Bay

“ Now all the bay is alive. Moreover, the sea is sweeping in, filling the bay like a bath-tub, obliterating the causeways under millions of dancing ripples of turquoise. Soon my decoys are out, and I am sunk in a sand-pit at the edge of the sea. The wind holds strong from the northeast, and I am kept busy until my gun-barrels are too hot to be pleasant. ”

“ Within a long recess a bay there lies, Edged round with cliffs high pointing to the skies; The jutting shores that swell on either side Contract its mouth, and break the rushing tide. Our eager sailors seize the fair retreat, And bound within the port their crowded fleet: For here retired the sinking billows sleep, And smiling calmness silver’d o’er the deep. I only in the bay refused to moor, And fix’d without, my halsers to the shore. ”

“ The bay is already beginning 132 to be silvered over by the mild rays of the queen of night. Gently she steals on the world, while she bestows on us her borrowed splendour. She lights the wandering traveller, she warms the earth with gentle heat. She dazzles not the eye of the philosopher, but invites him to contemplate and admire. Scarcely a breeze is stirring; the shadow of each tree remains undisturbed; the unruffled bay and river glide smoothly on, reflecting nature’s face. ”

“ During the summer and part of the winter, the bay is sprinkled far and wide with the sails of fishing dories. Into this pocket of the sea, always conveniently open, nature brings food for man in the form of marine creatures,—lobsters, crabs, and a clutter of fish. The bay, with its air of mild domesticity, is man's domain; the sea outside, God's alone.
Never the less the region in winter is harsh and unfavoured. The wind pipes down the chimneys and clamours on the crags and fairly howls in giant witch-fashion on the ocean. ”

“ We are a long time sailing by the Bay of Islands. But it gives us time to look, and talk about it with the Captain. Beyond the forest-covered hills which surround it, are lakes as beautiful, and larger than Lake George, the cold, clear waters of which flow to the bay under the name of the river Humber. It has a valley like Wyoming, and more romantic scenery than the Susquehanna. The Bay of Islands is also a bay of streams and inlets, an endless labyrinth of cliffs and woods and waters, where the summer voyager would delight to wander, and which is worth a volume sparkling with pictures. ”

“ But if you cast your eyes over yonder magnificent bay, where vessels bearing flags of all nations are at anchor, and then let your vision sweep past and over the islands to the outlets beyond, where the quiet ocean lies, bordered with fog-banks that loom ominously at the boundary-line of the horizon, you will see a picture of marvellous beauty; for the coast scenery here transcends our own sea-shores, both in color and outline. ”

“ To the north-west, too, across that great blue arc of sea-water which is the Bay outside the bay, look! Yonder is another edge of Earth, but one that stands upright, instead of lying out, and, in place of a coat of colours, wears a robe of bright white—the snows, namely, the Alps, that other hold of space and strength. Vast sea, far-flung earth, great mountain peaks; and, as though these were not enough, all this consummate depth of blue above our heads! One looks, one apprehends, a little one comprehends—and instinctively one draws the long breath of the free. ”

“ It is curious to rise from a seat in the amphitheatre where you have been lulled by the light touch of the wind and the soft lapping of the waves, to contemplate two or three rods beyond this scene of mighty wrath. It is more curious still to stroll through expanses of sedgegrass to the other side of the Point and behold the bay. A quiet little bay it seems, with its diversified edge of sandy beach and tumble of small rocks, with its lobstermen's sheds clinging to the shore and further inland the houses. ”

“ Near the outlet of the lake is a bold rocky bluff, rising right up out of the deep water twenty feet, against which the waves dash, and around which a romantic bay steals away to hide itself in the old woods. This beautiful bay is always calm, for even the narrow strait which connects it with the open water is divided by a rocky, but wooded island, shutting out alike the winds and the waves from disturbing its repose. ”

