Atlantic coast

“ In winter, or during violent storms, the savagery of these rocks, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic, and surrounded by an almost perpetual surf, is overwhelming. You can with difficulty believe the island on which you stand is not reeling beneath your feet.
After exploring the shore and seeing with his own eyes the deep gashes in its mailed garment, the basins hollowed out of granite and flint, and the utter wantonness in which the sea has pitched about the fragments it has wrested from the solid rock, the futility of words in which to express this confusion comes home to the spectator. ”

“ On the great coast line referred to above is the center of the great natural acclivities of the globe. It is the most varied, the most stimulating, and the most productive in all departments of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The Atlantic coast belt, which also has great influence on the eastern districts of the new world and the western districts of the old, crosses the great coast belt at almost right angles at the place of its great sundering between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. ”

“ Nature had marked America for a great commercial nation. The sweep of the Atlantic coast, from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Florida, comprehending twenty degrees of latitude, broken into capacious bays and convenient harbors, and receiving the inward flow of the sea into great navigable rivers that stretched far into the interior, presented an access to the ocean not surpassed by that of any large portion of the globe. ”

“ Position, climate, latitude, mountains, lakes, rivers, coal, iron, silver, and gold are forces which decree occupation, character, and the measure of power and influence which a people shall have among the nations. Rivers are natural highways of trade, while mountains are the natural barriers. The Atlantic coast is open everywhere to commerce; but on the Pacific shore, from British Columbia to Central America, the rugged wall of the coast mountains, cloud-capped and white with snow, rises sharp and precipitous from the sea, with but one river flowing outward from the heart of the continent. ”

“ The general phenomena on the two opposing sides of the Atlantic have great resemblance. The Atlantic coast of the United States presents an elliptic curve in its entire extent, with three intermediate and similar curves; the first extending seven hundred miles from Cape Florida to Cape Hatteras, the second from Cape Hatteras five hundred miles to the outer capes of Massachusetts, and the third formed by the coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Opposite to the United States, the Atlantic admits soundings in every place near the shores, always deepening very gradually. ”

“ But it isn’t the standing on cherry-tree ladders, or the doing of any actual thing, that makes the essential difference between the people of the Atlantic and the Pacific Coast. It is the land itself, perhaps—the sunshine, the climate, that pours a rejuvenating radiance upon the spirit of resident and visitor alike. ”

“ The only other beaches of great length on our Atlantic coast, which I have heard sailors speak of, are those of Barnegat on the Jersey shore, and Currituck between Virginia and North Carolina; but these, like the last, are low and narrow sand-bars, lying off the coast, and separated from the mainland by lagoons. Besides, as you go farther south the tides are feebler, and cease to add variety and grandeur to the shore. On the Pacific side of our country also no doubt there is good walking to be found ”

“ It is very remarkable, that, while the Atlantic coast abounds in excellent harbors, on the Pacific side of the continent there is no good harbor where a vessel can find refuge in any kind of weather between San Francisco Bay and San Diego to the south, and Port Angeles, on the Straits of Fuca, to the north. ”

“ It is the atmospheric softness, and the rich vegetation, which, on the west of Ireland, covers the valleys, glens, and the mountain-sides, it is the colour of the deep and lovely tarns, of the expanses of heather, and of the distances, and lastly, it is the rugged, rock-bound coast, a coast of many bays, of desolate islands, of solitary sea stacks, of cliffs, of sandy beaches, and wonderful sea caves, a coast that has for ages withstood the attacks of the mighty waves of the storm-driven Atlantic ”

“ Coast-line.—The coast-line of North America on the west is almost everywhere high and rocky. To the south of Puget Sound good harbors are rare, but British Columbia and Alaska have great numbers of good seaports, the coast-line being, in many places, deeply cut with high-walled fjords, or “canals,” and elsewhere sheltered by ranges of high and well-wooded islands. The Atlantic coast, north of New York Bay, is generally rocky and well sheltered with islands, and has abundance of good natural harbors ”

“ The Atlantic coast of South America is simpler, the chief indentations being, on the north the gulfs of Darien and Venezuela, on the northeast the estuary of the Amazon, and on the east the harbors of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and the gulfs of Blanca, San Matias, and San Jorge, on the Argentine coast. ”

“ Great stretches of seacoast exist at the present time which within the historical period have been covered by the ocean. Even at the present writing we are witnessing the gradual submergence of some parts of the earth and the rising of others; terraces on the northern Atlantic coast may be seen along the hillsides many feet above the present level of the ocean—all of which go to show that the relationship of the land to the water is an unstable one. ”

“ The result of all these operations is, that we know the contours and the nature of the surface-soil covered by the North Atlantic, for a distance of seventeen hundred miles from east to west, as well as we know that of any part of the dry land.
It is a prodigious plain—one of the widest and most even plains in the world. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a wagon all the way from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. ”

“ Property-owners along the ocean front of the beaches have generally made the mistake of supposing that the domain of the Atlantic was bounded by the high-water mark of the spring tides. Any one who should build a dwelling on the strand below ordinary high-water mark would be considered lacking in common sense, yet it is scarcely less foolish to build within reach of the storm-waves. ”

“ Every opening which presented itself was explored, and never left till its termination was determined; so that on a very careful and minute inspection of every creek and inlet of a coast consisting almost entirely of creeks and channels, formed by an innumerable multitude of islands, he thought himself justified in pronouncing, that there is no navigable passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, unless there may be a possibility of sailing through the strait between Asia and America, and navigating the Frozen Ocean. ”

