CHAPTER XIII.

THE SYRENS.

Behold me once more on shore. I had enough, and to spare, of

shipwreck. I want durable races. The Cetaceæ must disappear. Let us

moderate our conceptions, and, of that gigantic faëry of the

first-born mammalia, of milk and warm blood, let us preserve all

except the giant.

Above all, let us preserve the gentleness, the love, and the love of

family. Let us preserve them completely in those humbler but kindly

races into which both elements infuse their spirits.

The benedictions of the Earth already begin to be felt. On quitting

the life of the fish, many things impossible to it, easily become

harmonized.

Thus the Whale, tender mother if ever there was one, could grasp her

nursling, but could not press it to her breast, the arms being too

high and short, and the breast, as we have already shown, being,

perforce, placed far back. In the new creatures, which swim, but

which also creep upon the land, such as seals, sea cows, &c., the

breast, lest it should be hurt by the ground, is placed upon the

chest, thus foreshadowing woman, and giving to the form and attitude,

a grace most illusive at a distance.

In reality, even closely examined, if it has less of charming

whiteness, the breast of the new creatures is a true feminine breast;

that globe which, swelling with love, and with the sweet necessity of

giving suck, exhibits, in its gentle heavings, all the sighs of the

heart beneath, and invites the child to nourishment and soft repose.

All this is denied to the mother that swims and floats, but is enjoyed

by her who rests. The fixity of the family, the constant tenderness,

let us at once say, Society, all these commence from the moment that

the child reposes on the maternal breast.

But how is organization to pass from creatures of the sea to creatures

of both sea and land? Let us try to divine that transition.

At the outset, the parentage of the amphibious race is evident. Many,

amphibious still, to their great inconvenience, have the heavy tail of

the Whale. And this latter, in one species, at least, conceals in its

tail the rude outlines and distinct commencements of the two hind feet

of the highest of the amphibious creatures.

In the seas studded with islands, continually interposing land, the

cetaceæ, so frequently interrupted in their passage, had to modify

their habits accordingly. Their less rapid motion, and confined life,

diminished their bulk, and from the Whale they were reduced to the sea

Elephant, and reserving the memory of the superb which had armed

certain of the cetaceæ, in their grand sea life, the sea Elephant

still has strong, but very harmless fore teeth. Even its masticating

teeth are not precisely either herbivorous or carnivorous. They are

but ill adapted to either diet, and must needs operate but slowly.

Two things tended to lighten the Whale; his mass of blubber, that vast

mass of concentrated oil, which floated him on the water, and that

powerful tail whose alternate strokes to right and left, urged him

onward. But all this was unfitted for the amphibious creature,

grovelling in shallow waters, or crawling on the rocks. The fish, so

agile, scorns a creature that cannot catch him, and he consequently

gets little other prey than the molluscs, as slow as himself. By

degrees, he learns to eat the abundant and gelatinous sea wrack, which

nourishes, and fattens, but without giving the strength of animal

food.

Such a one we may see in the Red Sea, the Malay isles, and those of

Australia. Crawling or sitting, that rare collossus, the Dugong,

displays its chests and breasts. He is sometimes called the Dagon of

the Tabernacles, an inert idol, which in spite of its imposing

aspect, cannot defend itself, and which will soon disappear, and enter

into that region of fable which already contains so many realities, at

which we as stupidly, as presumptuously, laugh. What has caused this

great change, created the terrestrial Dugong, and his brother the

Walrus? The plentiful alimentation of the generous and fertile earth,

truly pacific before the coming of man, and doubtless, also, Love, so

difficult to the Whale, so easy in the quiet and settled life of the

amphibious.

Love, to these latter, is no longer a thing of flight and danger; the

female is no longer the shy giant that must be followed to the end of

the world, but is content, on her bed of sea-weed, to obey the will of

her master, whose life she makes pleasant. Few mysteries here. The

amphibious live frankly and honestly in the face of day. The females

being very numerous, voluntarily form a seraglio. From wild, fierce

poetry, we descend to patriarchal manners and pleasures too facile.

The male, good patriarch, notable for his large head, his moustaches,

and his great front teeth, sits proudly between his Sarah and Agar,

Rebecca and Leah, and his little flock of young ones, to all of which

he is most kind. In his quiet life, the great strength of this

sanguineous creature, turns wholly to family tenderness; he embraces

all his family, and is willing to die, if need be, in their defence.

But, alas! his strength and his fury serve him but feebly for even

his own defence: his enormous mass delivers him over to the enemy. He

bellows, and crawls, and is willing to combat, but unable--gigantic

failure as he is; an abortion belonging to neither world, a poor

disarmed Caliban.

Weight, so fatal to the Whale, is still more so to these. Let us,

then, still farther reduce the bulk, make, the spine more supple, and

above all, either do away with that tail, or rather, let us fork it

into two fleshy appendages, which will be much more useful. This new

being, the Seal, lighter, a good fisher, getting his subsistence in

the sea, but living on the land, will employ his life in endeavoring

to return to it, to climb the rock to which his females and their

offspring await his return from fishing. Having no tusks, like those

with which the Walrus assists himself in climbing, he presses into the

service his front and back members, clings to the sea-weed, distending

his members continually, until they form into fingers.

What is finest in the Seal, what strikes you the moment you catch

sight of his round head, is the great capaciousness of brain. Boitard

assures us that, with the exception of man, no creature has so fine a

cerebral development as the Seal. We are strongly impressed by the

aspect of the Seal, far more so than by that of the ape tribe, whose

grimaces never fail to revolt us. I shall never forget the Seals in

the Zoological Garden at Amsterdam, admirable museum, so rich, so

beautiful, so well organized, decidedly one of the finest

establishments in the world. I was there on the twelfth of last July,

just after a great rain fall. The atmosphere was heavy and sultry, and

two Seals sought shelter and coolness, swimming and playing in their

pond. When they rested they looked up at me with their velvety eyes,

and there was a mixed intelligence and melancholy in their fixed gaze.

There was no language which we could mutually understand. Pity that,

between soul and soul, there should be that eternal barrier!

The earth is the world of their greatest affection. There they are

born, there they love; thither, when wounded, they retire to die.

Thither they take their pregnant females, form for them their beds of

sea-weed, and provide them with fish. They are very affectionate, good

neighbors, mutually defending each other; only at their season of

amours they are a little apt to fight. Each male has two or three

females that he finds a home for on some mossy rock of sufficient

extent. That is his estate, and he suffers no intrusion upon it. He

knows how to maintain his right of proprietorship. The females are

gentle and defenceless. If ill treated, they weep, are agitated and

cast despairing glances upon the assailant.

They are parturient during nine months, and nurse their young during

five or six months, teaching them to swim, fish, and select the best

food. No doubt they would keep them still longer, but the husband is

jealous of his own progeny, fearing that the too weak mother will give

him a rival.

No doubt this brevity of education has limited the progress which the

Seal would otherwise have made. Maternity is only complete when we

come to the Sea Cow, an excellent family in which the parents have not

the sad courage to drive away their young. The mothers nurse them for

a long time; even while suckling a second, the mother still keeps by

her the eldest, which, though it be a male, the father never ill

treats, but seems to regard him with a love only second to that of the

mother.

