the
valley of the shadow of death; and it was particularly
pressed upon her observation, that to discover the golden
land, was the one thing needful to acquiring the
ability to exterminate the Turk and to recover Jerusalem.</p>
<p>It is well known that of three ships the Pinçons
shipped two, and commanded them, and they led the
way. One of them, indeed, mistook his course, but the
others, Francis Pinçon and his younger brother Vincent,
pilot of the vessel <i>Nina</i>, signalled to Columbus, on
the 12th of October, 1492, to steer to the south-west.
Columbus, who was on a westerly course, would have
encountered the gulf stream in its fullest force, and
directly thwart hawse, and he would have crossed that
liquid wall only with the greatest difficulty. He would
have perished, or would have made such little way
that his discouraged crew would have mutinied. On
the contrary, the Pinçons, who probably had collected
some traditions on the subject, steered as though they
were well acquainted with the current; they did not
attempt to cross it in its force, but keeping well to the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
southward, crossed without difficulty and made the exact
spot where the trades blow directly from Africa to
America in the latitude of Haiti. This is proved from
the journal of Columbus himself, who candidly avows
that he was guided by the Pinçons.</p>
<p>Who first saw America? One of Pinçon's sailors, if
we may put any confidence in the report of the royal
enquiry of 1513.</p>
<p>From all this it would seem pretty plain that a good
share of both the glory and the gain ought to have been
awarded to the Pinçons. They thought the same, and
commenced legal proceedings, but the king decided in
favor of Columbus. Why? Apparently because the
Pinçons were Normans, and Spain preferred to recognize
the right of a Genoese, without national feeling,
than that of French subjects of Louis XII, and of
Francis I, to whom, as French subjects, they might some
day, from fear or favor, transfer their rights. One of
the Pinçons died of despair, caused by this very manifestly
unjust decision.</p>
<p>But still, who had overcome the great obstacle of
religious repugnance? Whose eloquence, tact, and
perseverance, in fact set the expedition fairly afloat?
Columbus, and Columbus alone. He was the real author
of the enterprise and he was also its heroic conductor,
and he merits the glory which his posterity
preserves and ever will preserve for him.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p>
<p>I think with M. Jules de Blosseville (a noble heart
and a good judge of great and heroic things) that in
all these discoveries the only real difficulty was the circumnavigation
of the globe, the enterprise of Magellan
and his pilot, the Basque, Sebastian del Cano. The
most brilliant, but at the same time the easiest, was the
crossing the Atlantic, catching the trade wind, and
thus getting to America far south of the point at which
it had long before been discovered at the North.</p>
<p>The Portuguese did a far less extraordinary thing in
taking an entire century to discover the Western coast
of Africa. Our Normans, in a very brief space had
discovered the half of it. In spite of all that is said
about the laudable perseverance of Prince Henry, in
establishing the Lisbon school, the Venetian Cadamosto
clearly proves the want of ability of the Portuguese
pilots. They no sooner had one at once bold and highly
gifted, in the person of Bartholomew Diaz, who
doubled the Cape, than they replaced him by Gama, a
noble of the king's household, and, above all, a soldier.
The truth is, that the Portuguese cared more about conquests
to make, and treasure to gain, than about discoveries,
properly so called. Gama was brave as brave
could be, but he was only too faithful to his orders to
suffer no other flag in the same seas. A ship load of
Pilgrims from Mecca, whom he barbarously murdered,
exasperated all the hates, and augmented, throughout
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
the East, that horror of the very name of Christian,
which more and more closed Asia, alike against discoverers,
for the sake of discovery, and adventurers for
the sake of plunder.</p>
<p>Is it true that Magellan, before his great enterprise,
had seen the Pacific laid down upon a globe by the
German, Behaim? No; that globe has never been
produced. Had he seen, in the possession of his master,
the king of Portugal, a chart which had it so laid
down? It has been said, but never proved. It is far
more probable that some of the adventurers who, already,
for twenty years, had been traversing the American
continent, had seen the Pacific, not on globes or
charts, but with their own eyes. That report, which
was circulated, spread admirably well with the theoretical
calculation of such a counterpoise, necessary to our
hemisphere, and to the equilibrium of the globe.</p>
<p>There is not a more terrible biography than that of
Magellan. Throughout, we have nothing but combat,
far voyages, flights, trials, attempted assassination, and
at length, death, among the scourges. He fought in
Africa, he fought in the Indies, and he married among
the brave but ferocious Malays;—whom, by the way,
he seems not a little to have resembled.</p>
<p>During his long residence in Asia, he collected all
possible information, preparatory to his great expedition,
to find the way by America, to the Spice Islands,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
the Moluccas; thus getting spices so much cheaper than
by the old course. His original idea of the enterprise,
was, thus, an altogether commercial one. To lower the
price of pepper, was the primitive inspiration of the
most heroic voyage ever made on this globe!</p>
<p>The true court spirit of intrigue, reigned in Portugal
in full power over everything. Magellan finding himself
ill treated there, went over to Spain, where Charles
V. magnificently furnished him with five ships, but not
choosing to put full confidence in a Portuguese malcontent,
the king associated with Magellan a Castilian.
Magellan sailed between two dangers, the jealousy of
the Castilian, and the vengeance of the Portuguese,
who sought to assassinate him. He soon had a mutiny
in the fleet, and displayed, in crushing it an indomitable
heroism, and no less barbarity. The mutineers
he savagely put to death, and his Castilian colleague he
put into irons. To increase his troubles, some of his
vessels were wrecked. His people were unwilling to
proceed with him, when they saw the desolate aspect of
Cape Horn, the truly discouraging aspect of Terra-del-Fuego,
and Cape Forward. The islands, which form,
under the name of Cape Horn, the southern point of
America, seem to have been violently rent from the
continent by the fury of many volcanoes, and suddenly
cooled. As the result, they present a frightfully heterogeneous
mass of sharp peaks, huge blocks of granite,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
of lava, and of basalt, all these, grotesquely, yet frightfully,
arranged, in frowning confusion, and clothed in
ice and snow.</p>
<p>All had quite enough of this at a single glance, and
bold Magellan's word was—"Onward!" He filled
away his sails, steered now to starboard, now to larboard,
then to starboard again, and at length found
himself in that boundless sea which was then so <i>Pacific</i>
that it then received the name which it has ever since
borne; though all who have sailed upon it, well know
that at times, it can comport itself in an anything rather
than pacific style.</p>
<p>Magellan at length perished in the Philippines. Four
vessels were lost. The only one which survived, was
the Victory, whose crew was reduced to thirteen men.
But among them was the great and intrepid Pilot, the
Basque, Sebastian, who, in 1521, returned to Spain, the
first of mortal men who had been completely round the
globe.</p>
<p>Nothing could be grander. The sphericity of the
globe was thus made matter of certainty. That physical
marvel of water uniformly extended over a globe,
and constantly adhering to it, that strange mechanical
postulate, was fully demonstrated. The Pacific was at
length known, that grand, and till then mysterious laboratory,
in which, far from our ken, Nature so profoundly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
labors in life-creating and life-nurturing, making
new rocks, new islands, new continents.</p>
<p>A revelation, that, of immense significance; and not
only of material, but also of moral significance, which
gave a hundred fold increase to man's daring, and sent
him forth on another daring voyage, on the boundless
Ocean of the Sciences, to circumnavigate,—with more
or less of success, as it may chance,—the INFINITE!</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_III" id="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE LAW OF STORMS.</p>
<p>It is but yesterday, as it were, that we have built ships
fit for southern navigation; for navigation in those seas
where the long, strong, <i>rollers</i>, pile themselves, each
upon each, into absolutely mountainous masses of storm-lashed
waves. What, then, shall we say of the early
navigators who ventured into such seas with their
clumsy leewards, heavy, and yet scarcely sea-worthy
cock-boats?</p>
<p>Especially for the polar seas, whether arctic or antarctic,
we need ships expressly built for such rude
service. They were bold men, those who, like a Cabot,
a Brentz, a Willoughby, ventured in their clumsy, ill-found,
badly rigged, and scarcely sea-worthy tubs to
navigate the icy seas; to dare Spitzbergen, to make
Greenland by that funereal cape <i>Farewell</i>, and to coast
the thousand giant icebergs in sight of which, men in
our own day, a hundred Whalers have gone to pieces.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
<p>What chiefly rendered those ancient heroes so sublime
was their very ignorance, their blind courage, their
desperate resolution. They knew but little of the sea,
and of the Heavens they knew still less; the compass,
their only instructor and their only reliance, they dared
the most alarming phenomena without being able even
to guess at their causes. They had none of our instruments
which speak to us so plainly and so unmistakably.
They went blindfolded towards, and fearlessly into, the
uttermost darkness. They, themselves, confess that
they feared, but also, they would not yield. The sea's
tempests, the air's whirlwinds and water spouts, the
tragic dialogues of those two Oceans, of air and water,
the striking, and, not so long since, ominous phenomena
of the Aurora Borealis, all this strange and wild
phantasmagoria seemed to them the fury of irritated
Nature, a veritable strife of Demons against which man
could <i>dare</i> all—as they did—but could <i>do</i> what they
also did—nothing.</p>
<p>During three centuries but little progress was made.
Read Cook, read Peron, and you will readily comprehend
how difficult, uncertain, and perilous was navigation,
even up to an hour so near our own.</p>
<p>Cook, that man of immense courage, but also, of
most lively imagination, himself confesses, as his Journal
testifies, that he knew how uncertain and perilous
was the profession of the seaman even so lately as his
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
day. In his Journal, we read; "The dangers are so
great, that I venture to say, that no one will dare to go
farther than I have gone."</p>
<p>Now it is precisely since then that voyages have become,
at once, more distant, more regular, and less
dangerous.</p>
<p>A great age, a Titanic age, the 19th century, has
coolly, intelligently, and sternly noted all those phenomena
which the old navigators braved, but did not
examine. In this century it is that we, for the first
time, have dared to look the Tempest squarely, and
fearlessly, and scrutinizingly, in the eyes. Its premonitory
symptoms, its characteristics, its results;—each
and all have been calmly watched, and carefully and
systematically registered; and, then, from that registration,
necessarily come explanation and generalization,
and thence, the grand, bold—and, as our not
very distant ancestors would have said, impious system—the
<i>Law of Storms</i>.</p>
<p>So! What we took, what we in the old, bold, but
blind day, took for matter of caprice, is really, after
all, reducible to a system, obedient to a Law! So!
then, those terrible facts, that made the brain swim,
the boldest quail, because they <i>fought shadows</i> and
<i>walked in the darkness</i>, so! then, those terrible facts
have a certain regularity of recurrence, and the seaman,
resolute and strong, calmly considers whether he
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
cannot oppose to those regular attacks a defence no
less regular. In brief, if the Tempest has its <i>science</i>,
can we not create and use an <i>art</i>? An art not merely
to survive the Tempest but even to make it useful?</p>
<p>But our science and our art cannot be called into life
and activity until we shall have laid aside our old and
ill founded notion that Tempests are caused by "the
caprice of the winds." Attentive observation has taught
us that the winds are <i>not</i> capricious, that they are the
accident, sometimes, also, the agent of the Tempest, but
that, generally speaking, the Tempest is an <i>electrical
phenomenon</i>, and often occurs in the absence of gales.</p>
<p>Romme (brother of the Conventionalist, principal
author of the Calendar) laid the foundations of our
very important science. English seamen had remarked
that in the tempests in the Indian Seas, they sailed for
days together, and yet made no headway. Romme collected
and systematized all their observations, and
pointed out the important fact that the same occurred
in the tempests of China, Africa, and the Antilles. He
also first pointed out that rectilinear winds are of rare
occurrence, and that, usually, tempests have a circular
character,—are, literally, a <i>whirl</i> wind. The great
<i>whirling</i> tempests of the United States in 1815, and
that of 1821 (the year of the great eruption of Hecla)
when the winds blew from all points to a common centre,
aroused philosophical attention, both in America
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
and Europe. Brande, in Germany, and at the same
time, Redfield in New York, were the next after Romme
in profiting by these facts to lay down the law that,
generally, the tempest is a <i>Whirl</i>-wind, advancing, and
at the same time <i>revolving on its own base</i>. In 1838,
the English engineer, Reid, being sent to Barbadoes
after the too celebrated tempest which killed fifteen hundred
people, ascertained, with mathematical precision,
this double movement of advance and rotation. But
his still more important discovery was that <i>in our northern
hemisphere the tempest turns from right to left</i>,
that is to say from East to North, and round the compass,
back to East; while in <i>southern tempests it turns
from left to right</i>. A most important fact to regulate
the seaman's course.</p>
<p>Reid very rightfully gave his book the bold title of—"On
the Law of Storms."</p>
<p>But it was the law of their <i>Motion</i>, not the explanation
of their <i>cause</i>; it told nothing, either, of what
Storms do, or of what they are.</p>
<p>Here France came to the rescue. In 1840, Peltier
published his <i>Causes of Whirlwinds</i>, and his ingenious
and numerous experiments established the fact that
whirlwinds, whether at sea or on shore, were <i>electrical
phenomena</i>, in which the winds play only a secondary
part. Beccaria, a full century earlier, had suspected
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
that fact, but it was reserved for Peltier to establish the
fact, by making miniature storms.</p>
<p>Electrical whirlwinds readily take their rise in the
neighborhood of volcanoes,—those ventilating pipes of
the subterranean world, and therefore they are more
common in the subterranean world, than in ours.</p>
<p>The Atlantic, open at both ends, and swept in all directions
by the winds, should necessarily, have more
rectilinear, and fewer circular tempests; but Piddington
quotes a great number of the latter.</p>
<p>From 1840 to 1850, the immense compilations of Piddington
and Maury were made, at Calcutta and New
York. Maury is rendered illustrious for his charts,
his <i>Directions</i>, and his <i>Geography of the Sea</i>. Piddington,
less artistical, but not less learned, in his <i>Seaman's
Guide</i>, that Encyclopedia of storms, gives the results
of an infinite experience, the minutest and most
precise means of calculating the distance of the whirlwind,
its rate of speed, and the nature of its various
waves. He confirmed the ideas of Peltier, as to the
electric theory, and showed that those who had dwelt
on the caprice of the whirlwind, had, in truth, completely
mistaken the effect for the cause.</p>
<p>The old art of auguries, and science of presages,
never contemptible, was most happily revived by that
excellent book.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
<p>The setting of the Sun, is by no means an indifferent
augury. If he set red, and if the sea retain the
reflection of his blood-red rays, rely upon it, a storm is
brewing, in that other Ocean—the air; if around
him you see a lurid red within a white circle, and the
stars are flickering, and seeming to fall, be sure that the
upper regions of the atmosphere are threatening.</p>
<p>Still worse, it is, if, upon a dirty sky, you see small
clouds marshalling, like so many purple arrows, flying
from all quarters to one common point, and if, at the same
time, the larger masses assume the shape of strange buildings,
ruined bridges, broken rainbows, and a hundred
other eccentricities; then rely upon it, the storm has
already commenced in the upper region. At present,
all is calm, here below, but, on the horizon, you may
discern the faintly flashing, and silent lightnings. Listen
attentively, and, from time to time, you shall hear
the low mutterings of the distant thunder; and the
waves, as they break upon the beach, seem to sob.
Look out! The sea tells you, plaintively, of the coming
storm. "What are those wild waves saying?"
They are warning you, I repeat, of the coming storm.
The wild, free birds have already taken warning, and
hasten to their secure shelter in the clefts of the rocks.
If they are far from land when they see, and feel, and
hear, the first threatenings of the rising storm, they settle
down upon your masts, and yards, and shrouds.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
And first among them comes that bird of evil omen,
the "Mother Carey's Chicken," the Stormy Petrel.
Look out, my brothers; I assure you the tempest approaches.</p>
<p>Does it thunder? Be very glad of that, brother seaman;
the electric discharge is taking place far above
us, and we shall have the less of the tempest. It is an
old popular observation, but confirmed by the science
of Peltier and by the experience of Piddington and
others.</p>
<p>If the electricity, accumulated on high, discharges
itself here below, it will create circular currents, and
we shall have whirlwind, fierce tempest, and, probably
water spout.</p>
<p>This last sort of storm not uncommonly attacks you
when you are seemingly quite safe in harbor. In 1698,
Captain Langford, in port and well anchored, saw that
he was about to be thus assailed, slipped his cable, and
found safety on the open sea. Other craft, whose
commanders had less freight or less daring, remained
at anchor and were destroyed.</p>
<p>At Madras and at Barbadoes, warning signals are
given to the ships at anchor. In Canada, the electric
Telegraph, swifter than Nature's own electricity, sends
warning of the coming storm from port to port.</p>
<p>To the sailor when on the broad Ocean, the great
friend and adviser is the Barometer; its perfect sensitiveness
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
gives you the most exact information of the
weight with which the storm-laden atmosphere oppresses
it. Usually, it tells you of nothing but fine
weather; it almost seems to sleep. But at the first and
most distant note of the rising storm, it suddenly
awakens, is agitated, and its mercury descends, ascends,
redescends. The barometer has its own tempest.
Peron when at the Mauritius observed that
flashes of pale light escaped from the mercury, and filled
the whole tube. During gales, the sensitive instrument
seems actually to breathe. "In its fluctuations," say
Daniel and Barlow, "the water barometer breathed,
blew, like some wild animal."</p>
<p>But the Tempest advances and occasionally illuminates
the horizon all around with its electric lightnings.
In 1772, during the great storm in the West Indies,
when the sea rose seventy feet above ordinary high
water mark, the dense darkness of the night was dissipated
by balls of lurid fires that lighted up every shore.</p>
<p>The approach of the storm may be more or less rapid.
In the Indian Ocean, thickly studded with islands and
obstacles, the whirlwind and the water-spout approach
you only at the rate of some two miles an hour; while
when they come along the course of the warm current,
that comes to us from the Antilles, they travel at the
rate of from forty to fifty. Their speed would, in fact,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
be incalculably great but for their oscillation, beaten as
they are by the winds, both internally and externally.</p>
<p>Slow or rapid, the fury of the tempest is the same.
In 1789, in a single instant and with a single rush, the
tempest dashed to pieces every vessel in the port of
Ceringa; at a second rush the town was flooded; at the
third it was in ruins, and twenty thousand of its inhabitants
were dead. In 1822, off Bengal, a water spout
was for twenty-four hours sucking up air and water,
and, when it burst, fifty thousand people perished.</p>
<p>In different localities, different aspects of the Tempest.