“ In the southern division of the bay we see the sun set over the Pyrenees; and in the northern we have two splendid stretches of sand, one with huge fragments of dark rock scattered about for the waves to leap over, the other an unbroken level, firm to the feet, where the hindmost line of wave sends up its spray on the horizon like a suddenly rising cloud. This part of the bay is worthily called the Chambre de l'Amour; and we have its beauties all to ourselves, which, alas! in this stage of the world, one can't help feeling to be an advantage. ”

“ Stretching away from the shore is the bay, lying calm and unruffled under the summer sky, except when its glassy surface is rippled by the dip of an oar or churned into froth by the restless pulsations of a passing steamer. ”

“ The heavens are bright with bright clouds, the air is sweet with perfume from tree and flower, the bay is gemmed with gardened isles and promontories. Outside the heads which protect the bay and make it a safe refuge for mighty fleets, the sea dashes against hoary rocks which stand defiant of its wrath ”

“ The westward shore is a gentle, grass-grown slope, stretching up beyond a charming little bay formed by a spit of meadow. Near the sandy beach of this bay a country highway passes, winding in and out and up and down, as it follows the river and the bases of the knolls. Above this and commanding delightful glimpses of forest and stream and bayou and prairie, a goodly hillock is crowned, some seventy-five feet above the water's edge, with a dark, unpainted, time-worn, moss-grown house, part log and part frame, set in a deep tangle of 222 lilacs and crabs. ”

“ You could walk straight across the bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from the perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking, concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was high-water, or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was over a long reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe of the waves was visible, as if there was their hitherto, and further towards us they could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of the Atlantic. ”

“ And I see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in the dark. A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. ”

“ The bay itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving shadows which wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from the illimitable ocean. ”

“ One of these inlets bears the name of Conception Bay; and it is around the shores of this bay that the scene of this novel is laid. Everything in it suffers a sea-change; everything is set to the music of the winds and the waves. We find ourselves among a people with whom the sea is all, and the land only an appendage to the sea,—a place to dry fish, and mend nets, and haul up boats, and caulk ships. ”

“ At the bottom of the bay the sea expands a little, assumes a bluer tint as it comes to reflect more of the cloudless heavens, and at length its tiny waves die away on a bed of violets, as closely netted together as the sand upon the shore. ”

“ The Bay is in itself a Lake, at all times cheerful with its scattered fleet, at anchor or under weigh—its villas and cottages, each rejoicing in its garden or orchard—its meadows mellowing to the reedy margin of the pellucid water—its heath-covered boathouses—its own portion of the Isle called Beautiful—and beyond that sylvan haunt, the sweet Furness Fells, with gentle outline undulating in the sky, and among its spiral larches showing, here and there, groves and copses of the old unviolated woods. ”

“ In a moment, there is heard in the silent bay a sound of a rush and ripple, different from the lap of the many-tongued waves on the shore; and, silently as a cloud, with white wings spread, a little vessel glides into the harbor.
A little craft is she—not larger than the fishing-smacks that ply their course along our coasts in summer; but her decks are crowded with men, women, and children, looking out with joyous curiosity on the beautiful bay, where, after many dangers and storms, they first have found safe shelter and hopeful harbor. ”

“ It is an outlook of unrivalled beauty across the bay, that smokes and flashes with the innumerable stacks and sails of commerce, to the hills beyond, where the moving forest of masts halts at the shore, and roots itself in the groves of the many villaged uplands. ”

“ The bay, as everybody knows, is one of the most commodious in the world, and would be one of the most beautiful if it had hills to overlook it. There is, to be sure, a tranquil beauty in its wooded headlands and long capes, and it is no wonder that the early explorers were charmed with it, or that they lost their way in its inlets, rivers, and bays. ”

“ The beautiful bay, with its sunset lights behind the grand headland, with its deep caves and tumbled rocks, and above all its blue waters, lying sometimes calm and motionless, and at others dashing furiously at the foot of the cliffs, was enough to attract any lover of nature. ”