This extreme tenderness, peculiar to that species, is exemplified in

the physical progress made in the organization. In the Seal, a great

swimmer, and in the heavy and clumsy sea Elephant the arms still

continue to be fins; closely attached to the body are incapable of

extension. But at length the Sea Cow, the _Sea Mama_ as the negroes

call her, accomplishes the miracle. All extend and becomes pliant by a

continuous effort. Nature exerts all her ingenuity upon the fixed idea

of holding, pressing, caressing the young. The ligaments yield and

extend, the fore arm appears and by and by appears the hand.

And then the mother has the great, the supreme pleasure to press her

young one to her breast. Here, then, are two things which may enable

these amphibious creatures to make great progress. Already they have

the hand, that organ of industry, that essential instrument of future

toil. It must be supplied, must aid the work of the teeth as with the

Beaver, and the Ant, will commence, at the outset, with building a

home for the family.

On the other hand, education, also, has become possible. The young one

rests on the maternal bosom and, slowly drinking in her life, remains

there a long time, and to an age when he can learn every thing,--all

this depends on the kindness of the father who protects the innocent

rival. And it is that which allows of progress.

And, if we might give credence to certain traditions, progress did

marvellously continue. The developed amphibious creatures, according

to those traditions, approached nearer and nearer to the human form

and became Tritons and Syrens, men and women of the Sea. Only, in

contradiction to the fables of the melodious Syrens, these are dumb in

their utter impotency to find a language in which to address

themselves to man and obtain his pity. These races will have perished,

as has the unfortunate Beaver which cannot speak, but weeps.

It has been very lightly affirmed that these men and women of the Sea

were Seals. But how is it possible that such a mistake could be made?

Every species of the Seal has been known from very early times; even

as early as the seventh century the Seal was hunted, not only for his

skin, but also for his flesh, which was then eaten.

The men and women of the Sea which are spoken of in the writings of

the sixteenth century, were seen, not merely for an instant, and on

the water, but brought to land, shown, and kept in the great cities of

Antwerp and Amsterdam in the time of Charles V. and Philip II., and,

therefore, under the very eyes of Vesale and other learned men and

eminent naturalists. Mention is made of a marine woman who, for

several years, wore the dress of a nun and lived in a Convent where

any one might see her. She could not speak, but worked, and could

spin, knit, and sew. Only one peculiarity, they could not cure her

of,--her great love of the water, and her incessant efforts to return

to it.

But it will be asked--"If these creatures really existed, how is it

that we do not see them now?" Alas! We need not seek far for the

reply. They were so generally killed! It was considered a sin to let

them live, "for they were _monsters_." This we are expressly told by

the old writers.

Whatever had not the known form of animality, and, especially,

whatever approached to the form of man passed for a _monster_, and was

pitilessly dispatched. Even the human mother of a greatly deformed

child, could not protect it; the poor creature was smothered, as being

a child of the Devil, an invention of his malice to outrage the

creation and calumniate the Deity. On the other hand, those Syrens,

too analogous to humanity, were all the more taken and detested for a

diabolic mockery. In such horror and hate were they held in the eyes

of the middle ages that their appearance was considered a prodigy, an

omen that God permitted to terrify sinners. People scarcely dared to

name them, and made haste to get rid of them. Even the bold sixteenth

century still believed them to be men and women in shape, but Devils

in reality, and not even to be touched, excepting with the harpoon.

They had become very rare when miscreants made a profit of keeping and

exhibiting them.

But do there now exist any remains, any whole, or even partial,

skeletons of these creatures? We shall know that, when the Museums of

Europe shall throw open to our view the whole of their immense

collections. I am aware that room is wanting for that; and it is

always likely to be wanting, if we need a palace. But the most simple

building, if it only be sufficiently spacious and weather tight, would

serve to hold such collections, and needs not to be at all costly.

Hitherto, we have only seen mere specimens and selections.

Let us add that stuffed amphibious creatures, to give us a real idea

of them, should be so placed as to exhibit _these monsters_ in the

attitudes of their actual life. Let the maternal Seal, or the Sea Cow,

be seen on its rock, as a Syren, in the first use of her hand and

pressing her little one to her breast.

Is this to affirm that these creatures might have ascended to us? Or

that we have descended from them? Mallet supposed so, but I cannot see

the least probability in either.

The Sea, no doubt, commenced everything. But it is not from the

highest marine animals, that has proceeded the long parallel series of

terrestrials that is culminated and crowned in Man. They were already

too fixed, too special, to form the first rude sketch of a nature so

different. They had carried far, almost exhausted, the fecundity of

their species. In that case the elders perish; and it is very low down

in the obscure juniors of some parent class that the new series

commences that is to ascend so much higher. [See notes at the end of

the volume.]

Man was not their son, but their brother--a terribly tyrannical

brother.

See him at length arrive, the active, the ingenious, the cruel

monarch of the world! My book grows brighter, clearer. But what does

it now proceed to exhibit? Alas! What sad things must I now draw into

that broad, bright light! This creature, this tyrannical sovereign,

can create a second nature within Nature. But what has he done with

the first, with his mother, and his nurse? With the very teeth that

she has given him, he has cruelly gnawed her bosom!

How many animals that lived peaceably, were becoming civilized, began

even to practise some of the arts, are now hunted and terrified into

the condition of mere brutes? The Ape-kings of Ceylon, whose sagacity

was so well known in India, and that Brahmin of the creation, the

Elephant, have been chased, subdued into the state of mere beasts of

burthen.

The freest of beings, that formerly sported so joyously and harmlessly

in the sea, those affectionate Seals, those gentle Whales, the pacific

pride of the Ocean, have fled to the polar seas, the terrible world of

ice. But they cannot all support, for long, so hard a life; in a brief

time they will all have disappeared.

An unfortunate race, the Polish peasants, have learned to understand

the intelligence of the dumb exile which has taken refuge in the lakes

of Lithuania. The Poles say--"Woe to him who makes the Beaver weep."

That artist-animal has become a timid beast, which knows nothing and

can do nothing. The few that still survive in America, still retire

farther and farther from the vicinage of man. A traveller lately found

one, far, very far off, beyond the great lakes. It was timidly

resuming its traditional labors, and had commenced building a house

for its family. When it saw a man, it dropped the wood on which it was

working; it did not even dare to escape, but burst into tears.

BOOK THIRD.

CONQUEST OF THE SEA.

CHAPTER I.

THE HARPOON.

"The Sailor who sights Greenland," says Captain John Ross, with a

grave simplicity, "finds nothing to delight him with the sight." I can

very well believe it. In the first place, it is an iron-bound coast of

most pitiless aspect, whose dark granite does not even preserve a

vestment of snow. Everywhere else, Ice; not a trace of vegetation.

That desolate land which hides the Pole from us, seems a veritable

land of Famine and of Death.

During the brief time when the water remains unfrozen, one might

contrive to live there; but the place is frozen up for nine months in

the year, and during all that time, what is to be done? And what can

one get to eat? One can scarcely even search for food. The night lasts

for months together, and at times the darkness is so dense that Kane,

surrounded by his dogs, could only discover them by the humid warmth

of their breath. In that long, long, darkness, on that sterile land,

clothed in impenetrable ice, there wander, however, two Hermits, who

persist in living in that land of horror. One of these is the fishing

Bear, a bold and eager prowler, in rich fur, and in so thick an under

vestment of fat, that he can for a long time defy both cold and

hunger. The other, a grotesque creature, looks, when seen from a

distance, like a fish reared upwards, standing on the tip of its tail;

a fish clumsily and awkwardly built, and having long hanging fins. But

this seeming fish is a man. Each scents the other, the brute and the

man; both are fierce with hunger, yet the Bear sometimes declines the

combat, and retreats before the fiercer, and still more famished, man.

