Inland sea

“ In support of this opinion, he adduces the traditions and observations of the natives of Otaheite and of the Moluccas and Sunda Islands, regarding the retreat of the sea in several parts of their coast. We are disposed to stand neutral in this matter. The geographers who have collected the greatest number of facts relating to the level of the inland seas, and of the ocean in its various regions, find nearly as many in favour of a rise as in favour of a fall of level. ”

“ We have no more large oceans or deep seas,—nothing but inland waters; many straits, gulfs, and seas analogous to the Channel, the Red Sea, the Adriatic, the Baltic, and the Caspian; pleasant shores, quiet harbors, large lakes and streams, aerial rather than aquatic fleets, an almost always clear sky, especially in the morning. There are no mornings on Earth so luminous as ours. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. UGET SOUND is a great inland sea, extending nearly 200 miles from the ocean, having a surface of about 2,000 square miles, and a shore line of 1,594 miles, indented with numerous bays, harbors, and inlets, each with its peculiar name; and it contains numerous islands inhabited by farmers, lumbermen, herdsmen, and those engaged in quarrying lime and building stone. ”

“ At meridian, we hove to, and put off in two boats. Having passed to leeward of the island, we crossed a drowned reef, that extended as far as the eye could reach to the N.W., when we found ourselves in an inland sea, which was extensive and quite smooth. That part of the island where we landed was about five miles long, and a quarter of a mile wide. ”

“ The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects the three divisions of the Old World. The shores of this inland sea were in ancient times peopled by various nations belonging in an ethnographical and philological point of view to different races, but constituting in their historical aspect one whole. ”

“ As the little village and shore line faded away, we wished an artist could have caught the view. We sailed out into the finest part of the Inland Sea, where the shore was deeply indented with rocky promontories, which first ended in a high projection to our right ”

“ Now not only are we favoured with a multitude of navigable waterways—the tide makes even our small coastal rivers navigable right inland—but also we are quite exceptionally favoured in them when we consider that the country is an island.
If an island, especially an island in a tidal sea, has a good river system, that system is bound to be of more benefit to it than would be a similar system to a Continental country. ”

“ Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam. Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach, the narrow forest of shrub and palm, the empty lagoon, a border of misty islands on the farther side. ”

“ 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 sea, as if transformed by enchantment, rolled its free waves at my feet, and beyond the range of vision to the eastward. Islands, of various shape and size, overspread its surface; and the northern land terminated to the eye in a bold and lofty cape, bearing east-north-east, thirty or forty miles distant, while the continental coast trended away south-east. I stood in fact on a remarkable headland at the eastern outlet of an ice-obstructed strait. ”

“ It is not only sea you are looking at, it is ocean: ocean in its full depth within a few miles of the shore, and the blueness of deep water is a very different thing from the blue of the Irish Channel or the English, to say nothing of the yellowish waters of the North Sea. And the wash of waves there, even on a calm day, has in it a slow, heavy rhythm, a sense of power which rocks and soothes the senses. But to face that sea on that coast, not only rockbound but flanked with a line of reefs and islands, in hooker or pookaun or canvas-covered curragh, is an enterprise that might well dismay. ”

“ Two English vessels are approaching the island. At first the crews do not see it, but as evening draws on, the look-out man in the larger ship gives the signal that he has caught sight of land. “Land ho, land!” passes from mouth to mouth among the sailors. What land can it be? No island, no rock even, is marked on the chart, and the officers gather on deck to look over the darkening sea toward that darker point where the new land lies. ”

“ Continuing along the shore beyond the reef at the distance of two miles from the land, the boats touched the ground several times, which made us conclude we were steering into a bay, though its outline could not be seen. The wind changed at the time to the north, blew strong, and raised a heavy swell, which induced us to haul out to seaward, and we soon afterwards discovered an island, which we just reached under sail. ”

“ They have no vessels either large or small, nor has the coast any capes or bights that might afford shelter from west- and south-winds, the whole shore being clear and unencumbered, with a clayey bottom, forming a good anchoring-ground, the sea being not above 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 fathom in depth at 1,2 and more miles' distance from the land, the rise and fall of the water with the tides we found to be between 11⁄2 and 2 fathom. ”

“ At length we sighted an island, the coast of which was rocky and barren. Through stress of weather we were compelled to keep off the shore, steering northward until, on the third day, the weather having moderated, we hove to as near to the coast as we dared approach, and endeavoured to land a boat's crew. In spite of breakers and a heavy sea, six of the sailors leaped overboard opposite a sandy beach, and with great difficulty reached the shore. Whilst searching for water the sailors saw four natives, who fled at their approach. They were wild, black, and entirely naked. ”

“ The habitations of the natives are scattered without order upon these flats; and many of them appearing toward the shore, presented a delightful scene, viewed from our ships; especially as the sea within the reef, which bounds the coast, is perfectly still, and affords a safe navigation at all times for the inhabitants, who are often seen paddling in their canoes indolently along in passing from place to place, or in going to fish. ”

