Frank B. Goodrich

“ With the success of one or the other of these plans, an ocean voyage, even in a rough sea, will become a pleasure trip, like sailing in a painted ship upon a painted ocean; the wildness of a storm even may become merely an exciting spectacle, like looking at the representation of a hurricane in a theatre, with the further advantage of having it real and life-like. ”

“ In other parts we shall see those pale, glistening pearls which adorn the crowns of princes and are woven in the hair of beauty, extorted by the relentless grasp of man from the hidden stores of ocean. And spread round every coast there are beds of flowers and thickets of plants, which the dew does not nourish, and which man has not sown, nor cultivated, nor reaped, but which seem to belong to the floods alone and the denizens of the floods, until they are thrown up by the surges, and we discover that even the dead spoils of the fields of ocean may fertilize and enrich the fields of earth. ”

“ The equinox has come with darkness, and sullen night will soon displace the short and gloomy days of the Pole. The sky, of a dark violet color, is feebly lighted by a sun which dispenses no heat, and whose white disk, scarcely elevated above the horizon, pales before the dazzling brightness of the snow. To the north, this desert is bounded by a coast bristling with black and gigantic rocks. At the foot of their Titanic piles lies motionless the vast ice-bound ocean. ”

“ Having thus reached the fulness of its splendor, the aurora grows gradually pale, and diffuses its effulgence in a luminous mist. At this moment, from the fantastic illusions of the mirage, frequent in those latitudes, the American coast, though separated from that of Asia by the interposition of an arm of the sea, suddenly approaches so near it that a bridge might be thrown from one world to the other. Did human beings inhabit those regions and breathe the pale-blue vapors which pervade them, they might almost converse across the narrow inlet which serves to divide the continents. ”

“ The sun loves to visit it, and the moon and the glittering brotherhood of planets and stars, for they delight themselves in its beauty. The sunbeams return from it in showers of diamonds and [27] glances of fire; the moonbeams find in it a pathway of silver, where they dance to and fro, with the breezes and the waves, through the livelong night. It has a light, too, of its own,—a soft and sparkling light, rivaling the stars; and often does the ship which cuts its surface leave streaming behind a Milky Way of dim and uncertain lustre, like that which is shining dimly above. ”

“ The monsters that plough its waters have been hunted by man till the race is well nigh exhausted; for the leviathan which frightened the ancients is the whale which has illuminated the moderns. The chant of the sirens is hushed, and in its place are heard the clatter of rushing paddle-wheels, the fog-whistle on the banks, the song of the forecastle, the yo-ho of sailors toiling at the ropes, the salute in mid-ocean,—sometimes—alas!—the minute-gun at sea. ”

“ What undescribed monsters, what unimaginable shapes, may be roving in the profoundest places of the sea, never seeking—and perhaps, from their nature, never able to seek—the upper waters and expose themselves to the gaze of man! What glittering riches, what heaps of gold, what stores of gems, there must be scattered in lavish profusion in the ocean's lowest bed! What spoils from all climates, what works of art from all lands, have been engulfed by the insatiable and reckless waves! ”

“ Mankind—at least that portion whose history has descended to us—dwelt upon the borders of an inland, mediterranean sea. They had never heard of such an expanse of water as the Atlantic, and certainly had never seen it. The land-locked sheet which lay spread out at their feet was at all times full of mystery, and often even of dread and secret misgiving. Those who ventured forth upon its bosom came home and told marvellous tales of the sights they had seen and the perils they had endured. ”

“ The hulk of the ship seems encrusted with emerald and flossy mosses, and glittering with diamonds, gold, and all manner of precious stones. A pile of brick becomes a huge hill of crystal, decked with jewels. A ladder becomes silver, crusted with emeralds. The spars, the masts, and yards, whenever a point or angle catches the light, multiply the reflected splendor. Every shadow gives the impression of a bottomless depth. The sea seems loop-holed with cavities that pierce the solid globe. ”