A famishing man is very terrible in his cruel courage. With no other

weapon than a sharpened bone, our Greenlander pursues the enormous

Bear. But he would have long since perished of famine, had he no other

food than his terrible compatriot. He saved himself from death only by

a crime. The earth affording nothing, he turned his attention to the

Sea, and as it was closed by the ice, he found nothing there to kill

except his gentle acquaintance the Seal. In him he found the oil

without which he would be dead of cold, even sooner than of hunger.

The day dream of the Greenlander is that at his death he will pass to

the Moon, where he will have wood, fire, the light of the hearth.

Here below, in Greenland, oil supplies the place of all these. He

drinks it, in huge draughts, and is at once warmed and nourished.

A great contrast between that man and the somnolent, amphibious

creatures, that, even in that climate, can live without any very

severe suffering! The gentle eye of the Seal, sufficiently indicates

that. Nursling of the Sea he is always, in connection with her, and

there are always clefts in the ice, at which the excellent swimmer

knows how to provide himself with food. Heavy and clumsy as we may

take him to be, he can adroitly mount on a piece of ice and steer

himself in search of a convenient fishing place. The water, thick with

molluscs, and fat with animated atoms, richly nourishes the fish, for

the use of the Seal, who, having well filled himself, returns to his

rock, and sleeps too soundly to feel the cold, or to fear anything.

The man's life in Greenland, is the very contrary of this. He seems to

be there in spite of Nature, an accursed being, upon whom everything

makes pitiless war. Looking upon the photographs that we have of the

Esquimaux, we can read their terrible destiny in the fixity of their

gaze, and in the harsh, dark eye; black as midnight. They look as

though petrified by perpetually seeing before them the vision of an

infinite wretchedness. That gazing upon eternal terror, has hidden

beneath a mask of iron the man's strong intelligence, which, however,

is rapid and full of the expedients suggested by the endless dangers

and sufferings of such a life.

What was he to do. His family was famishing, his children cried for

bread, and his wife shivered upon the snow. The North wind, pitilessly

assailed them all with mingled hail and snow, that horrid pelting

which blinds, stupefies, deprives one of sense and voice. The Sea was

frozen up; so, fish was out of the question. But the Seal was there,

and how many fish there were in one Seal; what an accumulation of the

richest oil! The Seal was there, defenceless, sleeping. Nay, had he

even been awake, he would not have tried to escape. He is like the Sea

Cow; you must beat him if you wish to drive him away. Take one of

their young and it is in vain that you throw him into the Sea, he will

get out and still follow you, gentle and attached as your favorite

dog. This facile, this affectionate, trait in the creature's

character, must have terribly troubled the man who first thought of

killing such a creature; must have made him hesitate and resist the

temptation. But at length cold and famine got the upper hand, and he

committed the assassination; from that moment he was rich.

The flesh nourished the famishing people, the oil served to warm and

cheer them, and the bone and sinews served for many domestic uses,

while the skin served to clothe them. And what was still more useful

was, that by industriously sowing the skins together they made a

vehicle, at once light, and strong, and water proof, which the man

called his canoe, and in which he dared to put out to sea.

A miserable little vehicle it was; long, slender, and weighing

scarcely anything. But it was every where very firmly closed up,

except an opening in which the rower seated himself, drawing the skin

tightly around his waist. One would suppose that such a craft must

upset and be swamped; but nothing of the sort occurs. It darts like an

arrow over the crest of the wave, disappears, reappears, now in the

eddies, now between the icebergs.

Man and boat are one; a marine entity; an artificial fish. But how

inferior is this artificial fish to the true one! He has not the

floating bladder, which enables the fish to make itself lighter or

heavier as the occasion may demand. Still more, the man has not the

vigorous motion, the lively contraction and expansion of the spine to

communicate such power to the strokes of the tail, nor has he the oil

which, being so much lighter than water, will always ride above the

waves. What the man best imitates is the fin, but even that only

imperfectly. The man's fins, his oars, are not attached to his body,

but, moved by his long arms, are weak compared to the fin, and,

moreover, soon fatigue the rower. What is it that makes amends for so

much of inferiority in the means of the man? His terrible energy, his

vivid reason which, from beneath that fixed and melancholy

countenance, flashes out from time to time, invents, resolves, and

finds an instant remedy for all the deficiences which, in this

floating skin, momentarily threaten him with death.

Frequently our rower is stopped by a mass of ice which peremptorily

refuses him a passage. Then comes a new expedient, the parts are

changed on the instant. Hitherto the canoe has carried the man; now

the man carries the canoe. He takes it on his shoulder and traverses

the icy portage till he comes again to open water, the ice crackling

beneath him as he crosses it. Occasionally icebergs, floating, and

terrible mountains, are so close that they leave between them only a

narrow passage which our man passes through at the risk of being in an

instant crushed, flattened between them. Those icy walls now widen,

now contract, the space between them; they may, at any moment, come

together with a force that would crush a seventy-four, to say nothing

about our poor Greenlander in his poor skin canoe. Such a fate did, in

fact, once occur to a tall ship; she was cut in two, flattened,

crushed; by the coming together of two icebergs.

These Greenlanders tell us that their ancestors were Whale fishers.

They were less wretched then, more ingenious, and better provided. No

doubt they had iron; procured probably from Norway or Iceland. Whales

have always been very numerous in the Greenland seas. A grand object

of desire to those to whom oil is a thing of the very first necessity!

The fish give it by drops, the Seal in waves--the Whale in mountains!

He was truly a man, and a bold one, who first, with his poor weapons,

with the sea howling at his feet, and the darkness closing around him,

dared to pursue the Whale! A bold man, he, who trusting to his

courage, the strength of his arm and the weight of his harpoon, first

believed that he could pierce that mighty mass of blubber and flesh

and convert it to his own profit!--the man who first imagined that he

could attack the Whale and not perish in the tempest that would be

raised by the plunges and terrific tail-blows of the astonished and

suffering monster! And, as if to crown his audacity, the man next

fastened a line to his harpoon, and braving still more closely the

frightful shock of the agonized and dying giant, never once feared

that that giant might plunge headlong into the deep, taking with him

harpoon, line, boat,--and man!

There is still another danger, and no less terrible. It is that

instead of meeting the common Whale, our man should fall in with the

Cachalot, that terror of the seas. He is not very large, perhaps not

more than from sixty to eighty feet. But his head alone measures

about a third; from twenty to twenty-five feet. In case of such a

meeting, woe to the fisher; he would become the chased instead of the

chaser, the victim instead of the tyrant. The Cachalot has horrible

jaws, and no fewer than forty-eight enormous teeth; he could with ease

devour all; both boat and man. And he seems always drunk with blood.

His blind rage so terrifies all the other Whales that they escape,

bellowing, throwing themselves on the shore, or striving to hide

themselves in the sand. Even when he is dead they still fear him and

will not approach his carcass. The fiercest species of the Cachalot is

the Ourque or Physetene of the ancients, which is so much dreaded by

the Icelanders, that when they are on the sea they will not so much as

name him lest he should come and attack them. They believe, on the

other hand, that a species of Whale, the Jubarte, loves and protects

them, and provokes the monster in order to save them from his fury.

