The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1883-08-01
MISCELLANY.
AT SEA.


Another of John Burroughs delightful
essays appears in the Century, the subject
being the Transatlantic voyage. In keeping
with the text is the ideal full-page engraving,
by Elbridge Kingsley. of ship in mid.
which was drawn with the graver. We
quote the following from the writer's i'm.
pressions
One does not seem really to have got out
OF doors till he goes to sea- On the land he
is shut in by the hills, or the forests, OF
more or less housed by the sharp lines OF
his horizon. But at sea he finds the roof
taken of, the walls taken down; he is NO
longer in the hollow of the earth's hand, but
upon its naked back, with nothing between
him and the immensities. He is in the
great coslnic out-of-doors, as much SO as il
voyaging to the moon or to Mars An as
tronomic solitude and vacuity surrounds
him; his only guides and landmarks are
stellar; the earth has disappeared the hor-
lion has gone; he has only the sky and it's
orbs left this 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 astronomy under improved conditions.
If he was being borne through the inter.
planetary spaces on an immense shield, his
impressions would not perhaps be much diff
erent. He would find the same yacuity.
the same blank or negative space, the same
empty, indefinite oppressive out-of-doors.
For it must be admitted that voyage at
sea is more impressive 10 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 universe has
dwindled to little circle 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.
fitting dome, or else a pail of cloud that
seems ready to descend upon you You can
not see or realize the vast and vacant sur
rounding there is nothing to dcflne it or
set il off. Three thousand miles of ocean
space are less impressive than three miles
bounded by rugged mountain walls. IN
deed, the grandeur of form, of magnitude
of distance, OF proportion, etc, are only
upon shore. A voyage across the Atlantic is
ten-day sail through vacancy There is
no sensible progress; You pass no fixed
points. Is il the steamer that is moving, or
is 1t the sea or is il all dance and illusion
of the troubled brain? Yesterday, to-day,
and tomorrow, you are in the same paren-
thesis of nowhere. The three hundred 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 be-.
hind the same wave, and staggers slowly
across the sinister sky. The eye becomes a.
hunger for form, for permanent lines, for a
horizon wall to lift up and keep off the sky,
and give 1t sense of room One under
stands why sailors become an imaginative
and superstitious race it is the reaction
from this narrow horizon in which they are
put-this ring of fate surrounds and oppres :
SEES them. They escape by invoking the aid
of the supernatural In the sea itself there
is far less to stimulate thu imagination than
in the varied forms aud colors of the land.
How cold, how merciless. how elemental Il
looksl