In Africa you have the <i>upas</i>, the fierce compound
of <i>simoom</i> and <i>tornado</i>. The atmosphere seems
calm and clear, and yet you feel a strange oppression
of the lungs and a general anxiety as terrible as it is
strange. Then a black cloud, "no bigger than a man's
hand," appears on the horizon, approaches with lightning
speed, lengthening, widening, and deepening as it
approaches (<i>vires acquirit eundo</i>) the storm descends,
and in a quarter of an hour all around is devastated,
utterly ruined, and ships have utterly disappeared. Nature
takes no heed of such small matters. About Sumatra
and Bengal, you see in the evening or night (never
in the morning) a dark arched cloud in the sky. It
rapidly increases, and presently, from that dark cloud,
come down flashes and sheets of pale and ghastly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
lights. Woe to the mariner who shall encounter the
first wind that rushes from that sinister cloud; he will
pretty certainly go down.</p>
<p>But the ordinary form is that of a huge funnel. A
sailor, who was caught in one of these terrible storms,
says: "I found myself, as it were, at the bottom of an
enormous crater of a volcano; all around was darkness,
above a glimmering of lurid lights." That light is what
is technically termed "<i>the eye of the Tempest</i>."</p>
<p>When the Water spout, the horrible Typhoon, empties
itself, human science and human daring are of no
avail. Roaring, howling, shrieking, hissing, the storm
fiends are at work above, below, around the luckless
vessel. Suddenly there is a dead, a quite horrible
silence, and there comes forth, seemingly, from the very
centre of the water spout, a blinding flash, and a
deafening report, and when you, at length, recover
power to look aloft, you find that mast and spars have
been shivered.</p>
<p>Seymour tells us that, sometimes, after being caught
in one of those horrible Typhoons the sailors, for a long
time, have blackened nails and weakened sight. Sometimes,
too, this terrible Typhoon sucks up not only air
and water, but also the luckless ship, holds it suspended
in the air, and then dashes it rudely down into the
watery abyss. From this terrible action and pitiless
power of the Typhoon, the Chinese derived their notion
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
of the terrible mother <i>Typhon</i>, who, hovering in the
sky, picks out her victims and is ever conceiving and
bearing the <i>Ken Woo</i>, whirlwinds of fire and iron. To
that terrible <i>Typhon</i> they have erected temples and
altars, adoring her and praying to her in the vain hope
of humanising her.</p>
<p>The brave Piddington had no adoration to spare for
her; on the contrary, he gives her a marvellously ill
name. He calls her an only too strong corsair, a pirate
so strong and so tricky that there is no dishonor in
getting out of her way.</p>
<p>That perfidious enemy sometimes sets a snare for
you; tempts you with <i>a good wind</i>. Avoid that same
<i>good wind</i>, turn your back to it if you possibly can.
Give that dangerous companion the widest possible
berth. Steer very clear of the storm cloud or it will
suddenly sink you; ship, crew and cargo.</p>
<p>Such is the advice of the brave and skillful Piddington,
and, assuredly, one would gladly take such advice.
But how? It would be utterly useless if the storm
cloud and the ship were brought together within narrow
and land locked waters. But, in general, this
enormous compound of whirlwind and water spout embraces
a circle of ten, twenty, or even thirty leagues,
and this gives every ship, on which a constant and
intelligent look out is kept, a fair chance of keeping at
a respectful distance from so redoubtable a foe. The
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
great point to be ascertained is, <i>where is the centre</i>, the
nucleus, the terrible home, of this terrible <i>Typhon</i>. And
then to ascertain its rate of progression and its line of
approach.</p>
<p>The sailor of the present day has two excellent
lights to steer by; his Maury and his Piddington. On
the one hand, Maury teaches him the general laws of
the air and sea, and the art of selecting and using the
currents, directing him, as it were, along the streets
and highways of the Ocean. On the other hand, Piddington
in his small, but instructive volume, sums up for
him, and places in his hands, the <i>Experience of Tempests</i>;
not only how to avoid them, when possible, but
sometimes when to make them useful.</p>
<p>And this it is that at once explains and justifies the
fine sentence of the Dutch Captain Jansen. "At sea,"
says he, "the first impression is that of the power of
nature, the profundity of the depths—and our own
nothingness. On board of the largest ship, we still feel
that we are constantly in danger. But when the
mind's eye has penetrated the depths and surveyed the
expanse, man no longer fears the danger. He rises to
the true sense of the situation. Guided by Astronomy,
shown by Maury along the highways and byways of
the Ocean, he steers his course safely and <i>confidently</i>."</p>
<p>This is truly sublime. The Tempest is not abolished,
it is true; but ignorance, bewilderment, that terrible
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
bewilderment which is born of danger and darkness,
are abolished. At least if the seaman of the present
day perish, he will know the why and wherefore.
Great, oh, very great is the safeguard of having the
calm, clear presence of mind, with our soul and intellect
unruffled and resigned to whatever may be the effect of
the great divine laws of the world which, at the expense
of a few shipwrecks, produce Equilibrium and
Safety.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_IV" id="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE POLAR SEAS.</p>
<p>What most tempts man? The difficult, the useless,
the impossible. Of all maritime enterprises, that to
which the most persistent energy has been given, is the
north western passage, the direct line from Europe to
Asia. And yet, the plainest common-sense might anticipatively
have told us that, given, the existence of
such a passage, in a latitude so cold, so blocked up by
ice, it would, practically, be useless; few would, none
could, make any regular use of it. <i>Open this year, it
is quite sure to be closed up next year.</i></p>
<p>Remember that that region has not the flatness of
Siberia; it is a mountain of a thousand leagues, horribly
broken, with deep chasms, with seas, that, thawed
one hour, are frozen up the next, passages between icebergs,
which shift their position from time to time, open
to invite you, and close to crush you. At length, in
1853, that passage was found, by a man who had got
so far in, that it was safer to go ahead, than to recede,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
and who, therefore, went daringly and desperately forward,
till he found that which he sought. Now we
know what that passage is; men's minds are calmed
down; we know that there is such a passage, and we
have not even the smallest desire to make use of it.</p>
<p>When I spoke of that passage, as being <i>useless</i>, I
spoke of it as a commercial highway. But in following
this commercially useless enterprise, we have made
many very useful discoveries for Geography, Meteorology,
and the magnetism of the Earth; just as silly Alchemy,
has done so much for wise, and admirably useful
Chemistry.</p>
<p>What was the original idea? To open a short way
to the land of gold, to the East Indies. England, and
other powers, jealous of Spain and Portugal, reckoned
upon surprising them in the very heart of their distant
possessions, in the very sanctuary of wealth. From the
time of Queen Elizabeth of England, adventurers having
found, or stated that they found, some portions of
gold in Greenland, searched into, and made bold use of
the old Northern legend of <i>treasure hidden beneath
the Pole</i>; mountains of gold, guarded by Gnomes, &c.,
&c. And the legend inflamed men's minds. Upon so
reasonable a notion, sixteen ships were sent out, having
on board the sons and hopes of the noblest families.
There was quite a competition as to who should have
leave to go in quest of that Polar Eldorado; and those
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
who sought it, succeeded in finding only hunger, icy
barriers, suffering, and—Death! But that check was
unavailing; during three hundred years, explorers,
with a perfectly marvellous perseverance, continued to
explore, to fail, to be martyrized, and to die. Cabot,
the earliest of them, was only saved by the mutiny of
his crew, who would not allow him to go any farther.
Brentz died of cold, and Willoughby of famine. Cortereul
lost all, property, and life; and Hudson was set
adrift by his men, and, as he had neither sails nor provisions,
it is but too probable that he perished miserably,
though his fate was never precisely ascertained.
Behring, in finding the strait which separates America
from Asia, perished of fatigue, cold, and want, on a
desert island. In our own day, Franklin perished, in
the ice; he and his men having been reduced to the
most horrible cannibalism.</p>
<p>Every thing that can discourage man, is combined in
these Northern voyages. Considerably before the Polar
circle is reached, a cold fog freezes upon the sea,
and covers you with hoar frost; sails and ropes are icy
and stiffened, the deck is one sheet of glare ice, and
every manœuvre is a work of immense difficulty; and
those moving shoals, the icebergs, that are so much to
be dreaded, can scarcely be made out at the distance of
the ship's length. At the mast-head, the look-out man, an
actual living stalactite, every now and then warns the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
watch upon deck of the approach of a new enemy, a
huge white phantom, a terrible iceberg, often from two
to three hundred feet out of the water.</p>
<p>But these preliminary horrors, which announce to the
seaman his approach to the world of ice and suffering,
so far from deterring, increase his desire and determination
to proceed. In the mystery of the Pole, there is,
I know not what, of sublime horror and heroic suffering.
Even those who have only gone as far North as
Spitzbergen, retain in memory a profound impression of
its drear and horrible sublimity. That mass of peaks,
chains, and precipices, which, for four thousand five
hundred feet, rears its icy front, is like a gigantic apparition,
in that gloomy sea. Its glaciers flash forth
living lights, dazzling flashes of the most brilliant colors,
green, blue, and purple, contrasting marvellously
with the uniform whiteness of the snow. During the
nights, whose duration is not of hours, but of months,
the <i>Aurora Borealis</i>, every now and then lights up the
dreary scene in the strange splendors of a sinister illumination;
vast and terrible bale fires, that, from time to
time, light up the whole horizon, forming, with their
magnificent jets of lurid lights, a fantastic Etna, that
throws temporary and illusive light on that scene of
eternal winter.</p>
<p>All is prismatic in an atmosphere surcharged with
icy particles, where the air is full of mirrors and little
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
crystals. Hence, the most astonishing mirages, rendering
one uncertain whether he may take the evidence
of his own eyes as to the reality of any thing that he
thinks he sees. Merely aërial reflections and colored
mists appear solid masses, castles, cathedrals, islands,—anything;
and what you see upright at one moment, is
upside down a moment afterwards. The strata of air
which produce these effects, are in constant revolution,
the lightest ascends above the others, and in an instant
the mirage changes form, color, size, and character.
The slightest variation of the temperature, lowers,
raises, or slopes, the huge mirror; the image becomes
confounded with the object; they separate, disperse, another
succeeds, and then a third, pale and feeble, appears,
to disappear in its turn.</p>
<p>It is a world of illusion. If you love to dream; if,
especially, you love day-dreaming, with fancies wild
or tender, go to the North, and there you will see real,
yet no less fugitive, all that your waking dreams have
ever painted. In that world of mirages, the atmosphere
will put all your "castles in the air" to utter
shame. No style of architecture but that magical atmosphere
can imitate. Now you have the classic Greek,
with its porticos and colonnades; anon, Egyptian obelisks
appear, the one pointing high and sharp, towards
the sky, the other lying prostrate, and in twain, at the
base of the former. And, then, mountain upon mountain
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
appears, Pelion upon Ossa, a whole city of giants,
with Cyclopean walls, which change into the circular
sacrificial stones of the Druids, with dark, mysterious
caves beneath. Finally, all disappears; the wind rises,
and the mists and atmospheric reflections are dispersed.
In this veritable world of the upside down, the law of
gravitation is repealed, or, at the least, disregarded; the
weak and the light, carrying the strong and the heavy;
a spacious church is seen on the top of a slender spire,
an Egyptian pyramid whirls, dances, upon the sharply
pointed apex; it is an eccentric, a mad, school of art,
where you pass at once from the beautiful to the terrible,
from the terribly sublime to the absurdly fantastic.</p>
<p>Sometimes a terrible incident occurs. Against the
great stream, which flows majestically and slowly from
the north, there suddenly comes, from the south, a huge
iceberg, whose base is some six or seven hundred feet
below the water. It is impelled by the strong under-tow,
and advances so swiftly that it dashes aside, or to
pieces, whatever it happens to encounter. Arrived at
the plain of ice, this moving giant, this terrible iceberg
is not at all embarrassed. Thus, Duncan, writing
in 1826, describes a scene of the kind—"The field-ice
was broken up for miles in less than a minute, with reports
loud as those of a hundred pieces of artillery.
As the mountainous heap approached us, the space between
it and us was filled with the mighty masses, into
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
which the shock of her collision had broken up the massive
field ice. We should assuredly have perished, but
the huge mass suddenly sheered off to the northeast,
and we were saved."</p>
<p>It was in 1818, after the European war, that this
war against nature, this search after the north-western
passage was resumed. It opened with a serious and
singular event. The gallant Captain Ross, being sent
with two ships into Baffin's Bay, was completely deceived
by the phantasmagoria of that world of spectral
delusions. He distinctly saw, as he thought, a
land which has never existed, maintained that if he
proceeded he would certainly lay the bones of his ships
on that non-existent shore, and actually returned to
England. There he was laughed at, and accused of
timidity, and he was refused by the Admiralty, the command
of another expedition, which he solicited, in the
interest of his honor. Sir Felix Booth, a London distiller
and liquor merchant, more liberal than the British
Government, presented Ross with a hundred thousand
dollars, and Ross returned to the North, determined
to pass or die. Neither the one nor the other
was granted to him! But he remained during I know
not how many winters, forgotten, in those terrible solitudes.
He had all the appearance of a mere savage,
so long and so horrible was his destitution, when he
was saved by some whalers, who, when they first saw
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
him, asked him if he had, by any chance, fallen in with
<i>the late Captain John Ross</i>!</p>
<p>His Lieutenant, Parry, who confidently believed that
he could pass, made four attempts to do so; trying first
by Baffin's Bay and the West, and then by Spitzbergen
and the North. He made some discoveries by boldly
pushing forward in a sledge-boat; a sledge on the ice,
and a boat in the water. But the ice always defeated
his bold attempts, and he was no more successful than
Ross.</p>
<p>In 1882, a brave young Frenchman, Jules de Blassville,
conceived that France, in his person, might win
the glory of discovering the north-west passage. He
risked, at once, money and life; and purchased death.
He could not even get the selection of a proper ship.
They gave him the <i>Lilloise</i>, which sprang a leak on
her very first day out, and he had her repaired and refitted,
at his own cost of about eight thousand dollars.
In this unsafe vessel, he sailed for the iron-bound coast
of Greenland. According to all appearance, he did
not get even as far out as that. He has never since
been heard of, nor has any portion of his unseaworthy
vessel been picked up. Most likely she foundered, with
all hands on board.</p>
<p>The English expeditions have been fitted out in a
very different style; every thing was provided that
prudence could suggest or liberal-expenditure supply;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
yet they succeeded no better. The gallant, scientific,
and ill fated, Franklin, was blocked in by the ice in
1845. For twelve years from that date the English,
with an honorable persistence, sent out expeditions in
search of him. And not England alone; France and
America no less honorably assisted, and both those
great nations lost some of their brightest and best in
the brave, though fruitless, search. Side by side with
the name of Franklin, as connected with the icy peaks
and capes of that desolate region, our Belliot, and
others, must be named, who devoted themselves in hope
to save him. And, on the other hand, Captain John
Ross offered to organize and lead an expedition to
search for Blainville. Dark Greenland is connected
with a host of such brave, sad reminiscences, and the
desert is no longer quite a desert when connected with
such touching testimonies of <i>human brotherhood</i>.</p>
<p>There is something very touching in the persistent
belief, the inflexible affection, of Lady Franklin. She
could not, would not, believe herself widowed, but incessantly
besought for further search after her brave
husband. She vowed that she was quite sure that he
still lived for his country and for her; and so well did
she impress her own belief upon the Admiralty board,
that, seven years after he was completely missing, he
was officially named, not as <i>Captain</i>, but as Vice Admiral.
And she was right; he was then still living. The
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
Esquimaux saw him in 1850, and he had then sixty of
his men with him. Very soon after he had only thirty,
and those so worn by fatigue and want that they could
not hunt, or even walk, and as each one died he was
eaten by his far more wretched survivors. If Lady
Franklin's advice had been duly attended to, her brave
husband and most, perhaps all, of his men would have
been Saved. For she said—and the soundest sense
dictated her words—that he should be sought for to
the southward, inasmuch as it was to the last degree
improbable that in his desperate situation he should aggravate
it by proceeding towards the North. But the
Admiralty, perhaps more anxious about the north-west
passage than about the lost Franklin, persisted in
sending expeditions to the North, and the afflicted lady
did for herself what the Admiralty would not do for
her. At a great expense, she fitted out a vessel to
search to the southward of his last known or presumed
position. But it was already too late. Only the bones
of Franklin were found.</p>
<p>In the mean time longer, but more successful, voyages
were made towards the South pole. There we do not
find the same commingling of land and sea, ice and
tempestuous thaws, that make up the great horror of
Greenland. There is a boundless sea of immense and
mighty waves, and a glacier far more extensive than
ours of the North. Very few islands; those which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
have been seen, or, rather fancied, have most probably
been only shifting and wandering icebergs. Everything
there varies with the varying character of the winters.
Morel in 1820, Weddell in 1824, and Ballery in 1839,
found an opening, and made their way into an open sea,
which none since have been able to find.</p>
<p>The French Kerguelen and the English James Ross
have, undoubtedly, discovered lands. The first, in
1771, discovered the large island which he named after
himself, but to which the English have given the appropriate
title of <i>Desolation</i>. Two hundred leagues in
length it has some excellent ports, and, in spite of the
severity of the climate, it is tolerably prolific in seals
and birds, with which a ship can be plentifully provisioned.
That glorious discovery which Louis XVI., on
his accession, rewarded with a peerage, was, subsequently
the ruin of Kerguelen. False charges were
brought against him, and the rivalry of noble officers
overwhelmed him, jealous rivals with a hateful intrepidity,
bearing false witness against him. It was from
a dungeon of six feet square that, in 1782, he dated the
narrative of his discovery.</p>
<p>In 1838, America, France, and England each fitted
out an expedition in the interests of science. The
illustrious Duperrey had pointed out the way to important
magnetic observations, and it was desired to continue
them under the very pole. The English expedition,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
with this object, was entrusted to the command of
James Ross, nephew and lieutenant of the Captain John
Ross of whom we have spoken. It was a model expedition
for which everything was foreseen, and provided,
and James Ross brought back his crew without having
lost a man, or even had a man sick.</p>
<p>The American Wilkes and the French Dumont d'Urville
were not thus admirably fitted out; and perils and
sickness scourged them fearfully. James Ross, more
fortunate, doubled the Arctic circle and found real land;
but he confesses, with a really admirable modesty, that
he chiefly owed his success to the admirable manner in
which his government had fitted him out. The <i>Erebus</i>
and the <i>Terror</i> with their powerful machines, their ice
saw, and their iron shielded prow, cut their way through
the ice till they reached an open sea abounding in
birds, seals, and whales, and lighted up by a volcano
of twelve thousand feet in height, a northern Etna.
But no vegetation, no landing place, but an enormously
high and sharply scarped granite upon which not even
the snows could retain their hold. But it <i>was</i> land;
not a doubt of that. That Polar Etna, which they
named after their good ship Erebus, is there to prove it.</p>
<p>A terrestrial nucleus, therefore, is girdled by the
arctic sea.</p>
<p>April and May of 1853, were a grand date in the
history of the arctic pole.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p>
<p>In April that passage was found which had been so
perseveringly and vainly sought for during three centuries.
The discovery resulted from a bold stroke of
desperation.</p>
<p>Captain Maclure having made his way in by Behring's
strait was, for two years, shut in by the ice. Finding
it impossible to return, he determined, at all hazards,
to push forward. He did so and in only forty
miles further found himself along side of English ships
in the Eastern ocean. His boldness saved him and the
great problem was at length solved.</p>
<p>At that very time, May, 1858, New York sent out an
expedition for the extreme North. A young naval surgeon,
Elisha Kent Kane, only about thirty years old,
but who had already sailed far and wide, announced an
idea which greatly excited the American mind. Just
as Wilkes had proposed to find a world, Kane proposed
to find a sea, an open sea, under the pole. The English,
in their routine, had searched from East to West;
Kane proposed to sail due North and take possession,
for his country, of that, as yet, undiscovered open polar
sea. The bold proposal was enthusiastically hailed.
Grinnell of New York, a great ship owner, princely
alike in fortune and in heart, generously gave two
ships; learned societies, and not a few of the general
public, assisted with pecuniary contributions, with a
perfectly religious zeal made up and contributed warm
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
clothing. The crews, carefully selected from volunteers,
were sworn to three things; to be obedient to orders,
to abstain from spirituous liquors, and from profane
language. A first expedition failed, but its failure
daunted neither Mr. Grinnell nor the American public;
and a second was fitted out, with the aid of certain
English societies, who had chiefly in view the propagation
of the gospel or a final search after Franklin.</p>
<p>Few voyages are more interesting than this second
one of Kane's. We can readily understand the ascendancy
which young Kane acquired over his followers.