Many think that the first who undertook so perilous a task as that of

Whale fishing must have been eccentric hot heads. According to those

who think so, that perilous chase could never have originated with the

prudent men of the North, but must have been initiated by the Basques,

those daring hunters and fishers who were so well accustomed to their

own capricious sea, the Gulf of Gascony, where they fished the Tunny.

Here they first saw the huge Whales at play and pursued them, frenzied

by the hope of such enormous prey, and pursued them still, onward and

onward, no matter whither; even to the confines of the pole.

Here the poor Colossus fancied it must needs be safe, for it could not

fancy any one would be desperate enough to follow it thither, and so

it went tranquilly to sleep. But our Basque mad-caps approached it

stealthily and silently. Tightening his red belt around his waist, the

boldest and most active of the Basque sailors leaped from the deck

right on to the back of the sleeping monster, and, fearlessly or

carelessly, drove the harpoon home to the very eye. Poor Whale!

CHAPTER II.

DISCOVERY OF THE THREE OCEANS.

Who opened up to men the great distant navigation? Who revealed the

Ocean, and marked out its zones and its liquid highways? Who

discovered the secrets of the Globe? The Whale and the Whaler!

And all this before Columbus and the famous gold seekers, who have

monopolized all the glory, found again, with much outcry about their

discovery, what had so long before been discovered by the Whalers.

That crossing of the Ocean which was so boastfully celebrated in the

fifteenth century, had often been made, not only by the narrow passage

between Iceland and Greenland, but also by the open sea; for the

Basques went to Newfoundland. The smallest danger was the mere voyage,

for these men, who went to the very end of the then world, to

challenge the Whale to single combat. To steer right away into the

Northern seas, to attack the mighty monster, amid darkness and

storms, with the dense fog all around and the foaming waves below,

those who could do this, were, believe it well, not the men to shrink

from the ordinary dangers of the voyage.

Noble warfare; great school of courage! That Fishery was not then, as

it is now, an easy war to wage, made from a distance, and with a

potently murderous machine. No; the fisher then struck with his own

strong hand, impelled and guided by his own fearless heart; and he

risked life to take life. The men of that day killed but few Whales,

but they gained infinitely in maritime ability, in patience, in

sagacity, and in intrepidity. They brought back less of oil; but more,

far more, of glory.

Every nation has its own peculiar genius. We recognize each by its own

style of procedure. There are a hundred forms of courage, and these

graduated varieties, formed, as it were, another heroic game. At the

North, the Scandinavian, the ruddy race from Norway to Flanders, had

their sanguine fury. At the South, the wild burst, the gay daring, the

clear-headed excitement, that impelled, at once, and guided them over

the world. In the center, the silent and patient firmness of the

Breton, who, yet, in the hour of danger could display a quite sublime

eccentricity. And lastly, the Norman wariness, considerately

courageous; daring all, but daring all for success.

Such was the beauty of man, in that sovereign manifestation of human

courage.

We owe a vast deal to the Whale. But for it, the fishers would still

have hugged the shore; for almost every edible fish, seeks the shore,

and the river. It was it that emancipated them, and led them afar. It

led them onward, and onward still, until they found it, after having

almost unconsciously, passed from one world to the other. Greenland

did not seduce them, it was not the land that they sought, but the

sea, and the tracks of the Whale. The Ocean at large is its home, and

especially the broad and open Sea. Each species has its especial

preference for this or that latitude, for a certain zone of water;

more or less cold. And it was that preference which traced out the

great divisions of the Atlantic.

The tribe of inferior Whales, that have a dorsal fin, (Baleinopteres)

are to be found in the warmest, and in the coldest seas; under the

line, and in the polar seas. In the great intermediate region, the

fierce Cachalot inclines towards the South, devastating the warm

waters. On the contrary, the Free Whale fears the warm waters; we

should rather say that they did, formerly, fear them;--they have

become so scarce! Especially affecting, for their food, the molluscs,

and other forms of elementary life, they sought them in the temperate

waters, a little to the northward. They are never found in the warm,

southern current; it was that fact that led to the current being

noticed, and thence to the discovery of the _true course from America

to Europe_. From Europe to America, the trade winds will serve us.

If the Free Whale has a perfect horror of the warm waters, and cannot

pass the Equator, it is clear that he cannot double the southern end

of America. How happens it, then, that when he is wounded on one side

of America, in the Atlantic, he is sometimes found on the other side

of America, and in the Pacific? _It proves that there is a

north-western passage._ Another discovery which we owe to the Whale,

and one which throws a broad light alike on the form of the globe, and

the geography of the seas!

By degrees, the Whale has led us everywhere. Rare as he is at present,

he has led us to both poles, from the uttermost recesses of the

Pacific to Behring's strait, and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic

waters. There is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war

ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees beyond the

southern points of America and Africa. No one visits that region but

the Whalers.

Had they chosen, the magnates of the earth might much earlier have

made the discoveries of the fifteenth century. They should have

addressed themselves to the sea rovers, to the Basques, to the

Icelanders, to the Norwegians, and to our Normans. For very many

reasons, they could not venture to do so. The Portuguese were

unwilling to employ any but men of their own nationality, and formed

in their own school. They feared our Normans, whom they chased and

dispossessed from the coast of Africa. On the other hand, the kings of

Castile always felt suspicious of their subjects, the Basques, whose

privileges rendered them a kind of republic within a monarchy, and

who, moreover, were well known to be both bold and dangerous. It was

this feeling which caused these princes to fail, in more than one

enterprise. We need mention only one of them, the miserably ruined

Armada, so proudly and absurdly called the _Invincible_. Philip II,

who had two veteran Basque Admirals, gave the command of the Armada,

to a Castilian. The advice of the veterans was neglected, and thence

the disaster.

A terrible disease broke out in the fifteenth century. The hunger, the

thirst, the raging thirst for gold. Kings, priests, warriors, people,

all cried aloud for gold. There was no longer any means of balancing

income and expenditure. False money, cruel persecutions, atrocious

wars, all and every thing, were employed, but still the cry was for

gold, and the gold was not forthcoming. The alchemists confidently

promised that they would soon make it; but it was to be waited for,

that gold; still, still, it was not forthcoming. The treasury became

furious as a hungry Lion, devoured the Jews, devoured the Moors, and

of all that mighty devouring there was not a morsel left between the

teeth of the still gold-hungry nations.

The peoples were quite as eager as the kings. Lean and sucked to the

very bone, they begged, they prayed, they implored, for a miracle that

would bring down gold from Heaven.

We all know the story of Sinbad the Sailor, that capital story in the

_Arabian Nights_. The poor porter, Hindbad, bending under a load of

wood, stops before the doors of Sinbad's palace, to listen to the

music, and bitterly complains of the contrast between the lot of the

poor porter Hindbad, and that of Sinbad, the returned, renowned, and

magnificently rich Sinbad. But when the enriched sailor related all

the perils he had undergone, and all the sufferings he had endured,

Hindbad stood aghast at the tale. The entire effect of the story is to

exaggerate the dangers of the great game, the vast lottery of

travelling, but also to exaggerate the profits that may be made by it,

and to discourage steady and humble industry.

