Oceana

“ So it is, that it has fallen to my lot to report to your excellencies in the votes of the people, taken upon the 3d instant, in the first year of this commonwealth, at the halo; the Right Honorable Phosphorus de Auge in the tribe of Eudia, Dolabella d’Enyo in the tribe of Turmae, and Linceus de Stella in the tribe of Nubia, lords commissioners of the great seal of Oceana, and proposers pro temporibus, together with my brethren the tribunes, and myself being present. ”

“ The roaring of the wind which was lashing all the ocean into fury, a maelstrom in midocean, ghostly whitecaps stretching away into darkness, into seeming infinity; the frightened sergeant behind me, his teeth chattering with fear; the dead sentry at my feet, his body blue with cold, entirely nude as I have said; the marks on the deck of huge bare feet, wet as though the feet had come up out of the sea; the eery sound of bells between our vessel and the lowering horizon—and that dead-white face which I had seen beyond the port-hole of my own cabin a half-hour before. ”

“ If confinement discourages industry, an estate in money is not confined, and lest industry should want whereupon to work, land is not engrossed or entailed upon any man, but remains at its devotion. I wonder whence the computation can arise, that this should discourage industry. Two thousand pounds a year a man may enjoy in Oceana, as much in Panopea, £500 in Marpesia; there be other plantations, and the commonwealth will have more. Who knows how far the arms of our agrarian may extend themselves? ”

“ Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off, so as to expose to view this great sea-gash, which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most rugged, grand, and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light, and we should have presented to us at one view the empty cradle of the ocean.... ”

“ On the Atlantic coast one feels that he is looking off toward civilized and friendly lands, across a sea which ocean greyhounds have made narrow; but here three purple islands, floating on the limitless expanse, suggest mysterious archipelagoes scattered starlike on its area, thousands of miles away, before a continent is reached; and one vaguely imagines unknown races, coral reefs, and shores of fronded palms, where Nature smiles indulgently upon a pagan paradise. ”

“ Here, then, we have the backbone of the ancient continent which once occupied the whole of the Atlantic Ocean, and from whose washings Europe and America were constructed; the deepest parts of the ocean, 3500 fathoms deep, represent those portions which sunk first, to wit, the plains to the east and west of the central mountain range; some of the loftiest peaks of this range—the Azores, St. Paul's, Ascension, Tristan d'Acunha—are still above the ocean level; while the great body of Atlantis lies a few hundred fathoms beneath the sea. ”

“ Where the central oceanic buckle attains the water-line we have our oceanic islands, seen in our type ocean, as St Helena and the Azores. Although the apparent crust-waves are neither equal in size nor symmetrical in form, this complementary relationship between them is always discernible. The broad Pacific depression seems to answer to the broad elevation of the Old World—the narrow trough of the Atlantic to the narrow continent of America. ”

“ OUR story opens in that broad, far-reaching expanse of water which lies deep and blue between the two hemispheres, some fifteen degrees north of the equator, in the latitude of Cuba and the Cape Verd Islands. The delightful trade winds had not fanned the sea on a finer summer's day for a twelvemonth, and the waves were daintily swelling upon the heaving bosom of the deep, as though indicating the respiration of the ocean. ”

“ These northerly flowing waters are the cold waters of the Southern Ocean travelling into the equatorial regions, where they are warmed and supply the current which passes westerly and southerly through the Indian Ocean, attaining its greatest velocity as it passes through the Mozambique Channel, thence round the Cape of Good Hope, and north-westerly through the Carribean Sea to form the Gulf stream, which takes a north-easterly course to impart their warm, genial climate to the British islands. ”

“ I call it beautiful sea, for those who have merely looked upon the ocean from our own coasts have no conception of the grandeur of the tropic seas amongst the many islands of the Eastern Archipelago, where the water is as bright as lapis lazuli, as clear as crystal, and the powerful sun lights up its depths, and displays beauties of submarine growth at which the eye never tires of gazing. ”

