The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1883-04-20
At Sea.

Another of John Burroughs delight
ful essays appears in the April Centu
ry, the subject being the transatlantic
voyage. In keeping with the text i,
the ideal full-page engraving, by Ell
bridge Kingsley of a ship in mid-ocean
which was drawn with the graver. W.
quote the following from the writers
Impressions
Que does not seem really to have
got ont of doors till he goes to sea. Or
the land he is shut in by the hills. oil
the forests, or more or less housed by
the sharp lines of this horizon But at
sea he finds the roof taken off, and the
walls taken down ne is no longer in
the hollow of the earth's hand, but
upon its naked back, with nothing be.
tween him and the immensities. He is
in the great cosmic out-of-doors, as
much so as if voyagirg to the moon or
to Mars. An astronomic solitude and
vacuity 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 /;
this cold, vitreous, blue-black liquid
through which the chip plows is not
water, but some denser form of the
cosmic ether. He can now see the
sphere which the hills hid from him /;
he can study astronomy under improv.
ed directions. If he was being borne
through the interplanerary spaces on
an immense shield, his impressions
would not perhaps be much different.
He would find the same vacuity, the
same blank or negative space, the
same empty, indefinite, oppressive out
of-doors.
For it must be admitted that a voy-
age to 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 here is'no size, no form, no
prospective 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
enchantment. The sky becomes a
shallow, close-fitting dome, or else a
pail of cloud that seems ready to de-
scend upon you. You cannot see or
realize the the vast and vacant sur
rounding 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 form, of magnitude, of distance, of
proportion, etc, are only upon shore.
A voyage across the Atlantic is ten
dency to sail through vacancy. There
is no sensible progress you pass no
fixed points. Is it the steamer that is
moving or is il 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 parenthe
sis 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 plane
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-hun
ger for form, for permanent lines, for a
horizon wall to lift up aud keep off the
sky, and give it sense of room. One
understands why sailors become an i'm
aginativc and superstitious 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
supernatural, 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 merciless
how elemental it looks