“ But how lovingly the eye rests on that tranquil sea with its hither shore, the "white wings" floating above, the energetic steamboat defiantly crossing their track, the asthmatic tug pulling at something it has picked up at some little port down the Sound, and a few oar-boats rippling the water near shore. The air comes fresh from the northwest with an odor of the sea in it, a little cool, us if it had touched in passing the silvery snowline of the Olympics. ”

“ THE HALTING STEP. Chapter I.
n the Western coast of one of the islands in the Channel group is a level reach of salt marshes, to which the sea rises only at the highest spring tides, and which at other times extends as far as the eye can see, a dreary waste of salt pools, low rocks, and stretches of sand, yielding its meagre product of shell-fish, samphire, and sea-weed to the patient toil of the fisher-folk that dwell in scattered huts along the shore. ”

“ So Chancellor Kent says: 'The 'high seas' mean the waters of the ocean without the boundary of any county, and they are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the admiralty, up to high-water mark when the tide is full. The 'open ocean, which washes the seacoast,' is used in contradistinction to arms of the sea inclosed within the fauces terrae, or narrow headlands and promontories ”

“ We sailed round the north end, and upon the north-west and west side, saw innumerable rocks and shoals, which stretched near two leagues into the sea, and were extremely dangerous. The islands themselves had a more fertile and beautiful appearance than any we had seen before, and, like the rest, swarmed with people, whose habitations we saw standing in clusters all along the coast. We saw also a large vessel under sail, at a little distance from the shore ”

“ Offshore are the innumerable rocky islets, seemingly merely moored in the sea, around which skim myriads of sailing-vessels and steamers, quite in the ceaseless manner of cinematograph pictures, while an occasional black cloud of smoke indicates the presence of a great liner from the Far East, making port with its cargo of humanity and the silks and spices of the Orient. ”

“ Having in the early part of my life been employed for a score of years in the whaling service, during which time my sea voyages were passed in cruising over the North and South Atlantic, and over the Indian Ocean, from latitudes north of the equator to the southern shores of Kerguelen Land, and along the seas of Southern Australia, I also, in my searching, cruised over the Pacific Ocean from the icy seas south of Cape Horn to the northern latitudes of Alaska, and, from New Zealand in the Western Pacific to the numerous islands in the tropical zone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All seas are maintained by the abundance of water, so that the nearer the end any river, bay, or haven is, the shallower it waxeth (although by some accidental bar it is sometime found otherwise) , but the farther you sail west from Iceland, towards the place where this strait is thought to be, the more deep are the seas, which giveth us good hope of continuance of the same sea, with Mare del Sur, by some strait that lieth between America, Greenland, and Cathay. ”

“ The vast ocean is common to all mankind as to navigation and fishing, which are the only uses therof, because it is not capable of bounds; but where the sea is enclosed, in bays, creeks, or otherwise is capable of any bounds or meiths, as within the points of such lands, or within the view of such shores, there it may become proper, but with the reservation of passage for commerce, as in the land. ”

“ Wrecks of vessels strew the rocky shores, and four light-houses warn the mariner of danger. Once past the island the ship is well within the estuary of the gulf into which the St. Lawrence River flows, contributing the waters of the great lakes of the continent to the sea. As the north coast is approached the superstitious sailor is again alarmed if perchance, the compass-needle shows sympathy with some disturbing element, the cause of which he believes to exist in the mountains which rise along the shore. ”

“ If the marine features of this region are radically different from those of other coastal bodies of the eastern United States, so, too, the shore land, battered as it has been by sea and storm or worn by glacial action or Arctic currents, is no less remarkable. ”

“ On the 17th, we came in full view of a great island, or continent (for we knew not whether) ; on the south side whereof was a small neck of land jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold a ship of above one hundred tons. We cast anchor within a league of the creek, and our captain sent a dozen of his men well armed in the long-boat, with vessels for water, if any could be found. I desired his leave to go with them, that I might see the country, and make what discoveries I could. When we came to land, we saw no river, or spring, nor any sign of inhabitants. ”

“ We passed within a quarter of a mile of a small islet or rock, on which we saw with our glasses about thirty men, women, and children standing all together, and looking attentively at us; the first people we have seen show any signs of curiosity at the sight of the ship.
10th. Just without us as we lay at anchor was a small sandy island lying upon a large coral shoal much resembling the low islands to the eastward of us, but the first of the kind we had met with in this part of the South Sea. ”

“ The sea that lies between the two great countries of the south is not, like the Central or North Pacific, a sea bridged with islands, ruffled with trade winds, favorable to sailing ships, or overspread with a calm that permits the presence of light-draught paddle steamers. The seas which separate Australia from New Zealand are cold, bottomless, without islands, torn by Arctic currents, swept by polar gales, and traversed in all weathers by a mountainous swell. ”

“ The shore, at that part where our ships lay, is composed of a steep, rugged, coral rock, nine or ten feet high, except where there are two sandy beaches, which have a reef of the same sort of rock extending cross their entrance to the shore, and defending them from the sea. The salt-water lake that is in the centre of the island, is about a mile and a half broad; and round it the land rises like a bank, with a gradual ascent. ”