“ The chief divisions of Oceania are Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Australia, the largest body of land, is usually regarded as a continent. Nearly all the smaller islands are of coral or of volcanic origin; in many instances both agencies have contributed to their formation. The coral and volcanic islands seem to be the tops of mountain ranges that, little by little, have sunk, until only their higher summits are now above sea level.
The central part of the Pacific Ocean is pre-eminently the home of the reef-building coral. ”

“ From the blue ocean rises a mass of green palms. The sunlight glows in the green. It somehow even seems to turn the sunlight green. Against the dark blue of the sea and the light blue of the sky, the sunlight seems to be drawing the green island out of the water, and the soft south wind carries the scent of flowers far out to sea. It is the greeting of the island, and we inhale it deeply.
Here was a typical coral atoll—the kind you dream about. A circular reef studded with waving palms and within the reef a lovely, placid lagoon. ”

“ This reasoning is also applicable, in a greater or less degree, to all parts of the world; for as the same cause everywhere exists, the same effects, when narrowly examined, must everywhere be produced. In the Southern or Pacific Ocean we have wonderful examples of great masses of land formed by madrepores and extensive coral banks, which in time assume all the characteristic features of islands. These occupy considerable portions of the watery bed of the ocean, and displace corresponding portions of the fluid. ”

“ In the writings of the ancients we find reference made to an island which, if it ever did exist, now exists no longer. It was situated opposite the Straits of Gibraltar, was nearly two hundred miles in length, and was called "Atlantis"—hence the name of the Atlantic Ocean. Many believe, and with some reason, we think, that this island was not altogether a myth, although much that is said of it is undoubtedly fabulous. ”

“ Ocean Island, lat. 0° 50′ south, long. 168° east.
A fantastic, lonely, forbidding-looking spot. Circular in form, with rounded summit, and a cruel upheaved coral coast, split up into ravines running deep into the land. Here and there, on ledges overlooking the sea, are perched tiny villages, inhabited by as fierce and intractable a race [Pg 122] of Malayo-Polynesians as ever lacerated each other's bodies with sharks'-tooth daggers, after the mad drunkenness produced by sour toddy. ”

“ The waves themselves have gone to sleep under the fleecy covering. Old Ocean lazily breathes and dreams. The top-mast, lofty and slim, marks and flourishes on the misty sky, as an idler marks the sand with his cane. Pricked on by our impatience, back and forth we step the deck, about as purposeless as leopards step their cage. They are letting off the steam. It is flowing up from the great fountains, a deep and solemn voice, a grand ventriloquism, that muffles in its breadth and fulness all the smaller sounds, as the mighty roar dampens the noisy dashings of the cataract. ”

“ The best way to appreciate the magnitude of the great Oceanic area, is to state that with the exception of the Mauritius, the Isle of Bourbon, Ceylon, the Seychelles, the Maldives, and the Laccadives in the Indian Ocean, and the Japanese empire with the islands to the north thereof, in the Chinese Sea, every inhabited spot of land in the Indian and Pacific Oceans is inhabited by tribes of one and the same race. ”

“ It is so lovely that after three years it still seems like a dream. We are only one short look from the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose mists the sun sets in flaming purple and gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering gray and shell-pink. ”

“ That the fauna of the ocean, apart from the influence of temperature, would be much more uniform, and therefore less susceptible of being divided into zoological provinces, or regions, will be apparent from a glance at the map of the world on Mercator's projection, in which the fact that the three great oceans the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian are in free communication with one another in the southern hemisphere is clearly brought out. ”

“ To the south, in one unbroken line, lie several thousand miles of coast indented with rich markets of Spanish America—to the west, Asiatic Russia and China are close at hand—between the south and west are New Holland and Polynesia; and within good marketable distance are all the groups and clusters of islands that stud the ocean, from Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope, from Asia to America. ”

“ If you will look at a globe, or, if you have not a globe, at a map of the world, turning the South Pole from you, or uppermost, and, supposing yourself to be in a ship, sail across the Atlantic Ocean till you come to the Equator, which is an imaginary line that divides the northern half of the globe from the southern; then "cross the line," as it is called, and sail along the South Atlantic, in the direction of the coast of South America, till you arrive at its southern extremity, which you will see is called Cape Horn ”