The legend, which, in the fifteenth century, influenced so many

hearts, and turned so many brains, was a rehash of the fable of the

Hesperides, an Eldorado, a land of gold, which was located in the

Indies; a terrestrial paradise, still existing here below. The only

difficulty consisted in finding that same golden land. They did not

care to seek it in the North, which was the reason why so little use

was made of the discovery of Newfoundland and Greenland. In the South,

on the contrary, gold dust had already been found in Africa. That was

encouraging.

The learned dreamers of a pedantic century heaped up texts and

commentaries, and the discovery, by no means difficult in itself, was

rendered so, by dint of lectures, reflections, and utopian dreams. Was

this land of gold, Paradise, or was it not? Was it at our antipodes?

and, in fact, have we any antipodes? And at this last question all the

Doctors, all the men of the black robe, stopped the learned quite

short, and reminded them that upon that point, the Church was quite

positive; the heretical doctrine of the Antipodes having been formally

and expressly condemned. Behold a serious difficulty! Our learned

dreamers were stopped short.

But why was it so difficult to discover the already discovered

America? The reason seems to be that the discovery was at once hoped

for and dreaded.

The learned Italian bookseller, Columbus, felt quite satisfied upon

the subject. He had been in Iceland to collect traditions, and on the

other hand the Basques told him all that they knew about Newfoundland.

A Gallician had been cast away there and had lived there. Columbus

selected for his associates the Pinçons, Andalusian pilots, who are

with much probability supposed to be identical with the Pinçons of

Dieppe. We say that this is very probable because our Basques and

Normans, subjects of Castile, were intimately connected. They are the

same who, under the name of Castilians, were led by the Norman

Bethencourt to the famous expedition of the Canaries. Our kings

conferred privileges on the _Castilians_ settled at Honfleur and

Dieppe; and, on the other hand, the men of Dieppe had trading

establishments at Seville. It is not certain that a Dieppois found

America four years before Columbus, but it is about certain that these

Pinçons of Andalusia were Norman privateers.

Neither Basques nor Normans could obtain authority to act under the

commission of Castile. It was an able and eloquent Italian, a

persistent Genoese, who seized upon the fitting moment, and used it,

and set all scruple aside,--that moment when the ruin of the Moors had

cost so dear to Castile, and when the cry of Gold, Gold, or we perish,

became louder, more piteous, and more unanimous, than ever. That

moment was when victorious Spain shuddered as she counted the cost,

paid and unpaid, of her wars of the crusade and the Inquisition. The

Italian seized upon that lever and used it most unscrupulously;

becoming most devout among the devout. More apparently bigoted than

the Bigots themselves, he pressed the very Church into his service.

Isabella was reminded of the great sin and scandal of leaving whole

nations of Pagans still in the valley of the shadow of death; and it

was particularly pressed upon her observation, that to discover the

golden land, was the one thing needful to acquiring the ability to

exterminate the Turk and to recover Jerusalem.

It is well known that of three ships the Pinçons shipped two, and

commanded them, and they led the way. One of them, indeed, mistook his

course, but the others, Francis Pinçon and his younger brother

Vincent, pilot of the vessel _Nina_, signalled to Columbus, on the

12th of October, 1492, to steer to the south-west. Columbus, who was

on a westerly course, would have encountered the gulf stream in its

fullest force, and directly thwart hawse, and he would have crossed

that liquid wall only with the greatest difficulty. He would have

perished, or would have made such little way that his discouraged crew

would have mutinied. On the contrary, the Pinçons, who probably had

collected some traditions on the subject, steered as though they were

well acquainted with the current; they did not attempt to cross it in

its force, but keeping well to the southward, crossed without

difficulty and made the exact spot where the trades blow directly from

Africa to America in the latitude of Haiti. This is proved from the

journal of Columbus himself, who candidly avows that he was guided by

the Pinçons.

Who first saw America? One of Pinçon's sailors, if we may put any

confidence in the report of the royal enquiry of 1513.

From all this it would seem pretty plain that a good share of both the

glory and the gain ought to have been awarded to the Pinçons. They

thought the same, and commenced legal proceedings, but the king

decided in favor of Columbus. Why? Apparently because the Pinçons were

Normans, and Spain preferred to recognize the right of a Genoese,

without national feeling, than that of French subjects of Louis XII,

and of Francis I, to whom, as French subjects, they might some day,

from fear or favor, transfer their rights. One of the Pinçons died of

despair, caused by this very manifestly unjust decision.

But still, who had overcome the great obstacle of religious

repugnance? Whose eloquence, tact, and perseverance, in fact set the

expedition fairly afloat? Columbus, and Columbus alone. He was the

real author of the enterprise and he was also its heroic conductor,

and he merits the glory which his posterity preserves and ever will

preserve for him.

I think with M. Jules de Blosseville (a noble heart and a good judge

of great and heroic things) that in all these discoveries the only

real difficulty was the circumnavigation of the globe, the enterprise

of Magellan and his pilot, the Basque, Sebastian del Cano. The most

brilliant, but at the same time the easiest, was the crossing the

Atlantic, catching the trade wind, and thus getting to America far

south of the point at which it had long before been discovered at the

North.

The Portuguese did a far less extraordinary thing in taking an entire

century to discover the Western coast of Africa. Our Normans, in a

very brief space had discovered the half of it. In spite of all that

is said about the laudable perseverance of Prince Henry, in

establishing the Lisbon school, the Venetian Cadamosto clearly proves

the want of ability of the Portuguese pilots. They no sooner had one

at once bold and highly gifted, in the person of Bartholomew Diaz, who

doubled the Cape, than they replaced him by Gama, a noble of the

king's household, and, above all, a soldier. The truth is, that the

Portuguese cared more about conquests to make, and treasure to gain,

than about discoveries, properly so called. Gama was brave as brave

could be, but he was only too faithful to his orders to suffer no

other flag in the same seas. A ship load of Pilgrims from Mecca, whom

he barbarously murdered, exasperated all the hates, and augmented,

throughout the East, that horror of the very name of Christian, which

more and more closed Asia, alike against discoverers, for the sake of

discovery, and adventurers for the sake of plunder.

Is it true that Magellan, before his great enterprise, had seen the

Pacific laid down upon a globe by the German, Behaim? No; that globe

has never been produced. Had he seen, in the possession of his master,

the king of Portugal, a chart which had it so laid down? It has been

said, but never proved. It is far more probable that some of the

adventurers who, already, for twenty years, had been traversing the

American continent, had seen the Pacific, not on globes or charts, but

with their own eyes. That report, which was circulated, spread

admirably well with the theoretical calculation of such a

counterpoise, necessary to our hemisphere, and to the equilibrium of

the globe.

There is not a more terrible biography than that of Magellan.

Throughout, we have nothing but combat, far voyages, flights, trials,

attempted assassination, and at length, death, among the scourges. He

fought in Africa, he fought in the Indies, and he married among the

brave but ferocious Malays;--whom, by the way, he seems not a little

to have resembled.

During his long residence in Asia, he collected all possible

information, preparatory to his great expedition, to find the way by

America, to the Spice Islands, the Moluccas; thus getting spices so

much cheaper than by the old course. His original idea of the

enterprise, was, thus, an altogether commercial one. To lower the

price of pepper, was the primitive inspiration of the most heroic

voyage ever made on this globe!