“ Art is advancing to perfection! My children, you have discovered a powerful agent in navigation. All nations will cover the ocean with their fleets and wander to distant regions. Men, differing in their manners and separated by seas, will disembark upon peaceful shores, and import thence foreign science, superfluities, and art. Then shall the mariner fearlessly cruise over the immense abyss and discover new lands and unknown seas! ”

“ If we could see the great ocean as it can be seen by no mortal eye, beholding at one view what we are now obliged to visit in detail and spot by spot,—if we could, from a flight far higher than the eagle's, view the immense surface of the deep all spread out beneath us like a universal chart,—what an infinite variety such a scene would display! ”

“ The cable is at length laid through the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. Over what jagged mountain-ranges is that slender filament carried! In what deep oceanic valleys does it rest! Through what strange and unknown regions, among things how uncouth and wild, must it thread its way! Still, in spite of this first magnificent success, deep-sea telegraphing must be regarded as in its very infancy; and doubtless many new and even more marvellous feats will yet be performed claiming admission among the achievements of Man upon—or rather beneath—the Sea. ”

“ As I now see her, freighted with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point at which, for hundreds of miles, she could with any ease have made a harbor, and this perhaps the very best on the sea-board, I feel [344] my spirit raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies. I see the mountains of New England rising from their rocky thrones: they rush forward into the ocean, settling down as they advance ”

“ At a later period, when, with the progress of time, the love of adventure or the needs of commerce had drawn the navigator from the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic, and when some conception of the immensity of the waters had forced itself upon minds dwarfed by the contracted limits of the inland sea, then the ocean became in good earnest a receptacle of gloomy and appalling horrors, and the marvels narrated by those fortunate enough to return told how deeply the imagination had been stirred by the new scenes opened to their vision. ”

“ Suns rise and set, weeks and months pass; and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route, and now driven in fury before the raging tempest on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow ”

“ Not a blade of grass, not a green leaf, grows in this desolate and sterile spot. No breeze blows upon the surface of the bay: its tranquillity is never troubled except by the fall of enormous masses of ice from numerous overhanging peaks. The air is so still and the silence so profound that the noise made by a bird in laying an egg in the hollow of a rock is distinctly heard at the distance of a mile and a half. To this wonderful bay Lapérouse gave the name of Frenchport.
A painful accident occurred as the vessels, after a somewhat prolonged stay, were about departing from the spot. ”

“ Nor are the ships of man the only travellers we shall perceive upon this mighty map of the ocean. Flocks of sea-birds are passing and repassing, diving for their food or for pastime, migrating from shore to shore with unwearied wing and undeviating instinct, or wheeling and swarming around the rocks which they make alive and vocal by their numbers and their clanging cries. ”

“ Drake took possession, sailed with her two days and two nights from the coast, and then lay to to rifle her. He took from her an immense quantity of pearls and precious stones, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver in ingots, a large portion of which belonged to the king, and thirteen boxes of coined silver. The value of this prize was not far from one million of dollars. Then, as if he had been engaged in a legal commercial transaction, Drake asked the captain for his register of the cargo, and wrote a receipt in the margin for the whole amount! ”

“ Upon the quaint charts of the Middle Ages, a giant located upon the Canary Islands forbade all farther venture westward, by brandishing his formidable club in the path of all vessels coming from the east. Upon these singular maps the concealed and treacherous horrors of the deep were displayed in the grotesque shapes of sea-monsters and distorted water-unicorns, which were represented as careering through space and waylaying the navigator. ”

“ The vessels were now surrounded with canoes laden with cocoanuts and bananas, and a brisk and tolerably honest trade was driven by the natives and the strangers. The aspect of the coast—the mountains covered with foliage to their very summits, the lowlands interspersed with meadows and with plantations of tropical fruit, cascades pouring down from the rocks into the sea, streams flowing among lovely clusters of huts situated upon the shore—offered an enchanting scene to the wearied crews. While the Boudeuse was casting her anchor, canoes filled with women came around her. ”