“ One may further note the fact that the deepest areas of the Atlantic are met with in like manner close to the walls of the plateau—a long ridge, which rises midway between the continents and runs in the same general direction as their coast-lines, serving to divide the trough of the Atlantic into two parallel hollows. ”

“ The Atlantic border of North America is abundantly supplied with fine harbours, which not only favour communication with distant countries, but are within easy reach of agricultural and forest lands and important coal and other mineral deposits adjacent to the coast or in the interior, and are near extensive and valuable fishing grounds. The best of these harbours are at the mouths of rivers which have been depressed so as to form estuaries with wide entrances. These sea-gates, however, are frequently contracted, owing to the presence of sand-bars and spits deposited by shore currents. ”

“ The reason undoubtedly is, that the coasts of those countries are washed by enclosed seas, which naturally cannot be compared with the ocean; whilst the countries themselves, especially Germany and France—and the latter even in spite of its extent of coast towards the Atlantic—have an unmistakeable continental character. It is clear, moreover, that the ocean, as well as the smaller and enclosed seas, have, according to the difference of latitude, an entirely different influence on the people who inhabit their shores. ”

“ While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. ”

“ Deep-sea soundings have been made by ships of different nations; the United States ship Dolphin, the German frigate Gazelle, and the British ships Hydra, Porcupine, and Challenger have mapped out the bottom of the Atlantic, and the result is the revelation of a great elevation, reaching from a point on the coast of the British Islands southwardly to the coast of South America, at Cape Orange, thence south-eastwardly to the coast of Africa, and thence southwardly to Tristan d'Acunha. ”

“ Similar evidences are of frequent occurrence along these western shores, where now the restless Atlantic is slowly but unceasingly gnawing the rocky coast into wilder and more picturesque forms, while it strews the stolen debris on its ocean bed, to form new strata and continents for younger worlds than ours. ”

“ It is simply a part of the Atlantic Ocean, adjoining the coast of Europe between latitudes 43° 46′ and 48° 28′. I have not been able to ascertain that the wind blows harder, or that the sea runs higher there than elsewhere in the same latitudes, and am inclined to rank the prejudice against that particular tract of sea-water among vulgar errors.
The adventurer who has attempted to open up a trade with some distant region is accustomed, as he returns home, to count up the profits of his expedition ”

“ It is made up of irregular bits of land, all jumbled about in a shallow sea—or of bits of sea running into the flat land in all directions—so that to get to a place one mile in direct distance you may have to walk five or six or even ten miles, if you can’t get a boat. It is a land of desolation and dreariness. Bare rocky hills form the eastern coast, and from the foot of these the low undulating rocky and peaty land stretches for some ten or twelve miles to the Atlantic. ”

“ This rocky peninsula is truly a very wild and unworldlike little territory, jutting boldly out as it does into the mighty bay of Massachusetts, and commanding a view of its whole extent, from Cape Cod to Cape Anne, together with the many islands, towns, and villages scattered along the coast; whilst in front spreads out the Atlantic Ocean.
To sit within the upper gallery of this house upon the cliff, and watch the rising moon fling her golden bridge from the far horizon's edge, until it seems to rest upon the beach below, is a sight which would be worth something in a poet or a painter's eyes. ”

“ Every physical geographer who has written upon the Atlantic has noticed the curious parallelism between its eastern and its western borders, their salient and retiring angles corresponding very closely to each other. Thus, beginning at the north we see that the projection formed by the British Islands (which extends much further westwards at 100 fathoms below the surface than it does above the sea-level) , answers to the wide entrance to Baffin s Bay ; whilst, on the other hand, the projection of the American coast at Newfoundland answers to the Bay of Biscay. ”

“ Travelling along the coast of the Atlantic from Cape Spartel to Cape Blanco, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, generally within one mile of the sea, and often along the beach, a sailor's attention would naturally be directed to endeavour to fix the line of the coast, to effect which no opportunity was lost ”

“ Bay of, an eastern arm of the Atlantic, extending from Ushant Island to Cape Ortegal, and flanked on the east by France and on the south by Spain. It is about 350 miles long by 300 miles in width. Violent circular currents, as well as storms, make the navigation difficult. The Spanish coast is rocky, but the French coast is low and sandy. ”

“ On the west side of the Atlantic it breeds from 70o N. lat. on the eastern shore of Baffin's Bay to Cape Farewell, and again on the coast of America from Labrador and Newfoundland to the Bay of Fundy, while in winter it reaches Long Island. ”

“ The hungry ocean has gnawed and ravaged the New England coast, until along almost its entire length it is worn into ragged edges, forming islands, capes, promontories, bold headlands, peninsulas, bays, inlets and coves. In this coast are united the grand, the picturesque and the beautiful. Soft masses of foliage are in close juxtaposition with rugged rocks and dashing surf. ”

“ In summer, the season in which we were there, the sky is clear, with but little rain: if fogs and mists are at any time driven in by the south wind, they are immediately dissipated, and at once it becomes serene and bright again. The sea is calm, not boisterous, and its waves are gentle. Although the whole coast is low and without harbours, it is not dangerous for navigation, being free from rocks and bold, so that within four or five fathoms from the shore there is twenty-four feet of water at all times of tide, and this depth constantly increases in a uniform proportion. ”