The true court spirit of intrigue, reigned in Portugal in full power

over everything. Magellan finding himself ill treated there, went over

to Spain, where Charles V. magnificently furnished him with five

ships, but not choosing to put full confidence in a Portuguese

malcontent, the king associated with Magellan a Castilian. Magellan

sailed between two dangers, the jealousy of the Castilian, and the

vengeance of the Portuguese, who sought to assassinate him. He soon

had a mutiny in the fleet, and displayed, in crushing it an

indomitable heroism, and no less barbarity. The mutineers he savagely

put to death, and his Castilian colleague he put into irons. To

increase his troubles, some of his vessels were wrecked. His people

were unwilling to proceed with him, when they saw the desolate aspect

of Cape Horn, the truly discouraging aspect of Terra-del-Fuego, and

Cape Forward. The islands, which form, under the name of Cape Horn,

the southern point of America, seem to have been violently rent from

the continent by the fury of many volcanoes, and suddenly cooled. As

the result, they present a frightfully heterogeneous mass of sharp

peaks, huge blocks of granite, of lava, and of basalt, all these,

grotesquely, yet frightfully, arranged, in frowning confusion, and

clothed in ice and snow.

All had quite enough of this at a single glance, and bold Magellan's

word was--"Onward!" He filled away his sails, steered now to

starboard, now to larboard, then to starboard again, and at length

found himself in that boundless sea which was then so _Pacific_ that

it then received the name which it has ever since borne; though all

who have sailed upon it, well know that at times, it can comport

itself in an anything rather than pacific style.

Magellan at length perished in the Philippines. Four vessels were

lost. The only one which survived, was the Victory, whose crew was

reduced to thirteen men. But among them was the great and intrepid

Pilot, the Basque, Sebastian, who, in 1521, returned to Spain, the

first of mortal men who had been completely round the globe.

Nothing could be grander. The sphericity of the globe was thus made

matter of certainty. That physical marvel of water uniformly extended

over a globe, and constantly adhering to it, that strange mechanical

postulate, was fully demonstrated. The Pacific was at length known,

that grand, and till then mysterious laboratory, in which, far from

our ken, Nature so profoundly labors in life-creating and

life-nurturing, making new rocks, new islands, new continents.

A revelation, that, of immense significance; and not only of material,

but also of moral significance, which gave a hundred fold increase to

man's daring, and sent him forth on another daring voyage, on the

boundless Ocean of the Sciences, to circumnavigate,--with more or less

of success, as it may chance,--the INFINITE!

CHAPTER III.

THE LAW OF STORMS.

It is but yesterday, as it were, that we have built ships fit for

southern navigation; for navigation in those seas where the long,

strong, _rollers_, pile themselves, each upon each, into absolutely

mountainous masses of storm-lashed waves. What, then, shall we say of

the early navigators who ventured into such seas with their clumsy

leewards, heavy, and yet scarcely sea-worthy cock-boats?

Especially for the polar seas, whether arctic or antarctic, we need

ships expressly built for such rude service. They were bold men, those

who, like a Cabot, a Brentz, a Willoughby, ventured in their clumsy,

ill-found, badly rigged, and scarcely sea-worthy tubs to navigate the

icy seas; to dare Spitzbergen, to make Greenland by that funereal cape

_Farewell_, and to coast the thousand giant icebergs in sight of

which, men in our own day, a hundred Whalers have gone to pieces.

What chiefly rendered those ancient heroes so sublime was their very

ignorance, their blind courage, their desperate resolution. They knew

but little of the sea, and of the Heavens they knew still less; the

compass, their only instructor and their only reliance, they dared the

most alarming phenomena without being able even to guess at their

causes. They had none of our instruments which speak to us so plainly

and so unmistakably. They went blindfolded towards, and fearlessly

into, the uttermost darkness. They, themselves, confess that they

feared, but also, they would not yield. The sea's tempests, the air's

whirlwinds and water spouts, the tragic dialogues of those two Oceans,

of air and water, the striking, and, not so long since, ominous

phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, all this strange and wild

phantasmagoria seemed to them the fury of irritated Nature, a

veritable strife of Demons against which man could _dare_ all--as they

did--but could _do_ what they also did--nothing.

During three centuries but little progress was made. Read Cook, read

Peron, and you will readily comprehend how difficult, uncertain, and

perilous was navigation, even up to an hour so near our own.

Cook, that man of immense courage, but also, of most lively

imagination, himself confesses, as his Journal testifies, that he knew

how uncertain and perilous was the profession of the seaman even so

lately as his day. In his Journal, we read; "The dangers are so

great, that I venture to say, that no one will dare to go farther than

I have gone."

Now it is precisely since then that voyages have become, at once, more

distant, more regular, and less dangerous.

A great age, a Titanic age, the 19th century, has coolly,

intelligently, and sternly noted all those phenomena which the old

navigators braved, but did not examine. In this century it is that we,

for the first time, have dared to look the Tempest squarely, and

fearlessly, and scrutinizingly, in the eyes. Its premonitory symptoms,

its characteristics, its results;--each and all have been calmly

watched, and carefully and systematically registered; and, then, from

that registration, necessarily come explanation and generalization,

and thence, the grand, bold--and, as our not very distant ancestors

would have said, impious system--the _Law of Storms_.

So! What we took, what we in the old, bold, but blind day, took for

matter of caprice, is really, after all, reducible to a system,

obedient to a Law! So! then, those terrible facts, that made the brain

swim, the boldest quail, because they _fought shadows_ and _walked in

the darkness_, so! then, those terrible facts have a certain

regularity of recurrence, and the seaman, resolute and strong, calmly

considers whether he cannot oppose to those regular attacks a defence

no less regular. In brief, if the Tempest has its _science_, can we

not create and use an _art_? An art not merely to survive the Tempest

but even to make it useful?

But our science and our art cannot be called into life and activity

until we shall have laid aside our old and ill founded notion that

Tempests are caused by "the caprice of the winds." Attentive

observation has taught us that the winds are _not_ capricious, that

they are the accident, sometimes, also, the agent of the Tempest, but

that, generally speaking, the Tempest is an _electrical phenomenon_,

and often occurs in the absence of gales.

Romme (brother of the Conventionalist, principal author of the

Calendar) laid the foundations of our very important science. English

seamen had remarked that in the tempests in the Indian Seas, they

sailed for days together, and yet made no headway. Romme collected and

systematized all their observations, and pointed out the important

fact that the same occurred in the tempests of China, Africa, and the

Antilles. He also first pointed out that rectilinear winds are of rare

occurrence, and that, usually, tempests have a circular

character,--are, literally, a _whirl_ wind. The great _whirling_

tempests of the United States in 1815, and that of 1821 (the year of

the great eruption of Hecla) when the winds blew from all points to a

common centre, aroused philosophical attention, both in America and

Europe. Brande, in Germany, and at the same time, Redfield in New

York, were the next after Romme in profiting by these facts to lay

down the law that, generally, the tempest is a _Whirl_-wind,

advancing, and at the same time _revolving on its own base_. In 1838,

the English engineer, Reid, being sent to Barbadoes after the too

celebrated tempest which killed fifteen hundred people, ascertained,

with mathematical precision, this double movement of advance and

rotation. But his still more important discovery was that _in our

northern hemisphere the tempest turns from right to left_, that is to

say from East to North, and round the compass, back to East; while in

_southern tempests it turns from left to right_. A most important fact

to regulate the seaman's course.

Reid very rightfully gave his book the bold title of--"On the Law of

Storms."

But it was the law of their _Motion_, not the explanation of their

_cause_; it told nothing, either, of what Storms do, or of what they

are.