Every line of his book is marked by his strength, his
brilliant vivacity, and his practical exemplification of
the bold American watchword—<i>Go ahead.</i> He knows
every thing; is confident of everything; prudent, hopeful,
more than hopeful,—positive. Every line tells you
that he is a man to be conquered by no obstacle. He
will go as far as mortal man can go. The combat is
curious between such a character and the pitiless and
icy North, that rampart of terrible obstacles. Scarcely
has he sailed when he is already seized by the cold
hand of winter and detained for six months amidst the
ice. Even in the spring he had a cold of seventy degrees!
At the approach of the second winter, on the
28th of August, nine out of his seventeen men, deserted
him. But the fewer his men and resources, the bolder
and sterner he became, being determined, as he tells
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
us, to make himself the better respected. His good
friends, the Esquimaux, who hunted or fished for him,
and from whom he is even compelled to take some small
objects, stole three copper vessels from him. In return
he kidnapped two of their women. An excessive and
savage chastisement. It was hardly prudent to bring
these poor creatures among the eight seamen who still
remained with him; all the less prudent when we consider
that discipline was already so much relaxed.
They were married women, too. Siver, wife of Metek,
and Aninqua, wife of Marsiqua, were in tears for five
days. Kane laughed at them and makes us laugh too,
when he says: "They wept and made terrible lamentation;
<i>but they did not lose their appetite</i>."</p>
<p>At length their husbands and friends took back the
stolen articles and took all that had passed in good
part, with the native good sense of men who had no
weapons, but sharpened fish bones, to oppose to revolvers.
They agreed to every thing and promised the
utmost friendship and most faithful alliance. A week
after, they disappeared and we may easily imagine with
what feelings of friendship! Of course, wherever they
went, they would warn the natives to shun the white
man. And thus it is that we close the uncivilized
world alike against ourselves and civilization.</p>
<p>The sequel is sad. So cruel are the sufferings of the
seamen that some die and others want to return. But
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
Kane is of quite another mind, he has promised to discover
a new sea, and discover it he will. Plots, desertions,
treacheries, all add to the horrors of his situation.
In the third winter he must have died, destitute as he
was of food and fuel, had not other Esquimaux supplied
him with fish; he aiding them by hunting. In the
mean time some of the men, who had been out exploring,
had the good fortune to find that sea about which he
was so anxious. At least they reported that they had
seen a vast extent of open unfrozen water, and, all
around, birds which seemed to find there the shelter of
a less severe climate.</p>
<p>That was enough to warrant the return. Kane,
saved by the Esquimaux, who took no advantage either
of their superior numbers or of his extreme destitution,
left there his vessel frozen up in the ice.</p>
<p>Weak and exhausted, he yet contrived, in eighty-two
days, to get back to the South. But he got back only
to die. That intrepid young man, who approached
nearer to the pole than any other man had ever done,
dying, carried off the prize which the learned societies
of France laid upon his tomb—the great geographical
prize.</p>
<p>In his narrative, which contains so many terrible
things, there is one which seems to me to be very
touching. It enables us to estimate the exceeding
sufferings of such an expedition; I allude to the death
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
of his dogs. He had some excellent ones of the Newfoundland
breed, and some of the Esquimaux; they,
rather than men, were his companions and his friends.
During his long winter nights, those nights of months,
they watched around his ship, and when he sallied out
in the dense darkness he recognized the brave brutes by
their warm breath as they came and licked his hands.</p>
<p>The Newfoundlanders were the first to grow sick.
He fancied that they suffered less from the cold than
from the privation of light; when the lanterns were
shown to them they seemed to revive. But, by degrees,
a strange melancholy grew upon them, and they went
mad. Next followed, in the same sad course, the Esquimaux
dogs, and none remained but his little slut,
Flora, <i>the wisest</i> little thing—as he calls her—and
she neither went mad nor died. I believe this is the
only point, in his fearfully interesting narrative, at
which you can perceive that that brave, stern heart, for
an instant sank.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_V" id="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</p>
<p class="caption3">MAN'S WAR UPON THE RACES OF THE SEA.</p>
<p>On reviewing the whole history of Voyages, we are
impressed by two quite contrary feelings:</p>
<p>1. We admire the courage and genius with which
man has conquered the seas, and dominated his whole
planet.</p>
<p>2. We are astonished to find him so unskilful in all
that concerns the conciliation of the inhabitants of the
various seas and lands, that he has conquered. Every
where, the voyager has gone, as the enemy of the young
populations, whether human or brute, whether terrestrial
or maritime, which, properly treated, would have
been, each in its own limited sphere, so servicable to
him. Man, as to the globe on which he has made such
grand discoveries, is like a musical novice, before some
immense Organ, from which he can produce but a few
notes. Emerging from the middle ages, after so much
of philosophy and theology, he still remained barbarous;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
of the sacred instrument, he only knew how to
break the keys.</p>
<p>The gold seekers, as we have seen, sought only gold,
nothing but that; man they pitilessly crushed. Columbus,
though the last of them, shows this with a quite
terrible plainness and simplicity, in his own journal.
His words make us shudder, anticipating, prophesying,
as they do, what would be done by his successors. No
sooner has he landed in Haiti, than he enquires, "where
is the gold? Who has got gold?" The natives smiled,
in their innocent astonishment, at this fierce desire
for gold. They promised him that they would search for
it for him, and in the mean time, gave their rings and ornaments
to satisfy the earlier, that eager appetite.</p>
<p>He gives us a most touching description of that unfortunate
race, so interesting for its beauty, its kindness,
and its tender confidence. But the Geonese, touchingly
as he described that people, had his own mission of avarice,
his hard, stern habits of thought. The Turkish
wars, the atrocious galleys, and their wretched slaves,
piracy and manstealing, were the common life of that
day. The sight of that young, unarmed community,
those poor, naked children, and lovely and innocent
women, inspired him only with the horrible mercantile
thought, that they might be very easily enslaved.</p>
<p>He would not, however, consent to have them carried
away from the beautiful island; they and it, belonged,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
said he, to the King and Queen, Ferdinand and Isabella.
But he said these darkly and terribly significant
words—"They are timid and well fitted for obedience.
They will do whatever they are ordered to do; a thousand
of them would retreat before three or four of ours.
If your Highnesses give me the order to carry them
off or to enslave them here, there is nothing to hinder
it; fifty men will suffice to do it." Thus wrote he in
his Journal, or Despatch, of 14 and 16, December.</p>
<p>Presently came from Europe the wholesale sentence
of that whole poor innocent people. They were ordered
to be the slaves of gold—all subjected to compulsory
labor, some to seek gold, and others to feed the
goldseekers.</p>
<p>Columbus confesses that in twelve years, six sevenths
of that once happy population had perished; and Herrera
adds that in twenty-five years, that population had
fallen from a million of souls to fourteen thousand.</p>
<p>What followed, is only too well known. The gold
seeker and the planter exterminated the natives and incessantly
replaced them at the expense of the negroes.
And what has been the consequence? That in the low,
hot, immensely fecund countries, the black race alone,
are permanent. America will belong to that race;
Europe has achieved precisely the opposite of that
which it intended.</p>
<p>Every where, in all directions, the colonizing impotency
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
of Europe has displayed itself in America. The
French adventurer has not survived; he took thither
no family, and did take thither all the worst vices of
his native land. As a natural consequence, instead of
civilizing the barbarians, he added their vices to his
own, and sank to their barbarous level. With the exception
of two temperate countries into which they went
<i>en masse</i>, and in families, the English have not been
much more successful than the French in planting their
race permanently and healthily in transmarine colonies.
In another century, India will scarcely know that the
Englishmen once lived there. Have the Missionaries,
whether Catholic or Protestant, made any converts?
Dumont, the thoroughly well-informed Dumont, tells
me—"<i>not one</i>!"</p>
<p>Between them and us, there are thirty centuries and
thirty religions. Try to force their intellect, and the
result will be that which the truly great Humboldt observed
in those American villages which are to this day
called "<i>Missions</i>;" that, having lost their own native
energies and traditions, without acquiring ours, they
will sink into a sort of stupefaction, become merely so
many children of a larger growth, alive in body, but
dead in mind,—all but idiots, useless alike to themselves
and to others.</p>
<p>Our voyages, upon which we moderns, and more especially
the learned, so plume ourselves, have they
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
been really, or at all, servicable to the savages? I really
cannot see it. While, on the one hand, the heroic
races of North America have perished of hunger and
wretchedness, the soft, effeminate, gentle races of the
South, perish, too, to the great shame of our seamen,
who, in that distant part of the world, have thrown off
even the very mask of decency. Population at once
kindly and weak, in whom Bourgainville discerned such
excess of complaisance, among whom the English Missionaries
have gained much profit, but not a single
soul,—kindly and weak people, they are perishing miserably
beneath the double scourge of the worst vices
and the most loathsome diseases of the old world.</p>
<p>Formerly, the long coast of Siberia was well peopled.
Under that terribly hard climate, the nomadic natives
hunted the richly, the preciously, furred animals which
at once fed and clothed them. The Russian despotism,
at once strong and senseless, compelled them to adopt
the settled life of agriculturists, in a climate, and upon
a soil, where agriculture is an absurdity, an impossibility.
The consequence is that these peoples have
gradually died off. On the other hand, the trading
spirit, that greedy and insatiable devourer, has refused
to spare the brutes in their breeding seasons, and as a
necessary consequence, the brutes have disappeared
with the men; and now, for a thousand miles along that
coast, you have a terrible solitude, where man hunts
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
not, and where the brutes are not. The winds may
whistle shrilly, the frost may be bitter and biting as ever,
but there is neither man nor beast to listen to the
one or to shudder beneath the other.</p>
<p>Had our voyagers to the North been truly wise, their
very first care should have been to form a good, firm
friendship with the Esquimaux, to mitigate their miseries,
to adopt some of their children and have them well
instructed in Europe, and thus lay the foundation of a
great indigenous race of discoverers. We learn from
Captain John Ross, and from not a few others, that
they are very intelligent, and very readily acquire the
knowledge and the arts of Europe. Marriages would
have been contracted between European sailors and the
native women; a mixed population would thus have
sprung up, to which all that northern portion of the
American continent would have been "native and to
the manor born." And that would have been the, at
once, safe and sure way of discovering the much coveted
North-western passage. Thirty years—a single
generation—would have done it effectually—and in
three hundred years it has been done only uselessly
because you have terrified those poor savages; because
you have destroyed alike the man of the soil and the
<i>Genius Loci</i>. What is the use of merely seeing that
desert, when, in the very act of seeing it you make it
either depopulated or hostile?</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
<p>We may be quite sure that if man, civilized man, has
thus ill treated his uncivilized brother man, he has been
neither more friendly nor more merciful for the brutes.
He has converted the gentlest and the most affectionate
of them forever, irreclaimably, into savage and merciless
foes to man. And man, civilized man, has done this.
All the old authors concur in telling us that when these
poor brutes first (most unluckily for themselves!)
made the acquaintance of man, they exhibited nothing
but the most confident and inquisitive sympathy. He
could walk past and through whole families of Sea
Cows and Seals, and they never fled from him. The
Penguins, and their kindred species, followed him,
begged a share of his shelter, yea, even nestled at night
beneath his garments.</p>
<p>Our forefathers, quite justly, believed that, to a very
great extent, the animals feel and love, even as we do.
Certain it is that they have a singular and very decided
taste for music. The very Shad, simple as they seem,
will follow you to the sound of bells; Valence tells us;
and Noël tells us that he has often seen the poor Whale,
the Joubarde roll and frolic around the bark, delighted
with the music, and, fearless of the <i>man</i>!</p>
<p>What the poor, dumb creatures most enjoy; what
they most possess of intelligent life; what they have
most been deprived of by dint of human and very
cruel persecution;—is the right, the security, the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
sanctity of marriage! Fugitive and isolated, they now
only retain that which we, most cruelly, have left to
them; temporary concubinage, that miserable temporary
concubinage which makes sterile every creature that is
subjected to it.</p>
<p>Marriage, fixed, settled, faithful, is the very life of
nature,—and we find it in even the poorest living
tribes on which man's tyranny has not yet imposed unnatural
laws. The Roebuck, the Pigeon, that prettiest
of the Parrot family, the "Love Bird," and hundreds
of other species, which we, in our profound ignorance
and fancied learning, despise, have this instinctive love
of marriage. You may notice that, even among the
other and wilder birds and beasts, the matrimonial tie
is inseparable, at least, until the young family is old
enough to take care of itself.</p>
<p>The Hare, in its timid and ever anxious life, the Bat,
that strange prowler in the dark night hours, are very
very tender of their families. The Crustaceæ, even,
nay, even the very Poulpes have their marital affection;
take the female and the male is sure to be there,
to combat vainly, and to be taken with her.</p>
<p>How much more, then, shall Love, the Family, <i>Marriage</i>,
in the true sense of that word, exist among our
gentle, truly gentle, till brutally persecuted, amphibious
creatures! Slow, sedentary, attached to home, how
natural, how inevitable it is, that, the male should be
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
true to his mate,—and she to him! Among them the
husband will die for, or with, the wife, either for the
young one. And, among them, too, we find what we
too often, only in vain look for among what we presumptuously
term the higher animals, the young one will
boldly leave its shelter and fight for the mother that
has previously rescued him.</p>
<p>Steller and Hartwig mention a strange, an almost human
scene enacted in the family of the Otarie, another
amphibious creature. The female had allowed her
young to be stolen from her. The male, furious, beat
her severely, and she grovelled and wept.</p>
<p>The Whales, which have not the fixed abode of the
amphibii, yet cross the Ocean in couples. Duhamel and
Lacepede say, that in 1723, two Whales being attacked
kept firmly side by side. One of them being killed, the
other, with terrible moanings of mingled despair and
grief, of sympathy and rage, threw itself upon the dead
body of its mate and died, rather than retreat. If
there was in the world one being which, even more
than any other ought to have been spared, it was the
free Whale, that admirable creature so abounding in
value; that most inoffensive of all the creatures of the
Ocean whose very food is different from that of man.
Excepting its terribly strong tail, this creature has not
even a weapon of defence. And, then, the poor thing
has such a host of enemies! Every one and everything
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
seems to be hostile to it. Its parasites establish themselves,
not only on, but in its vast gnawing, even its very
tongue. The Narvel, with its terrible tusks pierces
it, the Dolphins gnaw it, and the bold, ever hungry,
swiftly swimming, Shark tears huge bleeding morsels
from it.</p>
<p>And, then, there are two blinded and ferocious foes
that, in most dastardly fashion, thin that inoffensive
race even anticipatively; killing the pregnant mother.
First, there is the horrible Cachalot, whose head makes
a full third of its entire frame. This horrid creature,
with its crushing jaws, armed with forty-eight teeth,
literally eats the unborn young one. Man, still more
cruel, causes the poor creature a more prolonged suffering.
The cruel harpoon, plunged again and again into
that quivering and sensitive body inflicts suffering, such
as we cannot even think of, without blushing for that
human nature of which we so often and so unblushingly
boast.</p>
<p>Dying slowly, and in the long agony of many wounds,
and of many convulsions, she writhes, shudders, lashes
the sea into a mad foam with her terrible tail, and, even
as she dies, feels about with her poor hand-fins, as
though striving once more to embrace and caress her
little one. Something dreadfully human, as it seems to
me, is that death scene of the poor Whale!</p>
<p>At this day we can scarcely even imagine what were
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
the scenes of butchery some two hundred years ago;
while the Whales swam in shoals and every shore
swarmed with the amphibii. The enormous massacres
polluted the ocean with blood to an extent such as our
human battles, from the earliest day, cannot even begin
to compare with. In a single day, from fifteen to
twenty Whales were killed, and fifteen hundred Sea
Elephants! And this was mere killing for the sake of
killing. For what was to be done with so many of
those huge creatures, each of which had so much blood
and so much oil? What was the meaning of all this
cruel slaughter? What the result? Just simply, to
redden and pollute so many miles of the pure Ocean!
To have the cold and cruel enjoyment of most brutal
tyrants; to watch, with cruel eye, the lingering agonies
and the fierce, but impotent struggles, of one of God's
noblest and most inoffensive creatures! Peron relates,
with a disgust which does him honor, that he saw a
brutal sailor thus slowly and brutally butcher a female
Seal. She groaned and writhed like something human;
and whenever she opened her poor, bleeding mouth, he
dashed the oar into it, breaking her poor teeth at every
thrust.</p>
<p>Durville tells us that at the new Shetland isles, in the
South Seas, the English and Americans actually exterminated
the Seals in four years; killing, in their blind
rage, alike the newly born and parturient female, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
often they killed only for the skin, losing the vast and
very precious amount of oil.</p>
<p>Such slaughter as that is really a disgrace to our
common humanity; such butchery reveals a terrible, a
loathsome, instinct, that makes us shudder as we look
around upon even our best and kindliest, and reflect
how soon and upon what slight temptation they, too,
may become cruel! On a smiling shore and among a
notably amiable people, we remember one of these murderous
massacres to have taken place. Some five or
six hundred Tunnies were driven into a lovely bay that
they might be ignominiously murdered in a single day.
The drag nets, so vast that the capstan and the bars
had to be brought into requisition, to <i>heave</i>, rather
than draw them in, brought the poor creatures into that
beautiful bay, to them, a veritable <i>chamber of death</i>,
and all around were bronzed, hardy, and cruel men,
armed with harpoons and pikes. And from distances
of even twenty leagues around, fair women—shame to
our nature!—yea, women sat or stood to witness that
truly brutal butchery. The signal is given and the
dastardly butchers strike, and the pierced and bleeding
victims writhe, bound, agonize—as though they were
human, and pitiless woman applauds the prowess—Godwot!—of
pitiless man! The waters, agitated by
the vain, though mighty struggle of the victims, is polluted
and discolored with blood and foam, and woman—Woman
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
looks on this horrid scene and, when the last
victim has given its last gasp, sighs deeply and departs,
wearied, but not satisfied, and whispers—Is that all?
And yet we call ourselves only, "a little lower than
the angels!"</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_VI" id="BOOK_3_CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE LAW OF THE OCEAN.</p>
<p>A great and deservedly popular writer, Eugene Noël,
who throws a bright, broad light upon every subject
which he touches, most truly says, in his important work
on Pisciculture, the following words: "We might
make the Ocean an immense food-factory, more productive
than even our earth itself, fertilizing and supporting
everything, seas, rivers, lakes, and Lands. Hitherto
we have cultivated only the lands—let us now cultivate
the waters. Nations! Attention!"</p>
<p>More productive than the land? Eh! How is that
to be?</p>
<p>M. Baude explains the matter very clearly, in his recently
published and very important work on Fishery.
