The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-04-13
At Sea.

| Another of John Burroughs delight
| full essays appears in the April century,
the subject being the transatlantic voy-
age. In keeping with the text Is the
Ideal full-page engraving, by Elbridge
Kingsley. of ship in mid-ocean, which
was drawn with the graver. We quote
the following from the writer impress
sions:
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 OF the for
ests, or more or less housed by the sharp
lines of his horizon. But at sea he finds
the roof taken off, the walls taken down.
| he is no longer in the hollow of the
earth's hand, but upon It's naked back,
with nothing between him and the inn
mensities. He is in the great cosmic
out-of-doors, as muclf so as if yoyaging
| to the moon or to Mars. An astronomic
solitude and vaeuity surrounds him; his
only guides and landmarks are stellar;
the earth has disappeared; the horizon
has gone; he has only the sky and Its
orbs left; the cold, vitreous, blue-blaek
| 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 I'M
proved 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 n voyage
at sea is more impressive TO the magma
ton than to the actual sense. The world
is left behnd; all standards of size, OF
magnitude, of distance, are vanished;
there is no size, no form, no perspective;
i I Il In aT7.
Gle of crumpled water, that Journeys
with you day after day, and TO which
YOU seem bound by some enchantment,
The sky becomes n shallow, close-fitting
dome, or else pail of cloud that seems
ready to descend upon you. You can
not see or realize the vast and vacant
surrounding; 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 noun
tain walls Indeed, the grandeur of
form, of magnitude, of distance, of pro-
portion, ETC., are only upon shore.
VOYAGE across the Atlantic is n ten-day
sail through vacancy. There is no sensi-
BILE progress; you pass no fixed points
Is it the steamer that is moving, or Is II
the sea? or is it all a dance and illusion
of the troubled brain? Yesterday, to-day
and tomorrow, you are IN the same pa
renthesis of nowhere. The three hun
bred 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-hanger
for form, for permanent lines, for hori-
ION wall TO lift M and keen off the sky.
and give it sense of room. One I'M
derstands why sailors become an imag-
NATIVE and superstitious race it is the
reaction from this narrow horizon in
which they are put-this ring of fate
surrounds and Expresses them They
escape by invoking the aid of the super
natural In the sea itself there is fan
less to stimulate the imagination than
in the varied forms and colors of the
land. How cold, how merciless, how
elemental it looksi