Here France came to the rescue. In 1840, Peltier published his _Causes

of Whirlwinds_, and his ingenious and numerous experiments established

the fact that whirlwinds, whether at sea or on shore, were _electrical

phenomena_, in which the winds play only a secondary part. Beccaria, a

full century earlier, had suspected that fact, but it was reserved

for Peltier to establish the fact, by making miniature storms.

Electrical whirlwinds readily take their rise in the neighborhood of

volcanoes,--those ventilating pipes of the subterranean world, and

therefore they are more common in the subterranean world, than in

ours.

The Atlantic, open at both ends, and swept in all directions by the

winds, should necessarily, have more rectilinear, and fewer circular

tempests; but Piddington quotes a great number of the latter.

From 1840 to 1850, the immense compilations of Piddington and Maury

were made, at Calcutta and New York. Maury is rendered illustrious for

his charts, his _Directions_, and his _Geography of the Sea_.

Piddington, less artistical, but not less learned, in his _Seaman's

Guide_, that Encyclopedia of storms, gives the results of an infinite

experience, the minutest and most precise means of calculating the

distance of the whirlwind, its rate of speed, and the nature of its

various waves. He confirmed the ideas of Peltier, as to the electric

theory, and showed that those who had dwelt on the caprice of the

whirlwind, had, in truth, completely mistaken the effect for the

cause.

The old art of auguries, and science of presages, never contemptible,

was most happily revived by that excellent book.

The setting of the Sun, is by no means an indifferent augury. If he

set red, and if the sea retain the reflection of his blood-red rays,

rely upon it, a storm is brewing, in that other Ocean--the air; if

around him you see a lurid red within a white circle, and the stars

are flickering, and seeming to fall, be sure that the upper regions of

the atmosphere are threatening.

Still worse, it is, if, upon a dirty sky, you see small clouds

marshalling, like so many purple arrows, flying from all quarters to

one common point, and if, at the same time, the larger masses assume

the shape of strange buildings, ruined bridges, broken rainbows, and a

hundred other eccentricities; then rely upon it, the storm has already

commenced in the upper region. At present, all is calm, here below,

but, on the horizon, you may discern the faintly flashing, and silent

lightnings. Listen attentively, and, from time to time, you shall hear

the low mutterings of the distant thunder; and the waves, as they

break upon the beach, seem to sob. Look out! The sea tells you,

plaintively, of the coming storm. "What are those wild waves saying?"

They are warning you, I repeat, of the coming storm. The wild, free

birds have already taken warning, and hasten to their secure shelter

in the clefts of the rocks. If they are far from land when they see,

and feel, and hear, the first threatenings of the rising storm, they

settle down upon your masts, and yards, and shrouds. And first among

them comes that bird of evil omen, the "Mother Carey's Chicken," the

Stormy Petrel. Look out, my brothers; I assure you the tempest

approaches.

Does it thunder? Be very glad of that, brother seaman; the electric

discharge is taking place far above us, and we shall have the less of

the tempest. It is an old popular observation, but confirmed by the

science of Peltier and by the experience of Piddington and others.

If the electricity, accumulated on high, discharges itself here below,

it will create circular currents, and we shall have whirlwind, fierce

tempest, and, probably water spout.

This last sort of storm not uncommonly attacks you when you are

seemingly quite safe in harbor. In 1698, Captain Langford, in port and

well anchored, saw that he was about to be thus assailed, slipped his

cable, and found safety on the open sea. Other craft, whose commanders

had less freight or less daring, remained at anchor and were

destroyed.

At Madras and at Barbadoes, warning signals are given to the ships at

anchor. In Canada, the electric Telegraph, swifter than Nature's own

electricity, sends warning of the coming storm from port to port.

To the sailor when on the broad Ocean, the great friend and adviser is

the Barometer; its perfect sensitiveness gives you the most exact

information of the weight with which the storm-laden atmosphere

oppresses it. Usually, it tells you of nothing but fine weather; it

almost seems to sleep. But at the first and most distant note of the

rising storm, it suddenly awakens, is agitated, and its mercury

descends, ascends, redescends. The barometer has its own tempest.

Peron when at the Mauritius observed that flashes of pale light

escaped from the mercury, and filled the whole tube. During gales, the

sensitive instrument seems actually to breathe. "In its fluctuations,"

say Daniel and Barlow, "the water barometer breathed, blew, like some

wild animal."

But the Tempest advances and occasionally illuminates the horizon all

around with its electric lightnings. In 1772, during the great storm

in the West Indies, when the sea rose seventy feet above ordinary high

water mark, the dense darkness of the night was dissipated by balls of

lurid fires that lighted up every shore.

The approach of the storm may be more or less rapid. In the Indian

Ocean, thickly studded with islands and obstacles, the whirlwind and

the water-spout approach you only at the rate of some two miles an

hour; while when they come along the course of the warm current, that

comes to us from the Antilles, they travel at the rate of from forty

to fifty. Their speed would, in fact, be incalculably great but for

their oscillation, beaten as they are by the winds, both internally

and externally.

Slow or rapid, the fury of the tempest is the same. In 1789, in a

single instant and with a single rush, the tempest dashed to pieces

every vessel in the port of Ceringa; at a second rush the town was

flooded; at the third it was in ruins, and twenty thousand of its

inhabitants were dead. In 1822, off Bengal, a water spout was for

twenty-four hours sucking up air and water, and, when it burst, fifty

thousand people perished.

In different localities, different aspects of the Tempest. In Africa

you have the _upas_, the fierce compound of _simoom_ and _tornado_.

The atmosphere seems calm and clear, and yet you feel a strange

oppression of the lungs and a general anxiety as terrible as it is

strange. Then a black cloud, "no bigger than a man's hand," appears on

the horizon, approaches with lightning speed, lengthening, widening,

and deepening as it approaches (_vires acquirit eundo_) the storm

descends, and in a quarter of an hour all around is devastated,

utterly ruined, and ships have utterly disappeared. Nature takes no

heed of such small matters. About Sumatra and Bengal, you see in the

evening or night (never in the morning) a dark arched cloud in the

sky. It rapidly increases, and presently, from that dark cloud, come

down flashes and sheets of pale and ghastly lights. Woe to the

mariner who shall encounter the first wind that rushes from that

sinister cloud; he will pretty certainly go down.

But the ordinary form is that of a huge funnel. A sailor, who was

caught in one of these terrible storms, says: "I found myself, as it

were, at the bottom of an enormous crater of a volcano; all around was

darkness, above a glimmering of lurid lights." That light is what is

technically termed "_the eye of the Tempest_."

When the Water spout, the horrible Typhoon, empties itself, human

science and human daring are of no avail. Roaring, howling, shrieking,

hissing, the storm fiends are at work above, below, around the

luckless vessel. Suddenly there is a dead, a quite horrible silence,

and there comes forth, seemingly, from the very centre of the water

spout, a blinding flash, and a deafening report, and when you, at

length, recover power to look aloft, you find that mast and spars have

been shivered.

Seymour tells us that, sometimes, after being caught in one of those

horrible Typhoons the sailors, for a long time, have blackened nails

and weakened sight. Sometimes, too, this terrible Typhoon sucks up not

only air and water, but also the luckless ship, holds it suspended in

the air, and then dashes it rudely down into the watery abyss. From

this terrible action and pitiless power of the Typhoon, the Chinese

derived their notion of the terrible mother _Typhon_, who, hovering

in the sky, picks out her victims and is ever conceiving and bearing

the _Ken Woo_, whirlwinds of fire and iron. To that terrible _Typhon_

they have erected temples and altars, adoring her and praying to her

in the vain hope of humanising her.