He shows very clearly that, of all creatures, the fish
consumes the least, and produces the most. Merely to
keep that creature alive, nothing, or next to nothing, is
required. Rondelet kept a carp three years in a bottle
of water, and gave it nothing save what it could extract
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
from that water; yet, in that time, it so increased
in bulk that he could not get it out of the bottle! The
Salmon, during its stay, of two months, in fresh water,
scarcely feeds at all, and yet in that time scarcely loses
flesh. Its stay in salt water, during the same space of
time, gives it the enormous increase of six pounds in
weight. How little that resembles the slow growth of
our land animals! If we were to pile up into one heap
all that it takes to fatten an Ox or a Pig, we should actually
be astounded at the amount of food required for
the like increase of weight.</p>
<p>And, accordingly, those people whose demand most
urgently presses upon their power of supply, the Chinese,
with their three hundred millions of ever craving
appetites, have directly applied themselves to the art
of promoting that great power of reproduction, that
richest manufacture of nourishing food. On all the
great rivers of China, prodigious multitudes find in the
waters, the food which they would but vainly ask from
the land. Agriculture is always more or less precarious;
a blighting wind, a frost, the slightest accident,
can sentence a whole nation to all the horrors of Famine.
But, on the contrary, the living and teeming, the
exulting and abounding, harvest beneath the waters,
nourishes innumerable families, and makes those families
almost as prolific and abounding as itself.</p>
<p>In May, on the great central river of the Empire, a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
vast trade is done in Fish <i>fry</i>, which is bought, sold,
and resold, for the purpose of stocking the fish-ponds of
private persons, who feed their fish from the mere offal
of the household.</p>
<p>The Romans,—so long ago!—had the same wise
system;—only they, sometimes, were barbarous enough
to feed their fish with slaves! Bad enough, that, and
to spare; but at least they left us the precious legacy
of these words—"The spawn of the sea fish <i>can</i> become
fish in fresh water." In the last century, a German,
by the name of Jacobi, discovered, or rather, revived,
the art of <i>artificial fecundation</i>; and, in our
own century, and with still more productive effect,
France, copying from England, has done the same
thing. A fisherman of Bresse, Remy, has practised,
since 1840, the art which has now become European.</p>
<p>Taken in hand by such men as Coste, Pouchet, &c.,
this art has ceased to be merely empirical—it has become
<i>a Science</i>. Among other things, it has become
known that there are certain regular connections between
the salt and the fresh water; the fish from the
former, coming, at certain seasons, to spawn in the latter.
The Eel, wherever bred, as soon as it has the
thickness of a needle, hastens to ascend the river, and
in such numbers that it actually whitens the whole
stream. This treasure, which, if properly taken care
of, would give many thousands of pounds of the most
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
nutritious food is unworthily, shamefully, destroyed;
sold as so much mere manure. The Salmon is no less
faithful; invariably it comes from the sea back to the
river in which it had its birth. Mark hundreds of them,
and not one of them shall be missing. Their love of
their native river is such that they will even, (see the
<i>Salmon Leaps</i> of Scotland, Ireland, and Northern England)
<i>leap</i>, springing from the tail, over seemingly insurmountable
obstacles! Such are the Fish!</p>
<p>Upon land, we take care of our <i>Horses</i>; why not
<span class="smcap">PRESERVE THE SEA</span>? Why not <i>protect the breeding
Season of the Ocean</i>? The young and the pregnant
females, should be held sacred, more especially as to those
species which are not superabundantly productive, such
as the Cetacæ, and the Amphibii. To kill, is a necessity
of our nature, our teeth and stomach sufficiently
testify to that; but that very necessity obliges us to preserve
life.</p>
<p>On the land, we feed and protect our flocks and herds.
But for the food and protection which we give to them,
most of them would not exist at all, or would have
been devoured by wild beasts. We have a right, or at
least, a plausible excuse, for killing them, but we take
care to spare the young and the pregnant.</p>
<p>In the seas there are still more young lives annihilated
when we depart from this law of <i>preserving</i> that we
may the more plentifully kill. We may, if we prudently
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
as well as mercifully so will it, make the generation
of the inferior animals, an element almost infinitely productive.
In our seas and rivers, chiefly, it is, that Man
appears the Magician. High time it surely is, that he
should unite to his power both kindness and wisdom.
He is in reality, the opponent of death; for, though appetite
compels him to kill, his skill and care can create
torrents of teeming life.</p>
<p>As regards those precious species which, foolishly, as
well as cruelly, we have almost annihilated, and especially
for that greatest and most precious life of all, the
Whale, there should be an absolute peace, for at least
half a century. That great, that really magnificent species,
will then repair its losses. Being no longer persecuted,
it will return to the temperate zone, which is its
natural climate, where it will find its natural food in the
abounding animalculæ of the comparatively warm waters.
Being thus restored to its natural climate and its
natural food, it will regain its old gigantic proportions.
Let the old rendezvous of their Love be held sacred,
and again we shall see the Leviathan, the whale of two
or three hundred feet long. Let this magnificent creature's
haunts be respected, especially in its breeding
season, and in half a century it would be as plentiful
as of old. Formerly it abounded in a bay of California.
Why not make that bay sacred to it? Then it
would not seek shelter among the horrid glaciers of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
pole. Let us respect their reason of Love, and enormous
will be the benefit to ourselves.</p>
<p>Peace! I say again; peace for the Whale, the Sea-Cow,
the Sea-Elephant; peace for all those precious
species which man's inhumanity has so nearly crushed
out of existence. A long, a sacred peace should be
granted to them; like that which the Swiss so wisely
granted to the Chamois, which, when almost extinct,
was thus rendered numerous as ever. For all, whether
Fish or Amphibii there is needed a season of perfect
rest, like the <i>Truce of God</i>, which in the olden day
prevented the chivalry of Europe from butchering each
other.</p>
<p>These creatures themselves instinctively comprehend
what we either know not or neglect; for, at their season
of maternity, they lose their timidity, and venture to
our shores, as though certain that at such a season, they
will be held sacred. At that season, they are in their
greatest beauty a id their greatest strength. Their brilliant
color and their flashing phosphorence indicate the
utmost vigor of their existence, and in every species
that is not menacingly superabundant, that season of
reproduction should be respected. Kill them afterwards?
By all means—but pray do not anticipatively
kill in the one fish a whole shoal of fishes.</p>
<p>Every unoffending creature has a right to the moment
of happiness, to that moment when the individual,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
however lowly placed, goes beyond the narrow limits
of his individual <i>Self</i>, and from his dark individuality,
glances into and feels the Infinite Future.</p>
<p>And let us aid Nature; then shall we be blessed,
from the lowest depths to the starry heights; then shall
we receive the blessing glance of that God who hath
made both great and small, and who has commanded us
to imitate Him.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a><br /><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_FOURTH" id="BOOK_FOURTH"></a>BOOK FOURTH.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE RESTORATION OF THE SEA.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a><br /><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_I" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</p>
<p class="caption3">ORIGIN OF SEA BATHING.</p>
<p>The Sea, so ill treated by man, in this pitiless warfare,
has been to him most generously kind. When Earth,
which he loves so much, when that rude Earth wears,
weakens, exhausts him, it is that so much feared, so
much abused Sea, which takes him to her bosom, and
restores him to new life.</p>
<p>And, in fact, is it not from her that life primitively
sprang? She contains within her all the elements of
life in a quite marvellous plenitude. Why, then, when
we feel ourselves sinking, do we not repair for restoration
to the abounding source of life?</p>
<p>That source has space and kindness enough for all,
but is especially kind to the too civilized children of
men, for the sons and daughters who are suffering for
the fathers and mothers, victims of mistaken or sinning
Love, less culpable than the sinning parents, yet a
thousand fold more punished. The Sea, that vast
female, delights to restore them; to their weakness she
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
gives her strength; and restores them young, beautiful,
healthful, from the boundless stores of her wide expanse
and fathomless depths. Venus, who was born of Ocean,
is from Ocean reborn every moment, and not a sick,
suffering, peevish, pale, and melancholy Venus, but the
triumphant, Venus full of passion and certain of fecundity.</p>
<p>How between this great and salutary, but somewhat
rude, strength and our weakness, can there be any connection?
What union can there be between elements
so greatly disproportioned? That was a serious and
difficult question; to solve it required an art, an initiation.
To understand that question thoroughly, we
must make ourselves acquainted with the time and occasion
when this art first revealed itself. Between two
ages of strength, the strength of the age of the Renaissance
and that of the Revolution, there was a period of
depression both moral and physical. The old world
had died, the new one was not yet born, and the misbegotten
children of worn out parents were weak and
unhealthy. On the one hand, the excessive indulgence
of the rich; on the other hand, the awful privations of
the poor, decimated the nations, and most decimated,
precisely those nations which most boasted their civilization.
France thrice ruined, from base to apex, in a single
century succumbed beneath the orgies of the Regency.
England triumphed over our ruin, yet had death and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
destruction within her own bosom. Her Puritan idea
had departed, and another had not yet come. Weakened
by the fierce lusts of Charles II., she was still
farther degraded by the paltry briberies of Walpole;
and in the debasement of the Public the worst passions
of the Individual came to light. The fine book of
<i>Robinson</i> exhibits the horrors of the terrible Lust of
Strong Drink;—a terrible book, that, in which Medicine
calls to its aid all the denunciations of Religion,
and denounces the gloomy suicide of celibatism.</p>
<p>Anxieties, evil habits, effeminate and unwholesome
life;—all these betray themselves in the softened tissues,
the meagre forms, the horrid scrofula. Lovely
complexions cover the most vile diseases. Anne of
Austria, renowned for her extreme clearness of complexion,
died of loathsome ulcer; the Princess of Soubise,
that dazzlingly fair beauty, rotted, so to speak,
into her grave. In England, the Duke of Newcastle
asked the learned Doctor Russell why it was that the
beautiful Lily and Rose concealed so much of scrofula.</p>
<p>It rarely happens that a worn out race recovers itself;
but the English did so. For some seventy or
eighty years it recovered a wonderful strength of
activity. Partly it owed its recovery to its political
and social disturbances,—for there is nothing so conducive
to health as movement; but it must be confessed
that the chief cause of its renovation was its change of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
habits. It changed in everything,—education, food,
medicine; all were changed, for all felt that health and
strength were necessary to success in anything and
everything.</p>
<p>There needed no great genius for such a Reform;
the true theory had been propounded; all that was necessary
was to make the Science an Art, to <i>practise</i>
what hitherto had only been <i>preached</i>. The Moravian,
Comenius, writing a century before Rousseau, said:
"Return to Nature; educate according to Nature;"
the Saxon Hoffman said: "Return to Nature; make
her your Physician." Hoffman appeared just in time
to combat the evils caused by the orgies of the Regency,
evils in which the remedies were as bad as the
disease, the Physician as fatal as the Quack. Hoffman
truly said to his age—"Leave Doctors alone; live
temperately, drink water, and you will need no medicines."
That was a true moral reform. And thus
among ourselves, Priessnith in 1830, after the Bacchanalia
of the Restoration imposed upon the luxurious
aristocracy of Europe the coarse food of the peasant,
and, in the hard northern climate, the open air bath, in
snow water; that Hell of cold which, in its reaction,
gives such a glow of heat. And the rich and the delicate
submitted to this hard discipline; so great is our
human love of life and fear of death.</p>
<p>And, in fact, why should not water be the safety of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
man? Berzelius assures us that four-fifths of our living
frames are water; just as four-fifths of our globe are
covered by Oceans, Seas, Lakes, and Rivers. For our
arid Earth the Sea is a constant Hydropathist, curing it
of its otherwise deadly dryness, and nourishing and
beautifying its fruits and flowers. Strange and prodigious
magician, that same water! With so little,
making so much; with so little, destroying so much—destroying
so slowly, but so surely!</p>
<p class="p0" style="padding-left:40%">
<i>Gutta lapidem cavat, non vi, sed stepe cadendo</i>;<br />
"The plastic globule wears the rugged rock,<br />
By frequent falling, not by sudden shock."<br />
</p>
<p>Water is at once the most potent and the most elastic
of all forces, lending her aid to all the metamorphoses
of our globe, covering, penetrating, transforming all
around us.</p>
<p>Into what frightful desert, into what gloomy forest,
will not man penetrate in search of the healing springs
which boil up from the bosom of the earth? What a
perfectly superstitious belief we have in those springs
which bring to us the hidden and healing virtues! I
have seen fanatics who had no Deity but Carlsbad, that
wonderful meeting of the most contradictory waters. I
have seen the worshippers of Bareges, and I confess
that I have myself submitted to the gushing and sulphureous
waters of Acqui in their strange and almost
animal pulsations. The hot baths of earth have no medium
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
in their action; they are either certain health or
certain death. How many sufferers who might have
lingered through weeks, months, or even years, have
been quickly slain by them! Frequently, those potent
waters give a sudden revival, and, together with health,
bring back the very passions which caused disease;
passions hot as the waters which revived them. The
very atmosphere above these sulphureous waters is intoxicating,
the <i>aura</i> of the Sybil that maddened her
into Prophecy! An outburst which compels us to
speak that which we would most conceal. And how
terribly self-revealing we are in those Babels to which,
under the plea of seeking health, we resort to throw
aside the conventionalities, in too many cases the very
decencies of Society. There, pale, worn sufferers, of
both sexes, sit at the gaming table in eager passion to
win gold, and, in reality, winning only an earlier
Death.</p>
<p>Very different is the saving breath of the great Sea;
in itself it is a purifier. That never ceasing interchange
of the ocean of air, and the ocean of water, forbids
life ever to languish. Early and late, those oceans
of air and sea are at work. At every instant each
passes through the crucible of death—and at every
instant revives. The whirlwind and the water spout
give newer and stronger life to the vexed ocean.</p>
<p>To live on land is to repose; to live on sea is to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
combat, and to combat savingly;—for those who can
bear it, a Spartan training in which many perish, but
those who survive are very strong.</p>
<p>In the middle ages there was a perfect horror of the
Sea. They libelled the great Sea, they called that fertile
mother "the kingdom of the prince of the powers
of air"—the very name which was given to Satan. The
nobility of the seventeenth century would by no means
consent to have its palaces near the huts of the rude
seamen. The frowning castle, with its ugly and formal
garden, was almost always built, as far as possible from
the sea, on some place destitute of sun and air, but
marvellously rich in fog and miasmata. In England
it was just the same. If the manor house was on a hill,
the advantage of the situation was sedulously provided
against by a forest of tall trees, and quite as often, instead
of being on the hill, it was in the pestilent marsh
below. At the present day, England, wiser than of
old, builds by the sea side, rejoices in sea baths even in
winter, and is rewarded by strong health. The people
of the sea coasts better knew, even in earlier times, the
life-giving power of the sea. Its purifying power first
struck them; they observed its power in curing scrofula
of its disgusting sores, and they well knew the
power of its bitterness in killing the parasite worms
which, otherwise, would kill the child. They ate the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
Sea weed and the <i>Halcyonia</i>, well knowing that the
iodine that they contain contracts and makes firm the
flesh. Russell, who heard and noted these popular
recipes, was thus enabled to answer the question of the
Duke of Newcastle, and did so in his excellent book,
published in 1750, on the use of Sea water in cases of
glandular wasting.</p>
<p>There is a great force in his sentence—"The great
want is not how to cure, but how to repair, <i>to create</i>."</p>
<p>He proposed a miracle, but a quite possible one; to
make new flesh, new tissues. And he proposed to do
that chiefly with the child, who, though born of polluted
parents, might yet be re-made.</p>
<p>It was at the same time that Bakewell, the Leicestershire
farmer, <i>created</i> meat. Up to that time horned
cattle were chiefly valued for their milk, from his day
forth they are made to yield a more generous food.
The poor milk diet, in fact, had to be abandoned by
men who are compelled to be so active, so laborious, so
untiring. Russell's little book, in 1750, created Sea
bathing; it is not too much to say he created it, for it
really was he who made it in vogue.</p>
<p>This whole grand theory may be summed up in a very
few words:</p>
<p>"It is necessary to drink sea-water, to bathe in sea-water,
and to eat sea-weed; clothe your children as
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
lightly as possible, and let them have plenty of air. The
Ocean breeze, and the Ocean water; there you have
the sure cure."</p>
<p>That last advice seems very bold. To have the half
naked child exposed to the open air in a damp and variable
climate, is, no doubt, anticipatively, to lose the
weak; but the strong will survive, and their posterity
will be the better brought up. Let us add that business,
and navigation, by earlier relieving the boys from
school, from the sedentary life of the young nobles at
Oxford or Cambridge, make them a new race.</p>
<p>In his ingenious book, guided only by popular tradition,
Russell doubtless was far enough from suspecting
how, in a single century, all science would come to the
aid of his theory, and that each would aid him in making
of the Sea a perfect system of Therapeutics.</p>
<p>The most valuable elements of terrestrial life are
abundantly in the sea; and science may well say to us—"Hither!
Hither, worn and wearied nation, swinked
laborer, failing woman, young child, fading because your
parents sinned; hither! to the Sea, and the Sea shall
cure you!" The universal base of life, the embryonic
mucus, the living animal jelly in which man continually
takes and retakes the marrowy substance of his being,
is so abounding in the sea that we may call it the sea
itself. Of that mucus, both marine animals and marine
vegetables are made. Her generosity puts earth to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
shame. She is liberal to give, be ye therefore, willing
to receive.</p>
<p>"But," it maybe said, "we are attacked in the very
foundation and support of our being. Our bones bend,
bow, and we are weak, and tottering from their insufficient
nurture." Well! The lime which they need
abounds in the sea; so abounds that her madrepores
build islands of it, and are at this moment building
whole continents. Her fishes carry it hither and thither
in such vast quantity that, washed upon every shore,
it serves as a manure.</p>
<p>And you, young female, you who, visibly, are wasting
into an early grave, repair to the sea, where every
breath you draw shall be a restorative. That restorative
iodine, is in every breath that blows, in every wave
that heaves, in every fish that swims. The Cod alone
have enough to iodise the entire earth.</p>
<p>Is it animal warmth that you lack? The sea affords
you the most perfect, the most equable, the most widely
diffused warmth; warmth so great, in fact, that were
it not diffused, it would melt the earth from Pole to
Pole, and make each Pole another Equator.</p>
<p>The rich, warm, red blood, is the triumph of the
Sea; by it she has animated and armed with mightiest
strength her giants, so much mightier than mightiest
giants of the earth. She has made that element, and
she can remake you, poor, pale, drooping flower. She
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>
abounds, superabounds, in that rich red blood; in her
children it so abounds that they give it forth to every
wind.</p>
<p>And there is the revelation of the whole mystery.
All the principles, pale mortal, that are combined in
you, she has in separation. She has your bone, your
blood, your sap and your heat—in one or the other of
her creatures, she has them all.</p>
<p>And she has, also, what you have not, a superabundant
strength. Her breathing gives I know not what
of inspiring excitement; of what we may call physical
heroism. With all her violence, the great generating
element inspires us with the same fiery vivacity, the same
wild love, with which she herself palpitates.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_II" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</p>
<p class="caption3">CHOICE OF COAST.</p>
<p>Earth is her own doctor; every climate has its own
remedy. More and more will Medicine lie in Emigration.
But it must be an Emigration of foresight, not one
of those mad-cap, rapid, and most mischievous journeys
in which the patient rushes from one extreme of climate
to another, but prudently calculated to the obtaining of
those vivifying aids which nature every where holds in
store for those who know how to profit by them. The
youth, that is yet to be born, depends upon these two
things—the <i>Science of Emigration</i> and the <i>Art of Acclimatization</i>.
