The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper

      THE SEA.

       Table of Contents

      One can hardly gaze upon the great ocean without feelings akin to awe and reverence. Whether viewed from some promontory where the eye seeks in vain another resting-place, or when sailing over the deep, one looks around on the unbounded expanse of waters, the sea must always give rise to ideas of infinite space and indefinable mystery hardly paralleled by anything of the earth itself. Beneficent in its calmer aspect, when the silvery moon lights up the ripples and the good ship scuds along before a favouring breeze; terrible in its might, when its merciless breakers dash upon some rock-girt coast, carrying the gallant bark to destruction, or when, rising mountains high, the spars quiver and snap before the tempest’s power, it is always grand, sublime, irresistible. The great highway of commerce and source of boundless supplies, it is, notwithstanding its terrors, infinitely more man’s friend than his enemy. In how great a variety of aspects may it not be viewed!

      The poets have seen in it a “type of the Infinite,” and one of the greatest1 has taken us back to those early days of earth’s history when God said—

      “ ‘Let there be firmament

       Amid the waters, and let it divide

       The waters from the waters.’ …

       So He the world

       Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide

       Crystalline ocean.”

      “Water,” said the great Greek lyric poet,2 “is the chief of all.” The ocean covers nearly three-fourths of the surface of our globe. Earth is its mere offspring. The continents and islands have been and still are being elaborated from its depths. All in all, it has not, however, been treated fairly at the hands of the poets, too many of whom could only see it in its sterner lights. Young speaks of it as merely a

      “Dreadful and tumultuous home

       Of dangers, at eternal war with man,

       Wide opening and loud roaring still for more,”

      ignoring the blessings and benefits it has bestowed so freely, forgetting that man is daily becoming more and more its master, and that his own country in particular has most successfully conquered the seemingly unconquerable. Byron, again, says:—

      “Roll on, thou dark and deep blue ocean—roll!

       Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

       Man marks the earth with ruin—his control

       Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain

       The wrecks are all thy deeds.”

      And though this is but the exaggerated and not strictly accurate language of poetry, we may, with Pollok, fairly address the great sea as “strongest of creation’s sons.” The first impressions produced on most animals—not excluding altogether man—by the aspect of the ocean, are of terror in greater or lesser degree. Livingstone tells us that he had intended to bring to England from Africa a friendly native, a man courageous as the lion he had often braved. He had never voyaged upon nor even beheld the sea, and on board the ship which would have safely borne him to a friendly shore he became delirious and insane. Though assured of safety and carefully watched, he escaped one day, and blindly threw himself headlong into the waves. The sea terrified him, and yet held and drew him, fascinated as under a spell. “Even at ebb-tide,” says Michelet,3 “when, placid and weary, the wave crawls softly on the sand, the horse does not recover his courage. He trembles, and frequently refuses to pass the languishing ripple. The dog barks and recoils, and, according to his manner, insults the billows which he fears. … We are told by a traveller that the dogs of Kamtschatka, though accustomed to the spectacle, are not the less terrified and irritated by it. In numerous troops, they howl through the protracted night