The tragic paradox of the sea change: How seeking sanctuary destroys the shore

“ When you have made an early start, followed the coast-guard track on the slopes above the cliffs, struggled through the gold and purple carpeting of gorse and heather on the moors, dipped down into quaint little coves with a primitive fishing village, followed the blinding whiteness of the sands round a lonely bay, and at last emerged upon a headland where you can settle into a nook of the rocks, look down upon the glorious blue of the Atlantic waves breaking into foam on the granite, and see the distant sea-levels glimmering away till they blend imperceptibly into cloudland ”

“ The effect produced by the contrast between the rugged, iron, sterile coast beheld from the sea, and the loveliness of deep blue water and summer islands richly wooded, and green hills sloping to the water’s edge, and sandy creeks, with the heavy bush to the right, and the tropical splendour of vegetation that meets the eye upon the outlying land—all which form the noble bay into which you pass through the narrowest and most repellent of headlands—is not to be described. ”

“ "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. ”

“ A barren reef lies where Love’s flowers have been,
Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!
So be it, but we seek a fabled shore,
To lull our vague desires with mystic lore,
To wander where Love’s labyrinths beguile;
There let us land, there dream for evermore:
“It may be we shall touch the happy isle.”
p. 32The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate,
If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene
We watch the bolt of heaven, and scorn the hate
Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen.
Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen
That veils the fairy coast we would explore. ”

“ As for us, we are men, bred on land; but now we have suffered a sea change, and swim about in this containing monster, scarce knowing how to describe our state; reason tells us we are dead, but instinct that we live.' This loosed my tongue in turn. ”

“ From the top of a high rock I had fine view of the most extensive and the dreariest wilderness I have ever beheld. It chilled the heart to gaze on these barren lands of Labrador. Indeed I now dread every change of harbor, so horribly rugged and dangerous is the whole coast and country, especially to the inexperienced man either of sea or land. ”

“ Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed. Wise men and strong we did not lack; But still, with memory turning back, In the dark hours we thought of thee, And thy lone grave beside the sea. Above that grave the east winds blow, And from the marsh-lands drifting slow The sea-fog comes, with evermore The wave-wash of a lonely shore, And sea-bird's melancholy cry, As Nature fain would typify The sadness of a closing scene, The loss of that which should have been. ”

“ If the coast is bold and rocky, it speaks a language easy to be interpreted. Its broken and abrupt contour, the deep gulfs and salient promontories by which it is indented, and the proportion which these irregularities bear to the force of the waves, combined with the inequality of hardness in the rocks, prove, that the present - 101 - line of the shore has been determined by the action of the sea. ”

“ Faithful to no race after the manner of the kindly earth, receiving no impress from valour and toil and self-sacrifice, recognising no finality of dominion, the sea has never adopted the cause of its masters like those lands where the victorious nations of mankind have taken root, rocking their cradles and setting up their gravestones. He—man or people—who, putting his trust in the friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and cunning of his right hand, is a fool! As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory. ”

“ My conception of its magnanimous greatness was gone. And I looked upon the true sea—the sea that plays with men till their hearts are broken, and wears stout ships to death. Nothing can touch the brooding bitterness of its heart. Open to all and faithful to none, it exercises its fascination for the undoing of the best. To love it is not well. It knows no bond of plighted troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to long companionship, to long devotion. The promise it holds out perpetually is very great ”

“ We used to be a happy an' prosperous race a'fore they came with their diving suits an' tramped all over the bottom of the Gulf. Killing the little baby sponges with their iron shoes, an' stripping the bottom clean as a Conch's floor. We've been run out of the business, an' they did it. We've lost our homes, an' they caused it. Our families don't have enough to eat an' wear any more, an' they are the reason—curse 'em, curse 'em, curse 'em."
"But you are leaving us to certain death, man!" pleaded Captain Westfield, "The water is rising over the marsh, already." ”

“ He always began with success and good fortune; the delusive promise lasted long enough to lure him deeper and deeper into the snare, and then the tide began to swell and turn, and on its rising waves his hopes went bitterly out into the blank and cheerless sea. It was a sad fate, and had his objects been worthier, a fate to be deeply sympathised with; but the man was a hard man (I scarcely knew him, though he was my father) ; and was susceptible to no grief but this. ”

“ But when we come to the end of the smiling sea of success; when the whirlwind of adversity has blown us upon the rocky shores of disaster, and a wave of suffering threatens to engulf us; when friends have failed and every human help is as far off as it is unavailing, then we must look for guidance to the skies as does the mariner when he steers his ship over the waste of waters. ”