Hitherto, man has remained a prisoner
like an oyster on its rock. If he occasionally emigrates
to some small distance from his temperate zone, he, for
the most part, goes to die. He will only become free,
really brave, when the science and art of Emigration
and Climatization shall make him free of the whole
globe.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p>
<p>Few diseases are cured in the place and under the
circumstances which have given rise to them; they hold
to certain habits which the localities perpetuate and
render unconquerable. There is no Reform, physical
or moral, for those who persist in the originating vice.</p>
<p>Medicine, guided by the auxiliary sciences, directs
us in the new road to the desired end. Our emigrations
must be made prudently and gradually. Can we,
safely, without preparation, without alteration of diet
and of habits, be suddenly removed from an inland to a
maritime abode? Can we prudently take to the sea-bath
until the sea breeze shall have trained our physical
frame? Can we suddenly and without preparation encounter
the severe shock, the horripilation of the really
tremendous shock of the cold water bath in the cold
open air? These questions we are glad to say are more
and more being put and answered by our physicians.</p>
<p>The extreme rapidity of our railroad journeys is very
mischievous even to the strong;—in many cases fatal
to the ailing. To pass, as so many do, from Paris to
the Mediterranean in twenty-four hours, passing at
every hour into a different climate, is as perilous a thing
as a nervous person can do. You arrive agitated,
giddy. When Madame de Sevigné took a whole month
to travel from Brittany to Provence, she proceeded
by slow and calculated degrees from one climate to
another, and its opposite. She proceeded, by slow degrees,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
from the maritime climate of the West into the
inland climate of Burgundy. Then, travelling slowly
by the upper Rhone into Dauphiny, she, with the
greater safety and comfort, braved the free winds of
Valence and of Avignon; then, halting awhile, and
resting at Aix, in the interior of Provence, far from the
Rhone and from its shores, she made herself Provençal
in lungs.</p>
<p>France has the enviable advantage of being between
two seas, and thence the facility of alternating, as the
disease may require, between the saline tonicity of the
Mediterranean and the moister and—except in case of
tempest—the far milder air of the Ocean.</p>
<p>On each of the two coasts there is a graduated scale
of stations, more or less mild, more or less strengthening.
It is very interesting to observe, and very useful
to follow, this double scale,—proceeding, as a general
thing, from weaker to stronger.</p>
<p>The climate of the Ocean parting from the strong,
rough, ever-heaving waters of the channel, becomes
extremely mild at the South of Brittany, milder still in
the Gironde, and mildest of all in the land-locked basin
of Arcachon.</p>
<p>The air of the Mediterranean, which we may call
circular, has its highest note in the dry, though keen,
climate of Provence and Genoa, becomes more mild as
you approach Pisa, milder and less variable in Sicily,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
and at Algiers attains a wonderful mildness and regularity.
And on your return be sure of a balmy air at
Majorca and the little ports of the Rousillon, so well
sheltered from the harsh north wind.</p>
<p>The Mediterranean commands our admiration by
two characteristics; the beauty of its shores and the
brilliant purity of its sky and atmosphere. Very salt,
very bitter is that sea; but what a glorious blue sky is
above it! It gives out by evaporation about thrice as
much water as it receives from all its tributary rivers.
It would become all salt, like that terrible Dead Sea,
but for the lower currents, the under-tow, like that from
Gibraltar, for instance, were not constantly tempering
it with the waters of the Ocean.</p>
<p>All that I have seen of its shores are beautiful,
though somewhat stern. Nothing common-place about
those shores. The volcanic, the lurid bale fires of the
lower earth, have everywhere made their mark upon
the upper earth; those dark Plutonic rocks are never
tiresome like the marshy sands of other shores. If the
famous Orange woods sometimes seem somewhat monotonous,
they compensate you when here and there, a
sheltered spot, you find the true African vegetation, the
Aloe and the Cactus, the hedge of Myrtle and Jessamine,
and the wild and perfumed landes. Above, it is true,
bald and frowning mountains loom, and their long offshoots
run even into the very sea.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span></p>
<p>"It seemed to me," said a traveller, "that I was
between two atmospheres; the air above, and the air
below." He describes the varied world of plants and
animals which were reflected by the crystal mirror of
that deep blue sea of Sicily. I was less fortunate off
Genoa, where, gazing into the depths, I saw nothing
but a desert. The dry and sterile rocks, the volcanic
framing of the shores, dark as midnight, or of a still
sadder and more ghastly and ghostlike white, showed
me nothing but antique sarcophagi—reversed churches,
reminding one, at times, of the cathedrals of Florence,
or the leaning tower of Pisa. Sometimes, also, I
seemed to see "strange monsters of the deep." Whales?
Elephants? I do not know; but of real life not a
trace.</p>
<p>Such, however, as that beautiful sea is, it admirably
nerves and hardens the dwellers on its shores, and the
sailors on its bosom; it makes at once the most fiery
and the most solid of races. Our giants of the North,
are, perhaps, stronger, but certainly are not more enduring,
and, as certainly, they do not so readily, or so
safely acclimatise, as the seamen of Genoa, of Calabria,
or of Greece, bronzed as they are, not by an accident
of the skin, but by the permeation, the imbibation of
the Sun's rays. A friend of mine, a learned physician,
sends his pale patients from Paris or Lyons to take their
Sun-baths in the South, and himself lies nude on the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
rocks, for hours together. He has only his head covered;
as to all the rest of his person, he is bronzed as
an African.</p>
<p>The really sick will go to Sicily, to Algiers, to Madeira,
in search of health. But the restorative of the
pale, worn populations of our great cities, is best to be
found in the more varied and more strengthening climates
of the country which has given to Earth its most
iron humanity, its heroes by sea and by land, and in the
council chamber—that truly iron race of the Columbuses,
the Dorias, the Massenas,—and the Garibaldis.</p>
<p>Our extreme Northern ports, Dunkirk, Boulogne and
Dieppe, where the winds and waters of the Channel
meet, are also a great nursery of renewed life, and restored
strength. That great breeze and that great sea,
might recall one from the grave. You may see there
perfectly incredible recoveries. Go there without any
real and vital wound, and you recover on the instant.
The whole human machine acts strongly; digests well,
breathes freely. You need not even strive for health
when there, for nature says to you, as Tully said to Atticus,
<i>Jubeo valere</i>,—<i>I command you to be well</i>. The
sturdy vegetation that flourishes upon the very margin
of the sea, seems to rebuke our weakness. Each of
the little ports which pierce our Norman coast, is swept
by the nor' westerly wind, which strengthens and revives
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
us; but grows less violent, though not less salubrious,
at the mouth of the Seine, beneath the fruitful
orchards of Honfleur and Trouville. The good river,
sweeping away to the left, carries with it a softer and
gentler air. Higher up, you meet the strong, the sometimes
really terrible, sea of Granville, Saint-Maloes,
and Cancale, about the best of naval schools for young
folks, a school which will make the strong still stronger.</p>
<p>But if, on the contrary, we have to deal with some
weakling, some young child, born to weakness, or some
young mother, made weak by too frequent parturition,
we must select some milder shelter. And such a warm
and always calm shelter, you will find, without
going further South, among the sleepy little isles
and peninsulæ of Morbihan. These isles form a
labyrinth more perplexed than that in which the English
king sheltered his fair Rosamond. Entrust your own
treasure to that shelter, and none shall know of her
save the Druidic rocks and the handful of fishermen
who inhabit those at once wild and gentle shores. Does
some gentle patient ask us on what people live, in those
marine solitudes? We reply, upon Fish, Fish—still
Fish! It is not far from St. Gildas, where the Bretons
assure you that Heloise sought her Abelard. They contrive
to live there as cheaply and as well as Robinson
Crusoe and his man Friday.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p>
<p>Places more civilized and attractive are to be found
farther South, such as Pornice, Royan, Saint George,
Arcachon, &c.</p>
<p>I spoke elsewhere of Saint George's, bordered by
many a bitter and precious plant; and Arcachon, too,
is as attractive, with its resinous and wholesomely pleasant
odor of its pine woods. But for the worldly rush
from that great and Wealthy Bordeaux, but for that
flood of health seekers, which pours into it at certain
seasons, it is at Arcachon that we would shelter the
dearly beloved patient, that dear and delicate creature
for whom we fear the rush and crush of the hard working
day world. That place, as long as we contemplate
it only within the inner basin, offers the contrast of an
absolute and very deep calm with a terribly rough sea
close by. Beyond the lighthouse is the terrible Gascon
sea, within the bay a lazy tide, so lazy that you cannot
hear its murmurs, as low, as light, as the quiet tread of
lady's gentle footstep on the sea-weed carpet of that
strand.</p>
<p>In an intermediate climate which is neither North nor
South, neither Brittany nor Vendëe, I have visited
again and again, and always with pleasure, the pretty
and staid shelter of Ponice, with its frank seamen and
its pretty girls, with their conical hats. It is a pretty
quiet little place, which, protected as it is by the island
(rather the peninsula) of Noirmantiers, receives only a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
slanting and exceedingly well behaved sea; that enters
silken in its softness. And in that bay of several
leagues, these creeks, with sloping shores, made, as it
would seem, on purpose for baths for women and children,
they are so sheltered and so safe. Those nice
sandy beaches, parted by such sheltering rocks, conceal
so much, and yet reveal so much of the sea life, the
plain, blunt, yet ever kindly and courteous life of the
seaman! But if those sheltering rocks do much good,
they also do no little injury. The sheltered creek and
safe haven, keeps out the Tempest;—but, it also keeps
out the fishes. By little and little, but very regularly,
the grand rush and the grand murmur of the sea are
kept out, and yet, that half silence has a very great
charm. No where else have I so much welcomed, or
so richly enjoyed, that great luxury of the undisturbed
Day-dreaming.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_III" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE HOUSE.</p>
<p>Permit an ignoramus who, yet, has paid a pretty high
price for what he <i>does</i> know, to give you some quiet advice
upon certain points upon which books, hitherto,
have told you little and Doctors nothing. That this
advice may come the more directly to both head and
heart, I will address them to an imaginary patient.
Imaginary? Not so; I have met such a patient many
times.</p>
<p>You meet a young lady seriously ill, or manifestly
about to be so, she is very weak, and her young child is
weaker still. The Winter has been hard upon them,
and the Spring still harder. Yet it is only weakness;—lassitude,
the <i>tedium vitæ</i> which Byron truly calls "more
terrible than death itself." And she is sent to the sea-side
for the Summer.</p>
<p>A great expense, that, for a fortune below even mediocrity;
painful moving for the mistress of a family;
hard separation, above all, for husband and wife who
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
truly love each other. They bargain, they would fain
shorten that separation. Would not one month be
enough? But the wise Physician knows better, and
says it would <i>not</i>; he well knows that a very short sojourn
at the sea side is far more likely to injure than to
benefit. The sudden, the severe shock of the sea bath
is likely enough to injure even the strong; to the feeble
it is simply murderous. You should first breathe the
sea air;—acclimatize yourself. Do this during the
month of June, then you shall have July, August, September,
and, in some seasons, even October for your
baths, and the bath and the great, strong, keen winds
will harden your frame against the fast approaching
Winter.</p>
<p>Few men are free during the whole Summer; happy
the husband who can be away from the thronged city
to pass a couple of the Summer months at the sea side
with his suffering wife. However much he may feel inclined
to sacrifice every secondary interest for her, it is
for her interest that he must remain in the counting
house or the factory. There are strong links in the
chain of our daily life which we may not, which we
cannot, break. Therefore, the wife must go alone; and,
for the time, behold them loving, and yet divorced.
Shall I give you my opinion? <i>Let</i> her go alone; better
for her than if she went in the train of some rich
luxurious family.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span></p>
<p>That gregarious travel and gregarious abode have
their pleasures, no doubt; but, also, they have their
evils. In such cases we are apt either to become enemies,
or, which is still worse in the case of woman, to
become too friendly. The style of life at a watering
place sometimes, and not seldom produces results which
we regret through the whole remainder of life. In my
opinion the smallest inconvenience of that gregarious
watering-place life (smallest but very far from small) is
that the very people who alone would be both morally
and physically benefited by the sea, lose all that benefit
by carrying to the solemn shore the frivolity, the late
hours, the false gaiety of the great town.</p>
<p>Alone we think; in the crowd we gossip and scandalise.
The great and the rich lead the young and suffering
female into their own dissipations, and the consequence
is that she has by the sea shore a really more
mischievous excitement than she would have had in
Paris, or London, Saint Petersburgh or New York, and
will entirely lose the end for which, loving husband, you
sent her thither. Reflect upon it, young woman, be
courageous, but also be prudent. It is in an innocent
solitude that you may, if you will, enjoy with your child,
that you will most surely find the renewed health and
strength that you so much desire. In that infantine,
pure, but noble and poetic life, I again assure you, it is
that you will find restoration. Believe me the delicate
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
and tender justice which makes you fear expense, while
he at home is toiling so hard, will well repay you. The
old Ocean will love you the better if you love only it,
and will lavish upon you its great treasures of health
and youthfulness. Your child will flourish like a young
bay tree and you shall increase in grace and beauty;
and you will return to your far home youthful and
dearly beloved.</p>
<p>She resolves, she departs, for a place, the waters of
which are well known by chemical analysis to have the
qualities suited to her case. But there are many local
circumstances which cannot be known or even guessed
at from a distance. The Doctor who recommends particular
waters seldom knows the place, though he
knows the waters.</p>
<p>For some of the more important watering places
Guides have been published which are not without
merit, so far as they point out the particular diseases for
which particular waters are suited. But very few give
details which enable one to choose between a healthy
and unhealthy, a pleasant and an unpleasant, situation.
They do not venture upon such particulars as would
enable one to choose between places as well as between
waters, but confine themselves to so general a eulogy
of the latter as to leave us in the dark as to the former.</p>
<p>What is the precise exposition? Look at the map
and you perceive that the coast slopes to the South, but
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span>
even this tells you nothing; for it may chance that a
peculiar curve of the land may place your house under
a cold or damp influence, from a Northern or Western
exposure.</p>
<p>Are there any marshes in the neighborhood? In
most cases the answer must be, yes. But the difference
is very great whether the marshes be salt and renewed,
and made salubrious by the sea, or whether they be
stagnant marshes of fresh water which after droughts
emit feverish miasmata.</p>
<p>Is the sea very pure, or mixed? And in what proportion?
A great mystery. For nervous persons,
however, for novices just commencing with salt water
bathing, the mildest are the best. A sea, somewhat
mixed, an air less salt and keen, and a less desolate
shore, having some of the charms of the country, are the
best recommendations.</p>
<p>A grave point is the choice of a house; and who
shall direct you as to that? No one. You must see
for yourself; you must observe all the particulars on
the spot. You will learn little from persons who have
visited or even lived there. They praise or condemn
this or that place not on account of its real merit, but
according to the pleasure they have enjoyed or the
friends they have made there. They recommend you
to some of those friends who receive you admirably; at
first you are delighted, but in a short time you discover
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>
many inconveniences, and sometimes the house is even
dangerously unhealthy. Yet you do not like to leave
it, lest you should mortify both those who recommended
you and the kind and amiable family who so hospitably
received you.</p>
<p>"Well, then," you say, "I will ask no recommendation,
but on reaching the place I will consult an honest
and skilful doctor who will be able to enlighten me."
Honest! that is not enough, he must also be very intrepid
to tell you frankly any of the bad qualities of
the place, for he would be a ruined man, he would take
leave of the whole place, would live as solitary as a
wolf; and, indeed, would be lucky if some personal
injury were not done to him.</p>
<p>I have a perfect horror of the absurdly flimsy houses
which speculators build in our variable climate. These
pasteboard erections are so many dangerous traps. In
the full heats of Summer such bivouacs are all well
enough, but often one has to remain in September and
October amid the high winds and the torrents of rain.</p>
<p>For themselves the landlords build good substantial
houses, but for poor patients they build chalets of wood,
ill closed, and not even moss-covered, like the Swiss
chalets. It really is treating us quite too ill.</p>
<p>In those villas, apparently luxurious, but in reality
wretched, no provision is made for comfort. Drawing-rooms
for show,—and commanding a view of the sea,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span>
they have, but no provision is made to gratify that feeling
of home comfort, so dear to the sick, and more especially
so to woman. She feels unsheltered, as though
constantly exposed to half a gale of wind, and constantly
passing from one temperature to another.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the solidly built house of the
Fisherman is often low, damp, and inconveniently arranged
in its interior. Often, it has not even a double
ceiling, but mere planks, which admit cold draughts into
the upper rooms, inflicting coughs, rheumatism, and
a score of other diseases.</p>
<p>Whatever may be your choice, Madame, between
these two kinds of house, do you know what I heartily
wish for you? Laugh, if you please. What I wish
you to have, even in June, is a good fire-place, with a
very excellent chimney, well closed against the wind.
In our beautiful France, with its cold north-west and its
rainy south-west, which occasionally predominates for
nine months, a good fire may be necessary, even in
June. On a damp evening, when your child returns
shivering from his promenade, a fire is necessary, to
warm him, before he goes to bed.</p>
<p>Two things ought to be especially looked after, wherever
you lodge, fire and good water, the latter a thing
rarely to be found near the sea. If it is altogether bad,
endeavor, by the use of beer or tea, to dispense with
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
drinking the plain water, or if you must use it, let it
previously be boiled.</p>
<p>Why cannot I, with a single word, build you just
such a villa as I have in my mind? I do not speak of
the show-house, the almost castle, such as the wealthy
build at the sea side, but of the humble house, fitted for
humble fortunes. It is an art which is yet to be created,
and one which no one seems to suspect, that of
building a house, at once small and substantial. The
houses which are built for us, especially at the sea side,
are built in direct contradiction with our needs in so
changeable a climate. Those Kiosks, with their flimsy
ornaments, may do well enough for well-sheltered situations,
but make one fancy that the wind must needs
blow them into the sea. The Swiss chalets have immense
overhanging roofs, which so well protect from the
snow, but also have the serious defect of excluding the
light. The sun, in our northern seas, should not be excluded,
but most cordially received. As to the imitations
of chapels, gothic churches, and the like toys, we
need say nothing about them, they are really beneath
notice, so absurdly ill calculated as they are for comfortable
homes.</p>
<p>The first necessity for a sea-side house, is great
strength, a solid thickness of walls, which will obviate
that rocking which we always feel in slight buildings.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
We want such a solidity of construction as even in the
greatest tempests will give courage to a timid woman,
and enable her to say with a smile of pleasure. "How
very comfortable we are in here, while such a storm
rages without!"</p>
<p>The second point is that on the land side, the house
should be so perfectly sheltered that on that side we
can sit and forget the sea, and in the neighborhood of
that great movement find the most complete repose.</p>
<p>To meet those two needs, I prefer the form which affords
least hold to the wind, the crescent form, with the
convex front to the sea, so that every window will in
turn receive the Sun.</p>
<p>The concave portion of this half circle would be
sheltered by the horns of the crescent, so as to enclose
the pretty flower garden of the mistress of the house.
Stretching from this flower garden, the progressive sloping
of the soil would allow of a kitchen garden of a
certain extent, well sheltered from the wind.</p>
<p>We are told that "Flora shuns the sea;" what she
really does shun, is not the sea, but man's negligence,
ignorance, or indolence. At Eteretat, before a very
heavy sea, on the high overlooking beach, and exposed
to heavy winds, there is a farm, with an orchard of superb
trees. What precautions have been taken? A
simple hedge-crowned bank, five feet high, and behind
that a row of elms, which shelter all the rest. Many
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span>
places Brittany would furnish us with like instances.
Who does not know that Roscoff raises fruit and vegetables
in such profusion as to sell them cheaply, even in
Normandy?</p>
<p>But to return to our building. I want it low-pitched;
only a ground floor, and over that the bed-chambers.