“ Where are the bodies of those lost ones over whom the melancholy waves alone have been chanting requiem? What shrouds were wrapped round the limbs of beauty, and of manhood, and of placid infancy, when they were laid on the dark floor of that secret tomb? Where are the bones, the relics, of the brave and the timid, the good and the bad, the parent, the child, the wife, the husband, the brother, the sister, the lover, which have been tossed and scattered and buried by the washing, wasting, wandering sea? The journeying winds may sigh as year after year they pass over their beds. ”

“ The hulk was crowded with the entangled machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, posts, spars, levers, hatches, stanchions, floating trunks, boxes, and the confusion worse confounded by the awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness, but the absence of any ray of light to touch the optic nerve. The sense of touch is the only reliance, and the life-line is the only guide of the diver. The officers and men of the ship were anxious for the recovery of their baggage, and offered the divers salvage for its rescue. ”

“ They all agreed, and bound themselves by a solemn promise, to live upon one ounce of bread and a gill of water a day. They then bore away across this unknown and barbarous sea, in a boat twenty-three feet long from stem to stern, deep-laden with nineteen men, and barely supplied with food for two. There is nothing in maritime annals more worthy of a place in a work treating of "Man upon the Sea" than is this marvellous voyage from Tahiti to Timor. ”

“ We have now to narrate the incidents of a voyage without precedent, in one point of view, in maritime annals, and to chronicle the adventures of a ship which may be safely said to have achieved a fame beyond that of any other that ever ploughed the ocean. When we mention the name of the Mayflower, in which the Pilgrim Fathers proceeded from Southampton Water to Plymouth Rock, we are sure that the distinction which we claim for this feeble vessel will be contested by none,—not even by those who would gladly accord the supremacy of the seas to the Nina of Columbus or the Vittoria of Magellan. ”

“ The ocean has thus become almost a steam ferry; almost every day a steamer leaves for Europe. With this knowledge of how far we have progressed in becoming acquainted with the ocean, it will be well to consider for a moment how much still remains for us to explore. In the middle ages, and even down to modern times, the maps of the world represented all unknown lands as inhabited by monsters; but every voyage made by discoverers has contracted the limits of these fables, until they have finally about disappeared. ”

“ Albuquerque, whose courage obtained for him the name of the Portuguese Mars, ranks, by his talents, his severe virtues, and his disinterested zeal, among the greatest men whom the world has produced. He at once formed the plan of founding an empire which should extend from the Persian Gulf to the peninsula of Malacca; and, determining to abandon Calicut, which had thus far been looked upon as the best point for an arsenal, he selected the island of Goa, a little to the north, captured it, and made its admirable harbor a Portuguese roadstead and its town a Portuguese capital. ”

“ Its depth is sublime: who can sound it? Its strength is sublime: what fabric of man can resist it? Its voice is sublime, whether in the prolonged song of its ripple or the stern music of its roar,—whether it utters its hollow and melancholy tones within a labyrinth of wave-worn caves, or thunders at the base of some huge promontory, or beats against a toiling vessel's sides, lulling the voyager to rest with the strains of its wild monotony, or dies away, with the calm and fading twilight, in gentle murmurs on some sheltered shore. ”

“ He was once pursued by two Portuguese men-of-war, whom he fought and then contrived to elude. He captured a merchantman named the Quedagh, and, refusing the offered ransom of thirty thousand rupees, sold her and her cargo at a pirates' rendezvous for forty thousand dollars. He exchanged the Adventure for a larger vessel, and established himself at Madagascar. Here he lay in ambush, plundering the flags of every nation. He made himself dreaded, as a bloody, cruel, and remorseless bandit, from Malabar and the Red Sea across the Atlantic to the West Indies and the American coast. ”