“ This Countrey hath many removable Water-falls, descending from steep Rocks, large Creeks and Harbors, fresh Lakes and Rivulets, pleasant Fountains and Springs, some of which boyl in the Winter, and are cold and delightful to drink in Summer. The Inhabitants never receive any damage by Deluges; neither from the Sea, because the Water rises not above a Foot; nor by the swelling Rivers, which sometimes, for a few days covering the Plains, at their deserting them, leave them fat and fruitful. The Sea-Coast is Hilly, and of a sandy and clayie Soil, which produces abundance of Herbs and Trees. ”

“ Our land is wasted by the sea; and there is also a natural progress to be observed which necessarily takes place on this occasion; for, the coast is found variously indented, that is to say, more or less, according as the land is exposed to this wasting and wearing operation of the sea, and according as the wasted land is composed of parts resisting with different degrees of power the destroying cause. ”

“ When we hear the noise of the waves breaking against the bluffs and throwing their grape-shot of pebbles against them, and when we witness the enormous land-slides of which the sea-shores are often the theatre, we are sometimes led to think that the action of the sea is a preponderant factor in the destruction of continents. ”

“ Since the discoveries in the neighborhood of Sydney, there have been found, in South Australia, large tracts of country abounding in gold, only sixteen miles from Melbourne. The most recent accounts (December 15, 1851) from these regions are of a most astounding character. In the first week in December nearly fifty thousand pounds value in gold was brought into Melbourne and Geelong. The amount would have been greater but for want of conveyance. “To find quartz,” says the Australian and New Zealand Gazette, “is to find gold. It is found thirty-two feet from the surface in plenty. ”

“ The emphasis placed on the importance of likableness as the principal factor in getting yourself wanted may have made you forget the primary necessity of showing your prospect a real lack in his business, and that you are capable of filling it. It is possible to attract an employer's liking for you, whether he has a place for you or not. But his liking will do you no good unless you can also make him see he has a need for you.
Success is not to be won by getting in where you are not wanted, however likable you may be. ”

“ The defeat in life of one who appears so deserving of victory seems to prove that success cannot be assured by the development of individual characteristics and by doing specific things. But such a wholly negative conclusion would be wrong. When a worthy man fails, he loses out because he lacks an essential positive factor of certain success—the ability to sell his capabilities. By mastering the selling process this failure can turn himself into a success. ”

“ Help comes either too soon or too late, or lands on a point of the coast where aid is worse than useless, and where it only throws confusion into the ranks of the struggling native forces, whose plans are thus all disarranged, disconcerted, and thrown into confusion. Add to this the dangers of the sea, the possibly insufficient knowledge of the soundings and of the nature of the coast, the differences of spirit, customs, and language, of the two coalescing forces, and it may be easily concluded that the chances of success, as opposed to those of failure, are but scanty. ”

“ In the present as in the past, the kinds and abundance of plants set definite limits as to the species and numbers of animals an area may support. Thus, if man changes the plants of an area he will surely change the animals too, whether he realizes it or not.
If you drive to the quarry in the heat of the day you will see only a few of the birds that live here. They don’t like to hunt their food during those hot hours. Frequently a turkey vulture sails majestically above the plains along the Green River. ”

“ The dinosaur hordes were wiped out and the reptiles reduced to the position of relative insignificance they occupy today. Such a profound and sudden change in the evolutionary trend of life must have had a cause, and scientists have sought it. Several theories have been proposed to explain extinction of dinosaurs, and they are most interesting. ”

“ The destruction of the coast towns and harbors, which furnished markets for the products of the plains, the damming up of the rivers, and the obstruction of the smaller channels of natural drainage by the advance of the dunes, were no doubt very influential causes; and if we add the drifting of the sea-sand over the soil, we have at least a partial explanation of the decayed agriculture and diminished population of this great waste. ”

“ And the sea eternally knocks at the river-gates, beats upon the ramparts, growls on every side her ceaseless menace, lifting her curious waves as if to see the land she counts as hers, piling up banks of sand before the gates to kill the commerce of the cities, forever gnawing, scratching, digging at the coast; and failing to overthrow the ramparts upon which she foams and fumes in angry effort, she casts at their feet ships full of the dead, that they may announce to the rebellious country her fury and her strength. ”

“ Wearing, crushing, beating, pulverising, wave, and wind, and storm and Time, that great Edax rerum, 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 [33] 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. ”

“ But the billows of the ocean again agitate the loose material upon the shore, wearing away the coast with endless repetitions of this act of power and imparted force; the solid portion of our earth, thus sapped to its foundations, is carried away into the deep and sunk again at the bottom of the sea whence it had originated, and from which sooner or later it will again make its appearance. We are thus led to see a circulation of destruction and renewal in the matter of which the globe is formed, and a system of beautiful economy in the works of Nature. ”