“ ATLANTIC OCEAN SCENERY DESIRED.
The mind soon tires of tranquil scenes. On the way from the Sandwich Islands to China I had my fill of tranquility. I found myself yearning for a gale; felt great respect for the Gulf Stream, with waves as high as the main yard; longed to see breakers; wondered why the sea would not occasionally come over our rail. There seemed to be talent about the Rio de la Plata; Cape Horn was true genius; the North Atlantic a giant with a progeny in its own image. The halcyon waters of the Pacific impressed me as amiable but weak ”

“ The winds, and the clouds now take charge of the new island, or continent, and begin to prepare it for vegetation, and the habitation of man, and animals. The Pacific Ocean, within the tropics is, par excellence, the coral sea, and the navigator of that ocean is familiar with the phenomenon, which I am about to describe. In the midst of a clear sky, the mariner sometimes discovers on the verge of the horizon, a light, fleecy cloud, and as he sails toward it, he is surprised to find that it scarcely alters its [Pg 172] position. ”

“ It is found in the Roman writers and in the Greek geographers of the Roman period, sometimes for the whole body of water surrounding the earth, and sometimes with epithets which mark the application of the word to the Atlantic Ocean, which is also called simply Oceanus; while, on the other hand, the epithet Atlanticus is found applied to the Ocean in its wider sense, that is, to the whole body of water surrounding the three continents. ”

“ The highest degree of intimacy is developed in that vast island-strewn stretch of the Pacific constituting Oceanica.550 Here where a mild climate enables the boatman race to make a companion of the deep, where every landscape is a seascape, where every diplomatic visit or war campaign, every trading journey or search for new coco-palm plantation means a voyage beyond the narrow confines of the home island, there dwells a race whose splendid chest and arm muscles were developed in the gymnasium of the sea ”

“ On the west was the Atlantic Ocean, unknown and unexplored—that mysterious expanse of waters which filled navigators with awe and dread, and which was not destined to be crossed until the stars should cease to be the only guide. ”

“ Of course, I had been told, as has every traveler in the south seas, that there is not an atoll or island left for discovery. I had been informed that on every coral speck in the reef-strewn ocean, there is or has been, a white man. ”

“ The Inhabitants of Oceania are dark-skinned. Some are Malays, others are Negroes. They are very tine swimmers and boatmen.
The bread-fruit is the principal food on many islands. When baked it is like bread.
10. Principal Islands.'—The largest islands of Oceania are near the continent of Asia, and are often called the East India Islands. ”

“ Pacific Ocean, the largest sheet of water on the globe, occupies a third of its whole surface, as much as all the land put together. It is a wide oval in shape, lying between Australia and Asia on the W., and North and South America on the E. Except from Asia it receives no large rivers. On its American shores the Gulf of California is the only considerable indentation; the Okhotsk, Japanese, Yellow, and Chinese Seas, on the Asiatic coast, are rather wide bays shut in by islands than inland seas. ”

“ This bay is interspersed with many islands, and has every appearance of having been gained from the land, consequently we may suppose, with some probability, that the ocean, by its constant motion from east to west, has by degrees acquired this extent on the eastern continent, and has formed mediterraneans, such as Kamtschatka, Corea, China, and perhaps all the Archipelago; for the earth and sea are there so blended that it evidently appears to be an inundated country, of which we only see the eminences and high lands, while the lower are hid under the waters of the ocean. ”

“ Its extreme breadth, a little north of the equator, is four thousand five hundred and fifty leagues; between South America and New Holland, latitude thirty degrees south, it is two thousand nine hundred and seventy leagues. It contains an immense number of islands spread over its surface, particularly between latitude thirty degrees north and fifty degrees south, to which modern geographers have given the general appellation of Oceanica. It was first called the South Sea by the European navigators who entered it from the north. ”