Our house, therefore, will be but small; but, on the
other hand, it must be very thick, must have two rows
of chambers, an apartment looking out on the sea, and
another on the land.</p>
<p>The ground floor apartment, looking towards the
land, would be somewhat sheltered by the upper story,
which would project about five feet. This would make
the interior crescent a sort of gallery for use in bad
weather. The lower rooms would be a dining room;—a
small room for our books (voyages and travels, and
natural history) and a bathroom. I do not mean an
actual library or luxurious bath. The necessary, and
the very plain, the convenient, and nothing more.</p>
<p>On very rough days, when the beach is hardly the fit
place for delicate patients, I should wish to see the lady
reading or working in her pretty parterre. She would
have some life there, flowers, an aviary, and a little
tank of sea water to receive the little creatures which
the fishermen would be sure to give her. Of course
she would also have an excellent compound microscope.</p>
<p>For the aviary, I should prefer the free one which I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span>
have advised elsewhere, into which the birds come at
night for protection and a little food. It is closed upon
them at night, to protect them from birds of prey, but
opened for them very early in the morning. They return
to this aviary very regularly. I believe, even, that
if the aviary were large enough, and the tree which
they most affect were enclosed, they would freely breed
there, and confide their little ones to your protection.</p>
<p>Delightful, and yet serious life, this, that we have
planned for our fair patient and her sole child. What
charming solitude in this short widowhood. How new
the situation. No housekeeping, no business. With
her boy, she is even more alone than she would be without
him. But for him she would be intruded upon by
reverie and vain fancies. But her innocent guardian,
her boy, keeps all such fancies away. He occupies
her, causes her to talk, and talks to her of home, and
he thus constantly reminds her of him who, in their
far off home, is toiling for them, and she counts the days
to her return.</p>
<p>Flourish, pure and amiable woman. You are now
even younger than ever, you have become a girl again,
free, sweetly free, under the guardianship of your boy.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_IV" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</p>
<p class="caption3">FIRST ASPIRATION OF THE SEA.</p>
<p>It is a great and sudden transition to leave Paris in the
beautiful month of June when the great city is resplendent
with its magnificent gardens and its chestnut trees
in bloom. June would be delightful on the coast if one
had a single companion and the crowd had not arrived.
But when one is alone on the deserted, with the great
sea, we are touched with a sort of melancholy.</p>
<p>On a first visit to the coast the impression made is not
very favorable. There is aridity, there is wildness,
and yet there is a certain monotony. The novel grandeur
of the spectacle makes us feel, by contrast, how
weak and small we are, and that thought thrills the
heart. The delicate chest that so lately was confined
in a chamber, and now finds itself suddenly removed to
this vast open chamber of the universe, with the sun
shining so brightly and the sea breeze blowing so
strongly, feels oppressed. The child comes, goes, and
the mother sits down, shivering in the free fresh breeze.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
The warmth of the home she has but just left comes to
her mind and she saddens. But her boy frolics gaily
and that soon consoles her.</p>
<p>All this will soon pass away Madame. Be resolute;
your impressions will be very different when you become
better acquainted with the Sea and think of its myriads
of inhabitants. And that painful constriction of the
lungs will pass away too, when you become accustomed
to the free atmosphere of the sea. You require time to
accustom yourself to it, by and by, not thinking about
it, as your boy plays with you in sheltered nooks, you
will breathe freely and your chest will dilate without
pain and without conscious effort. But, just at first, I
advise you not to stay too long at a time on the beach,
but rather to take your walk inland.</p>
<p>The land, your accustomed friend, recalls you. The
pine woods rival the sea in healthful emanations; and
theirs have less of harshness. They penetrate all our
being, enter by every pore, modify and purify the
blood, and perfume us with their subtle aroma. In the
Landes behind the pine woods, the herbs and even the
coarse grass on which you tread, yield perfumes not
enervating or intoxicating as the dangerous roses, but
agreeably bitter. Seat yourself among them and you,
like them, will be sheltered by this slight slope of land.
Might you not, now that you are thus sheltered, fancy
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span>
yourself a hundred leagues from the sea? Drink in
the sweet breathings, the pure spirits, the very soul of
these wild flowers—that, in purity, are your very sisters.
Gather them if you will, Madame; they ask for
nothing better. Somewhat rude, perhaps, and yet so
beautiful; and in their virginal perfume they have that
singular mystery of calming and strengthening. Do
not fear to hide them in your fair bosom and upon
your beating heart.</p>
<p>Let us not forget that these sheltered landes are, at
certain hours, burning hot. They so absorb and concentrate
the rays of the sun. The weak woman is
wilted there. The young girl, full of vigorous life, feels
her pulses boiling and has redoubled power; her brain
swims and she has strange and dangerous day dreams.
If you wish to go there let it be on some moist and
rather cloudy day; or, still better, rise at a very early
hour when all is cool, when the wild thyme still keeps
somewhat of its dew, and while the Hare is still abroad.</p>
<p>But let us return to the Ocean. At ebb-tide he
manifests, and, in some sort, presents to you, the rich
life that he nourishes. You must follow, step by step,
the retiring waves, though the wet sand will sink some
little beneath your feet. Fear not. The gentle wave
will, at the most, kiss your feet. If you look closely
you will perceive that the sand is not, as you at first
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
thought it, dead, but is here and there moved by numerous
lingerers that the ebb-tide has left behind. On
certain beaches, small fish are thus hidden in the sand.
At the mouth of the rivers the Eel's writhing movement,
throws up the sand in mimic earthquakes. The Crab,
too eagerly engaged in feeding, or fighting, has now to
hasten back to the sea, and in his flight he leaves an odd
mosaic, a zigzag line marking his oblique travel, and
at the end of that line you will find him lying in wait
for the coming in of the tide. The Solen (<i>Manche
de Couteau</i>), that razor-shaped shell fish, has plunged
deep into the sand, but betrays himself to you by the
breathing holes that he has left. The Venus you can
just as certainly trace by the fucus attached to its shell,
but floating on the surface; and the undulations of the
soil betray to you the covered ways of the warlike annelides,
and viewing them with the aid of your microscope
you will be charmed with the rainbows of their
changing colors.</p>
<p>But the finest sights are caused at the first low ebb,
which always follows the high Spring tide. At such
ebbs, immense and unexplored spaces are left bare, and
we can survey that mysterious bottom of the sea, on
which we have so often speculated and dreamed. There
you discover, in motion, in life, in all the secrecy of
their retreats, astonished populations, which fancied
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
themselves secure, and which rarely, if ever before, had
been looked upon by the sun, and still more rarely by
the eye of man. Be not alarmed, swarming populations
of minute creatures, you are seen only by the inquisitive
but compassionate eye of a woman; it is not the
cruel and coarse hand of a fisherman that invades your
retreat. But you ask, what does she want with you?
Nothing but to see you, salute you, show you to her
boy, and leave you in your natural element, and with
every kindly wish for your health and prosperity. At
times we need not wander far; at such times in a cleft
of the rock, we may find every minute species, old
Ocean having diverted himself with lodging a whole
world of minute creatures within the space of a few
square feet. We sit and we watch, and the longer and
the more closely we watch, the more do we see of life,
at first imperceptible. And so interested are we that
we should sit there for an indefinite time, were we not
chased to shore by that imperious master of the beach,
the flood Tide.</p>
<p>But to-morrow, at ebb, she will return to the beach,
that school, that Museum, that inexhaustible amusement
for both mother and child. There the delicate and penetrating
sense of woman and the tenderness of her
heart seize and divine all. Maternity tells her all the
secrets of increasing, diminishing, and recreating life.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
Do you ask why her instinct so quickly reveals creation
to her; why she enters as one so thoroughly at
home, into the great mystery of Nature? It is because
she is Nature herself.</p>
<p>In the depths of the unctuous waters the small algæ,
small, but unctuous and nourishing, and other little
plants of delicate and pretty figures, form a miniature
prairie which is browsed by a vast herd of molluscæ,
Limpets, Whelks, and a hundred other species, watch,
wait, feed, there, and to-morrow you will find them
there still. But do you therefore suppose that they are
utterly inert? That they have no confused idea of Love
and the Unknown? Of some benevolent thing which
at certain hours returns to refresh and nourish them?
Oh yes, they both think of it and expect it; those widows
of the great Ocean well know that he will return
to caress the earth. Anticipatively they look towards
the Ocean, and even those which have a fixed abode,
turn from the rock and open their shells towards the incoming
tide. And if it come in somewhat strongly
they are all the more delighted; too happy to hail that
living wave that advances so strongly, as in haste to caress
them.</p>
<p>"See my child" says the young mother, "at our approach
the motionless ones remain, but the quicker have
fled. Now see, they take courage again. The active
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span>
shrimp, with its fine feelers, rainbowed by the water,
creates a great commotion in that mimic and miniature
sea, and the slow and hesitating sea spider, at once
timid and daring, saves herself by ascending to the
warm surface, and the crab advancing and surveying,
suddenly returns into his miniature forest of sea weed.</p>
<p>"But what do I see now? What <i>is</i> that? A large,
motionless shell suddenly takes life, and moves. Oh,
but that is not natural, and the impostor betrays himself
by his awkward gait and his many stumbles. Yes, yes,
we detect you now, you most cunning of all cunning
crabs, Sir Bernard the Hermit, who would fain pass
yourself off for an innocent mollusc! Your bad conscience
agitates you too much."</p>
<p>On the shore of our ocean, strangers to these movements,
the animated flowers expand their corollæ.
Near to the heavy anemone those charming little annelides
appear in the sunlight. From a tortuous tube
rises a disc, an umbrella, white or lilac, sometimes flesh
color. Thrown, itself, a little on one side, it casts off
from itself an object which has nothing comparable to
it in the whole vegetable world. Not one of these is
like its sister, and all are admirable for their velvety
delicacy.</p>
<p>See one of them, without umbrella, which throws off
a whole cloud of light cottony threads, scarcely tinted
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>
with a silver grey, while five longer filets are of the
richest cherry color. They wave, they entwine, they
untwist, and their silvery heads form beautiful images
in the water. To the coarse senses of man, such a
sight as that would suggest no serious thought; but
to the nervous and delicate woman, it is much. At
those colors, by turns flashing and fading, she reflects
on her own young life that now flashes, now fades, and
now threatens to expire. Affecting thought! Again
she looks into the pretty miniature Ocean of a few feet
square, and there she better discerns Nature, the fertile
mother, but the stern mother too.</p>
<p>And our fair patient is plunged into an oppressive
reverie. Woman would cease to be woman, that is to
say, the charm of the world, if she had not that touching
gift of <i>Tenderness for everything that lives</i>; <i>pity,
and loving tears</i>.</p>
<p>She has not wept as yet, our fair patient, but she has
been so near to doing so! Her boy perceives it. Being
already attentive and quick, he remains silent; and,
silently they return. That was the amiable first day
when she first began to spell with her heart the language
of Nature. And at her very first lesson that
language had so stirred the tenderness of that poor
heart! The daylight was dying, the sea bird, on rapid
wing, approached the shore and sought his nest.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span>
And as our patient and her boy entered their already
dark garden, the cry of the night bird was heard. But
the aviary was well closed, and the innocent little refugees
within were asleep with heads under wings.
Having herself seen that all was thus safe, she relieved
her heart with a sigh, and embraced her son.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_V" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</p>
<p class="caption3">BATHS—RESTORATION OF BEAUTY.</p>
<p>If, as certain French physicians maintain, sea-water
baths have only a mechanical action, infuse no new
principle into the blood and <i>are merely a simple branch
of hydropathy</i>, it must be confessed that of all the
forms of hydropathy they are the harshest and most
hazardous. Let it once be clearly shown that that sea-water,
so rich in life, bestows no more of vitality than
fresh water and we must confess that it is little less than
madness to take sea-baths in the open air and at all the
risk of the wind, the sun, and the thousand possible
accidents.</p>
<p>Whoever has seen a poor creature come out of the
water after taking his first bath, whoever has seen him
come out pale and shuddering, must perceive how dangerous
such experiments are to certain constitutions.
Be assured that none of us would submit to so much
suffering if health could be as readily secured without
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
suffering and without danger, in one's own house,
and by common fresh water hydropathy.</p>
<p>And, as though the impression of a first sea-bath were
not sufficiently strong, it is aggravated for a nervous
woman by the presence of the crowd of bathers. For
her it is a cruel exhibition to make before a critical
crowd, before rivals, delighted to see her ugly, for once;
before silly and heartless men, who, with telescope in
hand, watch the sad hazards of the toilette of the poor
humiliated woman.</p>
<p>To brave all this the patient must have faith, great,
surpassing faith, in the Sea. She must believe that no
other remedy will meet her case, and must determine
that, at whatever risks, she will be permeated by the
virtues of the sea water. "And why not be thus <i>permeated</i>?"
ask the German physicians. "If at first entering
the water you contract and close up your pores,
reaction brings almost immediately a warmth that reopens
them, dilates the skin and renders it very capable
of <i>absorbing</i> the life of the sea."</p>
<p>The two operations, the closing and the reopening of
the pores, the first chill and the succeeding glow, almost
always take place in five or six minutes. To stay in
longer than the latter space of time, is almost always
injurious.</p>
<p>Moreover, we should not venture upon this violent
emotion of the cold bath without a preliminary course
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span>
of warm bathing, to facilitate absorption. Our skin
which is entirely composed of the little mouths which
we call pores, and which, in its way, both absorbs and
digests, as the stomach does, wants time to get accustomed
to such strong nourishment as the <i>mucus</i> of the
sea, that salted milk with which the sea makes and remakes
such myriads of creatures. By a graduated
course of baths, hot, warm, lukewarm, and almost cold,
the skin acquires this habit, and, so to speak, this appetite;
and "increase of appetite grows by what it
feeds on."</p>
<p>For the hard ceremony of the first cold sea-water
baths, at least, the odious gaze of a mob of people is to
be avoided. Let them be taken in private and with no
one present but a perfectly reliable person who, at need,
will help the nervous patient, and rub her with hot
cloths and revive her with warm drinks containing a
few drops of the potent elixir.</p>
<p>"But," it may be said, "the presence of other bathers
lessens the danger; we are far different from Virginia,
who, in an extreme danger, preferred drowning
herself to taking a bath." A great mistake; we are
more nervous now than ever we were. And the impression
of which I speak is at once so vivid and so
revolting—I mean for nervous people—that it is quite
capable of killing, by aneurism or apoplexy.</p>
<p>I love the people, but I hate a mob; especially a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
noisy mob of fast livers who come to sadden the great
Sea with their noise, their fashions, and their absurdities.
What! Is not the land large enough? Must such
people come to the Sea to martyrize the sick and to
vulgarize the majesty of the Sea, that wild and true
grandeur?</p>
<p>I once had the ill luck to run from Havre to Honfleur
in a craft loaded with such fools. Even in that short
trip they found time to grow weary of quiet, and to get
up a ball. One of them—probably a dancing master—had
his Kit with him and played all sorts of dances
in the presence of that great Ocean. Happily one
could not hear much of that small music; scarcely now
and then could a shrill note or two rise above the solemn,
the truly solemn bass of the Sea's roar. I can
easily imagine the sadness of the lady who, in July,
suffers under the invasion of a mob of these fops, fools,
and gossips. All liberty is then at an end. Even in
the most retired spot the drowsy ear of night is vexed
by the boisterous echoes from saloon, and dancing
room, coffee-room and Casino. In the day the host of
yellow gloves and varnished boots crowds the shore.
One lady is observed alone, with her boy. Why is
that? Impertinents wish to know, they approach, and,
gathering sea shells for the child, endeavor to force their
conversation on the mother. The lady is embarrassed,
bored to death, and has to confine herself to her
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>
lodging or venture out only in early morning, while the
empty pated revellers are still sleeping off the effects of
the last night's follies. Then, from her seclusion flow
a thousand ill natured comments. She becomes alarmed,
for some of these idlers have influence and may, possibly,
injure her husband.</p>
<p>Nowhere more than at the sea side, are we inquisitive,
and the poor woman becomes agitated and sleepless
during the long hot nights of July and August, and
if, towards morning, she at length sleeps, she is not much
more tranquil. The baths, far from cooling, add the
saline irritation to the fierce heat of the dog days.
From her youth she derives, not strength, but fever;
and, weak and highly nervous, she is all the more disturbed
by that interior storm.</p>
<p>Interior, but yet not hidden. The Sea, the pitiless
Sea, brings to the skin the proofs of that excitement
which the sufferer would fain keep hidden. She betrays
it by red blotches, slight efflorescences. All these
petty annoyances, which still more afflict the children,
and which in them the mother looks upon as signs of
returning health, the mothers feel as humiliations when
seen on their own faces. They fear that they will
therefore be less loved. So little do they know of the
heart of man. They know not that the sharpest spur
of love is not beauty, but suffering.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span></p>
<p>"Oh! If he should find me ugly!" is the poor woman's
morning thought, as she looks in her glass. She
at once fears and desires the coming of her husband.
And yet she feels so lonely, and fears, she knows not
what, amidst that noisy crowd. She dares not go out,
she becomes feverish, and at length is confined to her
bed. In little more than twenty-four hours, the beloved
one is by her side.</p>
<p>Who has summoned him? She certainly has not.
But, in his great straggling handwriting, her boy has
written to his father thus: "My dear Papa, come
quickly. Mamma is confined to bed, and the other day
she said 'oh if he were here!'" And accordingly he
was there, and immediately she felt herself recovering.
