The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1883-05-23

Another of John Burroughs d.
lightful essays appears in the Apr.
Century, the subject being the trans
atlantic voyage. In keeping wit
the text is the ideal full-page engeay
ing, by Elbridge Kingsley, Of a shi]
in mid-ocean, which was drawn wit
the graver. We quote the followin
from the writer's impression:
One does not seem really to hav
got out of doors till he goes to sea
On the land he is shut in by tn
hills or the forests, or less housed By
the sharp lines of his horizon. Blu
at sea he finds the roof taken of
the walls taken down he is no long
er in the hollow of the earth's hand
but upon its naked back, with moth
ing between him and the immensi
ties. He is in the great cosmic out
ofooors, as much 90 as if voyagine
TO the moon or to Mars. An astron,
omic solitude and vacuity surrounds
him; his only guides and landmarks
are stellar; the earth has disappear.
ed; the horizon has gone; he has
only the sky and its orbs left; the
cold, vitreous, blue-black liquid
through which the ship plows is not
water, but some denser form of the
cosmic ether. He can now see the
curve of the sphere which the hills
hid from him; he can study astron-
omy under improved conditions.
If he was being borne through the
interplanetary spaces on an immense
shield, his impressions would not
perhaps be much different.
For it must be admitted that a
voyage at sea is more impressive to
the imagination than to the actual
sense. The world is left behind all
standards of size, of magnitude, OF
distance, are vanished there is no
size, no form, no perspective; the
universal has dwindled to little cir
Gle of crumpled water, that journeys
with you day after day, and to which
YOU seem bound by some enchant-
ment. The sky becomes shallow,
close-ftting dome, or else pail OF
cloud that seems ready to descend
upon you. You cannot see or rea-
lie the vast and vacantsurrounding;
there is nothing to define it or set it
off. Three thousand miles of ocean
space are less impressive than three
miles bounded by rugged mountain
walls. Indeed, the grandeur of
from, of magnitude, of distance, of
proportion, ETC., are only upon shore.
A voyage across the Atlantic is a
ten-day sail through vacancy. There
is no sensible progress you pass no
fixed points. Is it the steamer that
is moving, or is It the sea? or is it all
a dance and illusion of the troubled
brain? Yesterday, to-day and to-
morrow, you are in the same paren-
thesis of nowhere. The three hum
dred or more miles the ship daily
makes is ideal, not real. Every
night the stars dance and reel there
in the same place amid the rigging;
every morning the sun comes up
from behind the same wave, and
staggers slowly across the sinister
sky. The eye becomes a,hunger for
form, for permanent lines, for a ho-
rizon wall to lift up and keep off the
sky, and give it sense of room.
One understands why sailors be-
come an imaginative and supersti-
tious race it is the reaction from
this narrow horizon in which they
are put-this ring of fate surrounds
and oppresses them. They escape
by invoking the aid of the supernat-
ural. In the sea itself there is far
less to stimulate the imagination
than in the varied forms and colors
of the land. How cold, how mer-
cilless, how elemental it looks!