“ The day is serenely perfect and the sky is clear save for a few fleecy clouds that drift lazily along the horizon. Our road climbs the hills fronting on the bay—in places the water lies almost sheer beneath us—and the panorama that lies before us is like a fairyland. Of the deepest liquid blue imaginable, the still water stretches out to the hills beyond the bay, which fade away, range after range, into the dun and purple haze of the distance; in places their tops are swept by low-hung clouds of dazzling whiteness—an effect of light and color indescribably glorious. ”

“ Here beautiful views meet the gaze of the traveller in every direction; mountains on one side, the sea and beautiful bay on the other. On a clear day a panorama of fifty square miles may be seen with the unaided eye. Sheer precipices of more or less bare rock extend down for a distance of fifteen hundred feet or more. A stone merely dropped over the crowning walls would descend to the plains below. It is to the bay that one will turn with most interest. There, in the distance, is the seemingly narrow channel through which all boats must pass on their way to the city. ”

“ A great bank, half a mile out, nigh the mouth of the bay, breaks the force of the main ocean coming in from the offing. Winter and summer, when the tide flows over the quicksand, the sea seems to leave the waves behind it on the bank, and rolls its waters in smoothly with a heave, and covers the sand in silence. A lonesome and a horrid retreat, I can tell you! No boat ever ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-village, called Cobb’s Hole, ever come here to play. ”

“ The ever-varying face of the bay alone is a source of ceaseless enjoyment, and with the sound of its waves, sometimes dashing impetuously, sometimes murmuring softly, the eye, the ear, and the soul are filled with wonder and delight. ”

“ Go then with a mind perfectly at rest as to your emoluments, which we will keep safe for you. Seek the Sun, seek the pure air and smiling shore of that lovely bay, thickly set with harbours and dotted with noble islands—that bay in which Nature displays all her marvels and invites man to explore her secrets. ”

“ From what I know of this bay, I am prepared to say that there is a surf breaking on the beach at this moment which no boat of ours could pass through and live. Listen to the wind, how it howls through our rigging! ”

“ In the first picture we have a perfectly wild scene of rocks, mountains, woods, and a bay of the ocean, reposing in the luxuriance of a ripe spring. The clouds of night are being dissipated by the beams of the rising sun. On the opposite side of the bay rises a lofty promontory, crowned by a singular, isolated rock, which would ever be a conspicuous landmark to the mariner. ”

“ We have chosen a bright summer day for our visit, a day when the West Bay is lazily flinging in its five or six waves per minute; when white-sailed yachts and tall ships slide between us and the horizon; when the gulls are wheeling peacefully about their nests among the cliffs, and all Nature suns herself and rests. ”

“ But chiefly is it pleasant to mark them when the unruffled sea, and cloudless moon, invite them to wander on the marina, and embark on the waters—when the hot sun has persecuted the day, and evening first allowed to breathe freely. There is the bay alive with boats, and resonant of music and laughter, and the shore alive with gay promenaders. ”

“ All the coast of the bay, within recent historic periods, in different spots at different times, has risen and sunk and risen again, in simple obedience to the pulsations of the great fiery monster below. ”

“ From Saint Just's Church-town, the road conducts us over a wild part of the peninsula, although highly salubrious, and invigorating from the fine sea breezes which blow from every side; after a ride over such bleak and barren hills, the eye experiences a singular repose on our approach to the cultivated shores of the Mount's Bay. ”

“ We have been driving across a narrow mainland, from the ocean to the ocean, and before us, gleaming softly in the evening sunlight, is the beautiful Bay of Conception. The surrounding cliffs are quite purple, the ocean is a golden sea broken up by green islands. Far below us is a cluster of houses, a fishing settlement, with a lobster factory and some flakes run out over the rocks. There are boats idly rocking at the quay, whilst others are catching bait for a fishing schooner, lying at anchor in the bay. ”