And he, how happy he is! Happy to see her restored,
happy to be necessary to her, and happy to see her looking
so beautiful. She is somewhat sun burnt, but how
young she looks! What life in her glance, and in her
flowing and silky hair!</p>
<p>Is this mere fiction, this so prompt restoration of life,
beauty, and tenderness; this delightful incident of finding
in a wife, a young mistress, so happy in being rejoined
by a husband? Not at all. It is an agreeable
sight which right often may be witnessed. If rare
among the very rich, it is not so among the laborious
families whose labor makes them, during most of their
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span>
lives, close prisoners. Their forced separations are
painful, and their reunion has a charm, a rapture, which
they do not even try to conceal.</p>
<p>When we consider the prodigious tension of modern
life, for toiling men, (that is to say, for every one but a
few idlers) one cannot but be glad to witness those
scenes of joy, when a reunited family expand their
hearts. Those who have no hearts, call all this vulgar
and prosaic. But, the form matters little, where the
substance is so surpassingly good. The careworn
merchant, who, from three months to three months, has
only with utmost difficulty saved the bark in which the
destiny of his wife and children is exposed to shipwreck;
the administration victim; the employé, worn
well nigh to death by the injustice and tyranny of the
offices—these suffering captives, are released, for a
brief space, from their galling chains, and the tender
family, the mother and child, endeavor to make the
husband and father forget his cares.</p>
<p>And well able are wife and child to wile the worn
man into that sweet temporary oblivion. Their gaiety,
their caresses, and the distractions of the sea-side, soothe
his wearied soul, and fill his mind with other and happier
thoughts. It is their triumph. They hurry off to visit
<i>their</i> beach, to contemplate <i>their</i> sea, and to enjoy his
admiration, which he, worthy man, just a little exaggerates,
because he wishes them to be pleased. Yes! it is
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
<i>their</i> sea; having bathed in it, they have taken possession;
and he, the toilworn husband and father, must
share with them in their vast possession. The young
woman no longer fears that crowd which formerly so
much annoyed, and even alarmed, her; now that he is
beside her she is not merely safe, but bold, daring; to
say the truth, just a little presumptuous. She is quite
familiar with the sea; familiar enough to be determined
to learn to swim. At first she is supported by her active
and bold boy. Supported by him, she swims—but
I fear if left to herself her native timidity would
return, and she would sink. Yet she is in love with
the sea; yea, jealous of the sea. For, in fact, the sea
inspires no moderate passions. There is I know not
what of electric inspiration, of all-absorbing passion
for the Sea, in all who truly know it.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_VI" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE RESTORATION OF HEART AND BROTHERHOOD.</p>
<p>There are three forms of Nature which especially expand
and elevate our souls, release her from her heavy
clay and earthy limits, and send her, exulting, to sail
amidst the wonders and mysteries of the Infinite.</p>
<p>First; there is the variable Ocean of Air with its
glorious banquet of light, its vapors, its twilight, and
its shifting phantasmagoria of capricious creatures;
coming into existence only to depart on the instant.</p>
<p>Second; there is the fixed Ocean of the earth, its
undulating and vast waves as we see them from the
tops of "earth o'er gazing mountains," the elevations
which testify its antique mobility, and the sublimity of
its mightier mountains clad in eternal snows.</p>
<p>Third; there is the Ocean of waters, less mobile than
air, less fixed than earth, but docile, in its movements,
to the celestial bodies.</p>
<p>These three things form the gamut by which the Infinite
speaks to our souls. Nevertheless, let us point
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
out some very notable differences. The air-Ocean is so
mobile that we can scarcely examine it. It deceives, it
decoys, it diverts; it dissipates and breaks up our chain
of thought. For an instant, it is an immense hope,
the day of an infinity;—anon, it is not so; all flies
from before us, and our hearts are grieved, agitated,
and filled with doubt. Why have I been permitted to
see for a moment that immense flood of light? The
memory of that brief gleaming must ever abide with me,
and that memory makes all things here on Earth look
dark.</p>
<p>The fixed ocean of the mountains is not thus transient
or fugitive; on the contrary, it stops us at every step,
and imposes upon us the necessity of a very hard,
though wholesome, gymnastic. Contemplation here has
to be bought at the price of the most violent action.
Nevertheless, the opacity of the Earth, like the transparency
of the air, frequently deceives and bewilders
us. Who can forget that for ten years Ramon, in vain,
sought to reach Mount Perdu, though often within sight
of it?</p>
<p>Great, very great, is the difference between the two
elements; the Earth is mute and the Ocean speaks.
The Ocean is a voice. It speaks to the distant stars, it
answers to their movements in its deep and solemn
language. It speaks to the Earth on the shores,
replying to the echoes that reply again; by turns
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span>
wailing, soothing, threatening, its deepest roar is
presently succeeded by a sad, pathetic sigh. And
it especially addresses itself to Man. As it is the
fecund womb in which creation began and still continues,
it has creation's living eloquence; it is Life
speaking to Life! The millions, the countless myriads,
of beings, to which it gives birth, are its words. That
milky Sea from which they proceed, that fecund marine
jelly, even before it is organized, while yet white and
foaming,—speaks. All these mingled together makes
the unity, the great and solemn voice of the Ocean.</p>
<p>And, "what are those wild waves saying?" They are
telling of <i>Life</i>, of the eternal Metamorphosis; of the
great fluid existence, shaming our senseless ambitions
of the earth-world.</p>
<p>They are telling of <i>Immortality</i>. An indomitable
strength is at the bottom of Nature, how much more so
at Nature's summit, the Soul! And it speaks of Partnership,
of Union. Let us accept the swift exchange
which, in the individual, exists between the diverse
elements; let us accept the superior Law which unites
the living members of the same body—Humanity; and,
still more, let us accept and respect the supreme Law
which makes us create and coöperate with the Great
Soul, associated as we are—in proportion with our
powers,—with the loving Harmony of the world—copartners
in the Life of God.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span></p>
<p>The Sea very distinctly, in that voice that is mistakenly
supposed to be a mere confusion of sounds, articulates
those grave words. But man does not easily recognize
those words, when he first arrives on the shore
exhausted by worldly struggles, deafened, distracted, by
worldly babble. The sense of the higher life is dulled
even among the best of us; the best of us, to a greater
or less extent, resist that sense. And who shall teach
us to quicken and obey that sense? Nature? Not yet.
Softened into tenderness by the family, by the innocence
of the child and the tenderness of the wife, man
first takes an interest, real and strong, in the things of
humanity, in the cares and studies which tend to preserve
the family. But woman is earlier and more
deeply interested in the Sea, in the Poetry of the Infinite.
And thus we see that souls have sexes as well
as bodies have. For the man thinks of the seaman
more than of the sea's wonders; he thinks of its dangers,
of its daily and hourly tragedies, and of the floating
destiny of his family. The woman, tender as she
is to individuals, takes less interest in classes. Every
laborious man, who visits the coast, bestows his principal
attention and his principal sympathy upon the hard
life of the man of toil, the fisherman and the sailor;
upon that hard hard life so laborious and perilous and
so little productive of gain.</p>
<p>Such a man, while his wife rises and dresses her
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span>
sweet child, walks upon the beach in the early morning
just as the fishing boats return. The morning is cold,
the night has been rainy, and the boats have shipped
many a heavy sea. The men, and not only men but
very small boys, too, are wet to the skin. And what
have they brought back? Not much;—but they <i>have</i>
come back, and that is much. For last night, see you,
they shipped many a sea and looked at death closely
many a time. Ah! When the stranger reflects upon
the hard life brought immediately under his purview,
surely, however much he may have complained of his
own lot, he will now learn to say "My lot is far better
than theirs."</p>
<p>In the evening, just when the sun sets, coppery and
threatening, into the sinister horizon, these men already
have to sail again. And the stranger says to them,
"Shall you not have bad weather, think you?" "Sir,"
they reply, "we must earn our bit of bread," and they
and their sturdy boys push off to Sea. And their wives,
more than serious, sad, follow them with their eyes;
and more than one of those wives whisper an earnest
prayer. And the stranger, too, whispers his prayer,
and says to himself, "They will have a dirty night;
would that they may return in safety."</p>
<p>And thus it is that the Sea opens the heart, and that
even the hardest hearts are softened in presence of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span>
great stern mother. In that presence, no matter what we
may strive to think, we become humanized, sympathizing,
tender. And Heaven knows how much need and
how much occasion there are for sympathy there! Every
kind of want and struggle is to be found among those
brave, honest and intelligent marine populations who
are incomparably the best of our country. I have lived
a good deal on the coast. Every heroic virtue, which
an inland population would praise so highly, is there an
every day and very common-place matter. And, still
more curious!—there is no pride among these hardy
mariners. All our French pride is for the landsmen—the
soldiery. But among our marine population the
greatest dangers count for nothing; every one braves
such every day, and no one ever thinks of boasting of
them. I have never met with men who were milder or
more modest (I had almost said more timid) than our
Gironde pilots who, from Royan and from St. George's
gallantly put out, to face all that Cordouan has of peril.
There, as at Granville, and every where else on that
coast, it is the women alone who have anything to say,
or any business to do, on land. The brave pilots, when
once on shore, never say a word in the way of command;
peaceable as their valiant wives are superbly noisy, the
men leave the women full authority to administer the
poor income and to rule (occasionally with a pretty
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span>
hard hand) the youngsters of the household. The husband,
in fact, though he reads no Latin, literally and
practically translates the Latin poet:</p>
<p class="center">
"Happy, when in mine own house I am as nobody."<br />
</p>
<p>Their wives, greatly interested about the foreigner,
had, nevertheless, let it be boldly as truly said, a royal, a
magnificent, a generous, kindly feeling. At St. Georges,
they cut up, and scraped up, all their linen to make lint
for the wounded at Solferino. At Entretat, three Englishmen
being wrecked, and in awful danger, the whole
population, men, women and children, rushed to the
rescue, and dragged them to land with all the outward
and visible signs of a real and a violent sensibility.
And they were fed, and clothed, and tended, and relieved,
even as though they had been compatriots, and
very dear friends. This occurred in April, 1859.</p>
<p>Oh! Those kind French people! And yet, how hard,
hitherto, has been their life! In our <i>regime</i> of Classes
(so useful, however, in itself, and from which we derive
so much of giant strength) the sailor is compelled,
at any moment, to leave the merchant service for the
war ship, daily and hourly growing more severe, more
crushing, in its hard discipline! Forty years ago the
sailor sang, as he worked at the capstan bar; <i>now</i> he
heaves in silence. (Ial. Arch II. 522). And in the
merchant service, the great fisheries are almost worked
out. The profits of the Whale Fishery belong, almost
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span>
entirely, to the outfitter. (Boitard, Diet. art. Cetaceæ,
Whales, &c.) The Cod has diminished, the Mackerel
grows more and more scarce. A very precious little
book (<i>The Story of Rose Duchenin</i>, by herself) gives
a most touching picture of this great destitution. Alphonse
Karr, that admirable writer, had the good sense
to write that book from the dictation of that Fisherman's
Wife, without altering a word of hers, or adding
a word of his own.</p>
<p>Étretat is not, properly speaking, a port. Situated
little, if any, above the level of the Sea, and defended
only by the pebbly bar which the sea has washed in, it
is but poorly sheltered. And consequently, it is necessary
that, according to the old Celtic custom, every
vessel that runs in there, must be hauled up to the Quay
by the cable and the capstan; the capstan bars being
handled by the women, for the lads are all at sea. The
labor and the difficulty will be easily understood by all
who read this. The lubberly craft, as it is drawn up,
hits hard from boulder to boulder, and ascends only by
leaps, violent and damaging, and still more threatening
than either. And at every leap and every shock,
those poor women suffer from the hard blow to their
necks and from the bitterly painful emotions of their
poor hearts.</p>
<p>When I first witnessed this terrible labor, I was
wounded, saddened in mine inmost heart. My first
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span>
impulse was to bear a hand and lend my aid. But the
thing would seem so singular, I thought, that a something,
I know not what, of false shame, arrested me.
But every day I lent a hand, at least with my wishes
and my prayers. I went, and looked. Those young
and charming, though anything but pretty, women and
girls did not sport the short red petticoat of the coasts,
but long robes; and for the most part, they had the refined
and delicate aspect of the young lady of the great
city. Bending to that hard toil (a filial, and, therefore,
a noble toil) they had a certain mingled grace and
pride, and, in all that hard toil, not a complaint, not
even a sigh, escaped them.</p>
<p>That very small Quay of Boulders, small as it is, yet
is too large. I saw there a number of vessels, abandoned,
useless. For, see you, the Fishery has become
so unproductive! The fish have fled that shore. Entretat
languishes, perishes, so near to languishing, and,
but for its sea-bathing, perishing, Dieppe, which owes
its present existence—such as it is!—to the greater
or less number of visitors, who render Dieppe in one
season prosperous, and in another as nearly as possible,
bankrupt. And this very influx from Paris, worldly
Paris, is, after all, morally, at least, a real scourge to
that marine population.</p>
<p>Our Norman populations who discovered America,
and who, ever since the fourteenth century, have known
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span>
Africa, are every year becoming less and less in love
with the sea, so that, year by year, more and more of
them are turning their faces inland. The descendant
of the bold fellow who formerly harpooned the Whale,
is now a pale cotton-spinner of Montville or of Balbec.</p>
<p>It is for Science, it is for the Law, to put a stop to
this fearful decay. The former with its skill, its sound
advice will,—if such advice be resolutely acted upon,
<i>economise the Sea and</i> revive that Fishery which is
the very nursery of Seamen; and in the next place,
the Law, less exclusively caring for the interests of the
real <i>élite</i>, the real flower and elect of the country, in no
wise to be compared to those great masses from which
we draw our soldiery, but who, under given circumstances,
will be able to cut the Gordian knot of the
world.</p>
<p>Such were my reflections, on the little wharf or Quay
of Etretat, in the cloudy and rainy summer of 1860,
while the capstan bar was heaved at by young females,
while the capstan screamed at every turn, and while the
whole scene put one in mind of <i>desolation for the present,
and worse to come</i>.</p>
<p>And thus is it with our century. Ever since 1730,
and so in the present day, labor, fatigue, and slowness
have been upon us. Let us all, of no matter what rank,
put hand and strength to the capstan bar! But, alas!
how many of us prefer <i>picking up pebbles on the wild</i>
sea shore!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span></p>
<p>We read that Scipio, stern conqueror of Carthage,
and Terence, the lucky refugee from that shipwreck of a
world, amused themselves in picking up shells on the
sea shore; capital friends in their forgetfulness of the
past. They enjoyed the <i>dolce far niente</i>; they were
luxurious in their enjoyment of the illusion of being
<i>boys once more</i>. But let not that be <i>our</i> wish. We
will not, we must not, we dare not, forget <i>our</i> duty; no,
with persistent labor, with uncooling ardor, we will put
our hands to the capstan bar, and help to <i>warp up</i> this
great, but worn and much tried century.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_VII" id="BOOK_4_CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</p>
<p class="caption3">THE NEW LIFE OF THE NATIONS.</p>
<p>Just as I was finishing this book, in December, 1860,
resuscitated Italy, that great and glorious mother of the
modern nations, sent me tidings, in the shape of a small
book, a mere pamphlet. It was my "New Year's gift
for 1861."</p>
<p>And from that Italy how often have we had great
and beautiful tidings? In 1300 news from Dante; in
1500 news from Americus Vespucius; in 1600 from
Galileo. And what are our present tidings from Florence?</p>
<p>Apparently, but small. But who knows? Perhaps
the results will be immense! It is a discourse of but a
few pages, a medical pamphlet, and its very title is
more likely to repel than to attract. And, yet, in
those few pages there is matter which, duly acted upon,
may change the whole destiny of our great, but weak,
our often wise, but still more often mistaken Humanity.</p>
<p>Opposite to the Title I find two portraits, one a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span>
deceased boy, and another dying. The author of the
pamphlet is a Doctor, who, very unusual thing! has
been so terribly impressed by the fate of his poor unknown
and, but for him, uncared for children, that he
has been led to write for our instruction, his pain and
his regret.</p>
<p>The elder of these children, of a fine and high nature,
in the bitterness, as it would seem, of a great destiny
cut short, has a bouquet upon his pillow. His
mother,—poor, poor, mother! has given it to him this
morning, having nothing else to give, and the nurses,
seeing the quite religious love with which he cared for
the poor gift of that poor mother, have allowed him to
keep it.</p>
<p>The second, still younger, in all the tender grace of
his four or five years, is evidently dying; his eyes are
fast veiling beneath the death film. Each of these poor
boys had shown sympathy for the other. When they
could no longer speak their sympathy, they <i>looked</i> it
in their tender glances, and the good kind Doctor,
(blessings on him for the kindly thought!) had them
placed opposite to each other, and his engraving shows
them to us (touching sight), just as, dying, they
exchanged their sympathizing glances!</p>
<p>The whole is truly, and nobly, Italian. In any other
country a man would fear to be laughed at in showing
himself thus truly tender. Not so in Italy. The
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>
Doctor wrote to his Italian public, just as he might
soliloquise in the privacy of his own study; and he
unreservedly pours out all his feelings with an intensity,
with a perfectly feminine sensibility, which will make the
worldly man laugh, and the kindly man weep. And it
must be confessed that his native language has much to
do with his power over our feelings; it is the language
of women and children, at once so tender and so striking,
beautiful even in its terrible accent of grief and
suffering. It is a shower of mingled tears and roses.</p>
<p>And then he suddenly stops himself. and apologizes.
He would not have written thus, but for sufficient cause,
and that cause is that "Those poor children would not
have died if they could have been sent to the sea-side."
And, the inference? That at the sea-side we must have
Hospitals for children. Now here, if you please, is a
really skilful, as well as greatly humane, man. He
touches the heart; and the rest necessarily follows.
Men listen attentively and are touched; women burst
into an agony of tears. They beg, they pray, they insist—and
who is to resist them? Without waiting for
government action, or government aid, a voluntary
society has founded a "<i>Children's Sea-Bathing Hospital</i>"
at Viareggio.</p>
<p>All who have been there admire the crescent-like
sweep, made by the Mediterranean, when it quits
Genoa passes the magnificent road of Spezzia and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span>
reaches the Virgilian Olive Groves of Tuscany. About
half way from Leghorn a cape, stolen from the Sea, is
the site, henceforth the sacred site, of this truly
admirable foundation.</p>
<p>Florence, by the way, has preceded all Europe in the
way of charitable foundations; she had hospitals before
the close of the tenth century, and in the year
1287, when Beatrice inspired and maddened Dante, her
father, the cruel persecutor of the greater, far greater
Dante, founded the hospital of <i>St. Maria Nuova</i>. Even
Luther, though in his travels he saw little to admire in
Italy, <i>did</i> admire, and very heartily, its Hospitals and
the beautiful Italian women, who, veiled, stood by the
bedsides of the sick sinner and the dying pauper.</p>
<p>This new foundation, of which we have spoken, will,
we trust, be a model for Europe. We owe that much
to children; for upon them it is that fall the worst effects
of our murderous toils and our still more murderous
excesses in every kind of bad life.</p>
<p>It is impossible not to perceive the visible and terrible
deterioration of our Western races. The causes of
it are numerous and very various. The chief of them
all is the immensity and the constant and rapid increase
of our hours of labor. For the most part, it is compulsory;
compelled by trade regulations and trade necessities.
But even where no such compulsion exists,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>
there the same ardor of long hours and hard toil exists.
I know not what demoniac fire exists in our modern
temperament. Compared to ourselves, all former centuries
have been positively idle. Our results, no doubt,
are immense. From our prolific brain and iron hand,
proceeds such a marvellous flood of art, science, inventions,
productions, and ideas, that we are actually glutting
the markets, not only of the present, but also of
the future. But at what cost are we doing all this?
At the price of an awful expenditure of strength, and
of nervous energy; we are enervating ourselves, our
works are prodigious, and <i>our children</i> are miserable.
We condemn them to disease, suffering, and premature
death even before they are born. <i>Our spendthrift
waste of energy entails feebleness and early death upon
them!</i>
And let it be remembered that this immense amount
of production is the work of only a comparatively small
number. America does little of it, Asia next to nothing,
and even in Europe all, or nearly all, is done by a
few millions in the extreme West. The others laugh
to see the really working peoples thus wear themselves
out. Poor Barbarians! Do you fancy, then, that this
Russian or that Backwoodsman, can replace, at need, a
mechanic of London or an optician of Paris? No;
we have become such by the education and the practice
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span>
of long centuries. A whole and a very long tradition
is in us. What would become of you if we should die?
None of you are ready to succeed us.</p>
<p>But this same murderous toil, this absolutely suicidal
production, if we be willing to accept it for ourselves,
it is our duty <i>not</i> to accept it for our children; we have
no right thus to <i>add murder to suicide</i>. And, yet, that
is what we really are doing. They are born already,
with our fatigue, our cerebral exhaustion. With a perfectly
frightful precocity, they <i>know</i>, they <i>can</i>, they <i>will</i>,
and they <i>do</i>. But how long? The grave opens for
them <i>so</i> early!</p>
<p>The human infant, like the young plant, needs rest,
air, and a sweet liberty. Do we give our children any
of these? No; our very virtues, as well as our vices,
deny them all. Everything seems to combine to kill
them early. Do we love them? No doubt; and yet
our worst malice could not do more than we do to kill
them early or to cause them to live miserably, pitifully,
sufferingly, effeminate. Such a society as ours, so overworked,
so over excited, so constantly agitated, is,
(whether society will confess it or not) a real, and a
murderous war upon our children.</p>
<p>Especially there are times and seasons in the course
of the child's growth when his life quite literally hangs
upon a thread. Life, at those times, seems to borrow
human voice, and to ask,—"Can I possibly last?"
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span>
At those critical times, see you, the contact of so many,
the close, sedentary, and imprisoned life of cities, is
just simply Death to those delicate and fading creatures.
Or, even worse than Death, it is the commencement
of a long career of suffering and helplessness far
worse than Death itself. In this latter case you leave
a poor creature who, now sick, now well, drags on a
wretched existence, a misery to himself and a burthen
upon public charity.</p>
<p>All this must be cut short. We must have foresight
combined with humanity. We must snatch the child
from these murderous surroundings; we must take him
from man and give him to the grand nursing of the fecund
Nature—of the Sea. And, then, the child will
live and become Man. Your very foundlings, if you
thus treat them may some day become your Nelsons
and your Napiers, and your community, instead of having
to support an habitual patient of your hospitals,
will have the bold seaman or the strong laborer.</p>
<p>And, for the matter of that, why need we depend upon
the State to do this great thing? Florence hath
taught us that the royal heart is fully equal to any other
royalty; woman in her mercy, <i>is</i> a royalty; she
commands, entreats, and man obeys. Woman! Have
mercy upon the children!</p>
<p>If I were a young and lovely woman, I well know
what <i>I</i> should say, and what <i>I</i> should do. I should
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span>
have all around me my magnificence and my luxury,
and when on some fine day, my lover in his love should
be eager, passionate, ready to give great gifts, I would
say to him:—</p>
<p>"Please offer me none of your Cachemires, designed
in England and woven in India; for Diamonds I
really care nothing; Berthollet who knows so well how
to imitate Nature can make Diamonds, if he so please.
But if you really wish to make me a present which I
shall love, and for which I shall love you, be so good as
to get me a nice well sheltered, yet beautifully sunny
home, in which I can lodge some three score, or so, of
poor children. They will want no fine furniture; not
much of any kind. Once established in that sunny,
quiet, and kindly home, they will be well fed, and well
cared for; and, my word for it, not a woman will go to
the sea-side for her own health who will not give her
mite towards the support of those poor children. If
Beatrice of Florence could influence her father to found
such a home, such a saving refuge, cannot we women of
France do as much? Is it that we are less beautiful,
or are you less truly in Love?"</p>
<p>"If the Sea, as you every morning tell me, has beautified
and improved me so much; surely, your best gift
would be my keepsake for the beach. And if you
really love me, you will share with me in this work,
this great work of bringing to the bosom of the great
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span>
Ocean-mother a whole family of these perishing children.
Let her take our pledges of a durable tenderness
and purest love! Let her bear witness that, in the
presence of the Infinite, we <i>were</i>, in very truth, united
in one holy thought!"</p>
<p>One woman has thus commenced and another will
continue, the common mother, France. No Institution
more useful, no money better expended. And, in fact,
not much needs to be expended. The chief thing necessary
will be to transfer some of our charitable
institutions from the interior. For many of those
institutions expend their funds in mere waste; in fact,
some of them might be quite truly termed Pauper
Manufactories.</p>
<p>The Romans had the good sense never to grudge expense
for anything that concerned the public health.
Just look at their splendid aqueducts, just consider
their public baths where quite gratuitously, or, at the
utmost, at the charge of a half cent, the meanest could
bathe, and you will at once understand their public
spirit, their really large and grand patriotism. Fresh
water baths, salt water baths, everything was provided
for that lazy and non-producing plebeianism! Perhaps,
in fact, in the politico-economical sense, the Patricians
of Rome did too much for that, at once indolent and
seditious <i>Plebs</i>. And shall we, <span class="smcap">WE</span>, WE hesitate to do
far less to save our own race, that one creative and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span>
laborious race that creates all that is really progressive
on our globe?</p>
<p>I speak not here merely, or even principally, of the
children; but of all. Every town, at this very instant,
has a town within a town, a town of horrible sufferers;
of the poor, and the afflicted; they are going to be
Paupers not only now, but for the whole remainder of
their lives. Again, and again, and again they will
come; cured to-day, and returning to-morrow worse
and more helpless than ever. They must be enormously
expensive; and who pays the cost? Why their hardier
fellow workmen who, in the ultimate result, pay all our
expenses! And the laborer dies young, and leaves his
young ones a burthen on the public purse.</p>
<p><i>Prevention is better than cure.</i> You can do far more
for the man who is in danger of being sick than for him
who is already worn out. Ten days or a fortnight of
rest and good living at the sea-side, will restore him to
you, a good, sound, solid laborer. His carriage, and
the cheap shelter, for so few days! by that recuperating
sea-side, I tell you again, will restore him to you, a
good sound, honest, and independent laborer. And
the man will be saved, and his young family; and such
a man as, if you once lose him, you cannot easily replace.
No! You cannot replace him, for, as I have
already said, every really working man is the slow
product, of a long tradition of thought and of labor, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span>
he himself is a work of art; of that so much misunderstood
human art in which <i>Humanity itself becomes a
creative Power</i>.</p>
<p>Who shall give me to see that crowd of inventive
people, that creating and manufacturing people, who in
the world's service are hourly wearing themselves out;
who, I ask, will give me to see that People, that true
People, enabled to repair their shattered frames at the
magnificent sea-side? Let this ability be provided for
them, and all classes and conditions will equally share
the benefit. And let it not be forgotten that all classes
and conditions <i>owe</i> thus much to the worn toilers, for
by their toil, their excessive toil, all classes are benefited.
It is by their very blood, by their very marrow, that
all classes receive their enjoyments, their elegance, and
their enlightenment. Let society, then, give to them
the repose, the saline air, the restoring waters of the
great restoring Sea. In doing thus much, society will
benefit itself; while doing the simplest justice to its
worn toilers.</p>
<p>Have pity upon yourselves, all ye poor men of the
West. Consult upon, and act for, the common weal.
Earth entreats you to live and offers you that which is
her best, the SEA, to repair your own strength and thus
secure your children against your weakness. Earth
would be ruined if you persist in ruining yourselves,
for you are her Genius, her inventive and working Soul.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span>
She lives by your life, and if you die she also will die.
In the name, then, of Humanity and of Nature, too,
Nations! Attention! Mercy for yourselves; Earth
supplies you with the means of laboring and living;
THE SEA offers you the still better means of living
WELL.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a><br />
<a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span></p>
<p class="caption2"><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES.</p>
<p>"That vast animal the Earth, which for heart has a magnet, has at
its surface a doubtful being, electric and phosphorescent, more sensitive,
and infinitely more prolific, than the Earth itself.</p>
<p>"That being which we call the Sea,—is it a parasite of the vast animal
which we call the Earth? No. It has not a distinct and hostile
personality. It vivifies and fecundates the Earth with its vapors; it
even appears to be the Earth itself in that which it has of the most productive;
in other words, its principal organ of fecundity."</p>
<p>German Dreams! But are they, in feet, entirely Dreams? More
than one great mind, without going quite so far, seem to admit for both
Earth and Sea a kind of obscure personality. Ritter and Lyell say:
"The Earth labors herself; can she be impotent to organise herself? How
are we to imagine that the creative power which we observe in every
being on the globe can be denied to the globe itself?" But how does
the globe act? How at the present time does it obtain accretion? From
the Sea and its living denizens.</p>
<p>The full solution of these great questions would require a more profound
study of Physiology than we as yet have made. Nevertheless,
during the last twenty years every thing tends this way: 1. We have
studied the irregular and exterior phase of the movements of the Sea, we
have inquired into the <i>Law of Storms</i>. 2. We have studied the movements
proper to the Sea, its <i>currents</i>, the play of its arteries and veins,
of which the first propel the salt water from the Equator to the Poles,
while the second return it, freshened, to the Equator: 3. The third and
more difficult question on which modern chemistry will throw light, is
that as to the real nature of the marine <i>mucus</i>, of that unctuous gelatine
which is every where found in Sea water, and which appears to be a
living liquid.</p>
<p>It is quite recently that the sounding of Brooke, and more especially
the soundings for the submarine telegraph from Europe to America,
have begun to reveal the secrets of the bottom of the Sea. Are its lowest
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span>
depths peopled? Formerly, that was denied, but Forbes and James
Ross found life throughout them.</p>
<p>Previous to those splendid discoveries, which were made less than
twenty years ago, the book of the Sea could not be written. The first
attempt at writing it was made by M. Hartwig. For my own part, I
was still far from the idea of writing it when, in 1845, in preparing my
book of "<span class="smcap">The People</span>," I commenced, in Normandy, my study of the
population of the Coasts. In the fifteen subsequent years, this vast and
difficult subject has been continually growing upon me, and has followed
me from shore to shore.</p>
<p>The <a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_I">first book</a> of this Volume—<i>A glance at the Seas</i>, is, as the title
indicates, merely a preliminary promenade. All the important matters
therein are discussed in the following three books. I except two,
however, <i>Tides</i> and <i>Beacons</i>. Here my principal guide has been M.
Chazallon's important <i>Annual</i>, already numbering twenty volumes, the
first having appeared in 1839. If the Civic Crown was bestowed upon
the man who saved one human life, how many such crowns has not M.
Chazallon deserved! Anterior to his labors, the errors, as to the tides,
were enormous. By immense labor he has corrected the observations
for nearly five hundred ports from the Adour to the Elbe. His <i>Annual</i>
gives the most exact information upon the Beacons. Similarly valuable
is the clear and agreeably written exposition in the <i>Souvenirs</i> of M. de
Quatrefages on the Lighthouse system of Fresnel and Arago. The admirable
system of revolving lighthouses, in which the lights flash and
disappear, at short and regular intervals, is due to Lemoine, Mayor of
Calais.</p>
<p>For the various names of the Sea refer to Ad. Pictet-<i>Origines Indo-Europeennes</i>.
On the water, consult the Introduction to Deville's
<i>Annual of the Waters of France</i>; Aime's <i>Annale's de Chimie</i> II., V.,
XII., XIII., and XV. Morren, the same, I, and Acad de Bruxelles,
XIV., &c. On the saltness of the Sea Chapman quoted by Tricaut <i>Ann.
de Hydrographie</i> XIII., 1857, and Thomassy's <i>Bulletin de la Société
Geographique</i>, 4 June, 1860.</p>
<p>I did not thoroughly comprehend the Shore of <i>Saint Michel en Greve</i>
and the questions concerning it, until I read in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>
the two very fine articles of M. Baude, full alike of facts and
ideas. I speak elsewhere of his excellent views on the Fisheries.</p>
<p>In speaking (<a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_III">Chap. III.</a>) of Brittany, I must acknowledge my obligation
to the book of Cambry which formerly gave me my first ideas upon
that subject. It should be read in the edition which Émile Souvestre
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span>
enriched, and we may say doubled, with his excellent notes and notices
which thenceforth made us thoroughly acquainted with the <i>Derniers
Bretons</i>. In several admirable little tales of graphic and striking truthfulness,
Souvestre has given the best existing pictures of our western
coasts, especially of Finisterre and the neighboring shores of the Loire.
I should be glad to quote something from a writer so agreeable, and a
friend so sincerely lamented, but the limits of this little book prevent me
from quoting any literary matter.</p>
<p>The remarkable observation made by Elie de Beaumont, quoted by
me in <a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_IV">Chapter 4</a> of Book I., stands at the head of his article—which, in
itself, is a great book—<i>Terrains</i> in the Dictionary of M. d'Orbigny.</p>
<p>What I have said about St. George's, in <a href="#BOOK_1_CHAPTER_VII">Chapter 7</a>, is much better
said in Pelletan's books on <i>Royan</i> and in his <i>Pasteur du Desert</i>. That
Pastor, as is generally known, was the grandfather of Pelletan, the
reverend minister Jarousseau, so admirably heroic in saving his enemies.
His small house, still standing, is a veritable Temple of Humanity.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Notes to Book 2.</span> <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_I">Chapter I</a>, <i>Fecundity</i>. On the Herring, see Vol.
I of De Reste's translation of an anonymous Dutch work; Noël de la
Moriniere in his excellent works printed and unpublished; Valenciences'
<i>Poissons</i>, &c.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_II">Chapter II.</a> <i>Milky Sea.</i> Bory de Saint Vincent, <i>Diet. Classique</i>,
Articles <i>Mer et Matieres</i>; Zimmerman, the <i>World before Man</i>, a
beautiful and popular work which is in every one's hands. I am indebted
also to the work of M. Bronn, crowned by the <i>Academy of the
Sciences</i>. On the universal innocuousness of the vegetation of the Sea,
consult Pouchet's <i>Botanique</i> a work of the highest order. For the
plants which become animals; see Vaucher's Conferves, 1803; Decaisne
and Thuret <i>Annales de Sc. Nat.</i>, 1845; Volumes III., XIV. and XVI.,
and <i>Comptes de l'Acad.</i>, 1853, Vol. XXXVI.; also, articles of Montagne
Dict d'Orb. On the Volcanoes, see part 4, of Humboldt's Cosmos,
and Ritter, translated by Elisee Reclus, <i>Revue Germ.</i>, 30th November,
1859.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_III">Chapter III.</a> <i>The Atom.</i> In the text I have quoted the great masters,
Ehrenberg, Dujardin, Pouchet, Heterogenie. In the end spontaneous
generation will conquer.</p>
<p>Chapters <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a>, <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_V">V.</a>, <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a>, &c. Throughout this book, in ascending from
inferior to superior life, I have taken for my guiding thread in the great
labyrinth, the hypothesis of Metamorphosis but without serious intention
of constructing a <i>chain of beings</i>. The idea of ascending Metamorphosis
is natural to the mind, and is, in some sort, irresistibly imposed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span>
upon us. Cuvier himself, at the close of his Introduction to his <i>Poissons</i>,
confesses that if that theory has no Historical value it <i>has a logical
value</i>. On the <i>Sponge</i>, see Paul Gervais Dict. d'Orb. V. 375; Grant
in Chenn, 307, &c. On Polypes, Corals, and Madrepores (Chapters <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IV">4</a>
and <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_V">5</a>) besides Forster, Peron and Dawin consult Quoy and Gaimard;
Lamouroux, <i>Polypes Flexibles</i>; Milne Edwards, Polypes and Ascidies
of the Channel, &c. On the Calcaire, see the two Geologies of Lyell.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VI">Chapter VI.</a> <i>Medusæ, Polypes, &c.</i> See Ehrenberg, Lession, Dujardin,
&c. Forbes shows by vegetable analogies that these animal
metamorphoses are very simple phenomena. Annals of Nat. History,
December, 1844. See also his excellent dissertations, <i>Medusæ</i>, in
quarto, 1849.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VII">Chapter VII.</a> <i>The Oursin or Sea Hedgehog.</i> See the curious dissertations
in which M. Cailland has described his discoveries.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_VIII">Chapter VIII.</a> <i>Shells, Pearl, and Mother of Pearl.</i> The capital work
on these is Blainville's <i>Malacology</i>. See, also, on the Pearl Mabius of
Hamburgh, <i>Revue Germ.</i>, July 31, 1858. I have profitably consulted
on this subject our celebrated Jeweller, M. Froment Meurice.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_IX">Chapter IX.</a> <i>The Poulpe.</i> Cuvier, Blainville, Dujardin Ann. des
Sciences Nat., first series, Vol. V. p. 214, and second series Vols. 3, 16,
and 17; Robin and Secord, Locomotion of Cephalapodes, Revue de
Zoology, 1849, p. 333.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_X">Chapter X.</a> <i>Crustaceæ.</i> Besides the classical and important work
of Milne Edwards, I have consulted d'Orbigny and various travelers.
See, also, the fine Atlas of Dumont d'Urville.</p>
<p><a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XI">Chapter XI.</a> <i>Fish.</i> The Introduction of Cuvier, Valenciennes' article
Fish, in d'Orbigny's Dictionary. This last article is a complete book,
learned and excellent. On the anatomy of Fish see the celebrated dissertation
of Geoffroy. For what I have said on the nests made by
spawning Fish I am indebted to Messrs. Caste and Gerbe.</p>
<p>Chapters <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XII">XII</a> and <a href="#BOOK_2_CHAPTER_XIII">XIII</a>. <i>Whales, Amphibii and Syrens.</i> Here,
Lacepede is at once instructive and eloquent. Nothing can be better
than Boitard's articles in d'Orbigny's Dictionary.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Notes to <a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_I">Book 3</a>.</span> <i>Conquest of the Sea.</i> This book sprang naturally
out of my perusal of travels and voyages from the first History of
Dieppe, by Vitel Estancelin, down to the recent discoveries. Especially
consult Kerquelon, John Ross, Parry, Weddell, Dumont, d'Urville,
James Ross, and Kane; Biot in the <i>Journal des Savants</i> and the luminous
and precious abridgement of those works, by M. Langele in the
<i>Revue des deux Mondes</i>. On the Fishery, besides the great works of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span>
Duhamel, see Tiphaine, "Economie History of the Western Seas de
France, 1760."</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Notes to <a href="#BOOK_4_CHAPTER_I">Book 4</a>.</span> <i>Restoration by the Sea.</i> As long ago as 1725,
Maraigli seems to have suspected the presence of iodine. In 1730, an
anonymous work, <i>Comes Domesticus</i>, recommended Sea Bathing.</p>
<p>The Bibliography of the Sea would be endless. There are many excellent
books. Among them I may mention "the Mediterranean Sea,"
by W. H. Smith, 1854, the Manuals and Guide books of Guadet, Roccas,
Cochet, Ernst, &c.</p>
<p>On the degeneracy of Races, see Morel, 1857: Magnus Huss, "<i>Alcoholismus</i>,"
1852, &c.</p>
<p>I owe my acquaintance with the pamphlet of Doctor Barellay (<i>Ospizi
Marini</i>) to my illustrious friend Montanelli, and to the delightful
articles of M. Dall' Ongaro.</p>
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<div class="trans_notes">
<p class="caption2" style="margin-top:1em;">Transcriber's Note</p>
<p>Some presumed typose were corrected. Although most words were left as
per the printed version, some standardization was made (ex., Arcachon
for Archachon, Archacon and Arrachon). Based on some research, the
following list of changes were made.</p>
<table summary="Changes">
<tr>
<td class="bdb2">Page(s)</td>
<td class="bdb2 tdl">Change</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Grindenwald => Grindelwald</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Livingston => Livingstone</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Sheveningen => Scheveningen</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Eloretat => Étretat and Fecamp => Fécamp</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Biarrity => Biarritz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Hèaux => Héaux and Epees de Treguier => Épées de Tréguier</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Ponchet => Pouchet</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Geoffray => Geoffroy</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Added missing quotes at end of top and begining
of next paragraph</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Medea => Medusa</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Vetelles => Velelles</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td>
<td class="tdl">everything that comes in their path--animals, ("path--" added)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Cataceæ => Cetaceæ</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#Page_402">402</a></td>
<td class="tdl">appearing => appeared</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl">404<a href="#Page_404">404</a></td>
<td class="tdl">Chapter IX. <i>Fish.</i> => Chapter XI. <i>Fish.</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdl"><a href="#LAVINIA">ad2</a></td>
<td class="tdl">LA VINIA => LAVINIA</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>The cover image was compiled by the transcriber and is placed
in the public domain.</p>
</div>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42845 ***</div>
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