The brave Piddington had no adoration to spare for her; on the

contrary, he gives her a marvellously ill name. He calls her an only

too strong corsair, a pirate so strong and so tricky that there is no

dishonor in getting out of her way.

That perfidious enemy sometimes sets a snare for you; tempts you with

_a good wind_. Avoid that same _good wind_, turn your back to it if

you possibly can. Give that dangerous companion the widest possible

berth. Steer very clear of the storm cloud or it will suddenly sink

you; ship, crew and cargo.

Such is the advice of the brave and skillful Piddington, and,

assuredly, one would gladly take such advice. But how? It would be

utterly useless if the storm cloud and the ship were brought together

within narrow and land locked waters. But, in general, this enormous

compound of whirlwind and water spout embraces a circle of ten,

twenty, or even thirty leagues, and this gives every ship, on which a

constant and intelligent look out is kept, a fair chance of keeping at

a respectful distance from so redoubtable a foe. The great point to

be ascertained is, _where is the centre_, the nucleus, the terrible

home, of this terrible _Typhon_. And then to ascertain its rate of

progression and its line of approach.

The sailor of the present day has two excellent lights to steer by;

his Maury and his Piddington. On the one hand, Maury teaches him the

general laws of the air and sea, and the art of selecting and using

the currents, directing him, as it were, along the streets and

highways of the Ocean. On the other hand, Piddington in his small, but

instructive volume, sums up for him, and places in his hands, the

_Experience of Tempests_; not only how to avoid them, when possible,

but sometimes when to make them useful.

And this it is that at once explains and justifies the fine sentence

of the Dutch Captain Jansen. "At sea," says he, "the first impression

is that of the power of nature, the profundity of the depths--and our

own nothingness. On board of the largest ship, we still feel that we

are constantly in danger. But when the mind's eye has penetrated the

depths and surveyed the expanse, man no longer fears the danger. He

rises to the true sense of the situation. Guided by Astronomy, shown

by Maury along the highways and byways of the Ocean, he steers his

course safely and _confidently_."

This is truly sublime. The Tempest is not abolished, it is true; but

ignorance, bewilderment, that terrible bewilderment which is born of

danger and darkness, are abolished. At least if the seaman of the

present day perish, he will know the why and wherefore. Great, oh,

very great is the safeguard of having the calm, clear presence of

mind, with our soul and intellect unruffled and resigned to whatever

may be the effect of the great divine laws of the world which, at the

expense of a few shipwrecks, produce Equilibrium and Safety.

CHAPTER IV.

THE POLAR SEAS.

What most tempts man? The difficult, the useless, the impossible. Of

all maritime enterprises, that to which the most persistent energy has

been given, is the north western passage, the direct line from Europe

to Asia. And yet, the plainest common-sense might anticipatively have

told us that, given, the existence of such a passage, in a latitude so

cold, so blocked up by ice, it would, practically, be useless; few

would, none could, make any regular use of it. _Open this year, it is

quite sure to be closed up next year._

Remember that that region has not the flatness of Siberia; it is a

mountain of a thousand leagues, horribly broken, with deep chasms,

with seas, that, thawed one hour, are frozen up the next, passages

between icebergs, which shift their position from time to time, open

to invite you, and close to crush you. At length, in 1853, that

passage was found, by a man who had got so far in, that it was safer

to go ahead, than to recede, and who, therefore, went daringly and

desperately forward, till he found that which he sought. Now we know

what that passage is; men's minds are calmed down; we know that there

is such a passage, and we have not even the smallest desire to make

use of it.

When I spoke of that passage, as being _useless_, I spoke of it as a

commercial highway. But in following this commercially useless

enterprise, we have made many very useful discoveries for Geography,

Meteorology, and the magnetism of the Earth; just as silly Alchemy,

has done so much for wise, and admirably useful Chemistry.

What was the original idea? To open a short way to the land of gold,

to the East Indies. England, and other powers, jealous of Spain and

Portugal, reckoned upon surprising them in the very heart of their

distant possessions, in the very sanctuary of wealth. From the time of

Queen Elizabeth of England, adventurers having found, or stated that

they found, some portions of gold in Greenland, searched into, and

made bold use of the old Northern legend of _treasure hidden beneath

the Pole_; mountains of gold, guarded by Gnomes, &c., &c. And the

legend inflamed men's minds. Upon so reasonable a notion, sixteen

ships were sent out, having on board the sons and hopes of the noblest

families. There was quite a competition as to who should have leave to

go in quest of that Polar Eldorado; and those who sought it,

succeeded in finding only hunger, icy barriers, suffering, and--Death!

But that check was unavailing; during three hundred years, explorers,

with a perfectly marvellous perseverance, continued to explore, to

fail, to be martyrized, and to die. Cabot, the earliest of them, was

only saved by the mutiny of his crew, who would not allow him to go

any farther. Brentz died of cold, and Willoughby of famine. Cortereul

lost all, property, and life; and Hudson was set adrift by his men,

and, as he had neither sails nor provisions, it is but too probable

that he perished miserably, though his fate was never precisely

ascertained. Behring, in finding the strait which separates America

from Asia, perished of fatigue, cold, and want, on a desert island. In

our own day, Franklin perished, in the ice; he and his men having been

reduced to the most horrible cannibalism.

Every thing that can discourage man, is combined in these Northern

voyages. Considerably before the Polar circle is reached, a cold fog

freezes upon the sea, and covers you with hoar frost; sails and ropes

are icy and stiffened, the deck is one sheet of glare ice, and every

manoeuvre is a work of immense difficulty; and those moving shoals,

the icebergs, that are so much to be dreaded, can scarcely be made out

at the distance of the ship's length. At the mast-head, the look-out

man, an actual living stalactite, every now and then warns the watch

upon deck of the approach of a new enemy, a huge white phantom, a

terrible iceberg, often from two to three hundred feet out of the

water.

But these preliminary horrors, which announce to the seaman his

approach to the world of ice and suffering, so far from deterring,

increase his desire and determination to proceed. In the mystery of

the Pole, there is, I know not what, of sublime horror and heroic

suffering. Even those who have only gone as far North as Spitzbergen,

retain in memory a profound impression of its drear and horrible

sublimity. That mass of peaks, chains, and precipices, which, for four

thousand five hundred feet, rears its icy front, is like a gigantic

apparition, in that gloomy sea. Its glaciers flash forth living

lights, dazzling flashes of the most brilliant colors, green, blue,

and purple, contrasting marvellously with the uniform whiteness of the

snow. During the nights, whose duration is not of hours, but of

months, the _Aurora Borealis_, every now and then lights up the dreary

scene in the strange splendors of a sinister illumination; vast and

terrible bale fires, that, from time to time, light up the whole

horizon, forming, with their magnificent jets of lurid lights, a

fantastic Etna, that throws temporary and illusive light on that scene

of eternal winter.

All is prismatic in an atmosphere surcharged with icy particles, where

the air is full of mirrors and little crystals. Hence, the most

astonishing mirages, rendering one uncertain whether he may take the

evidence of his own eyes as to the reality of any thing that he thinks

he sees. Merely aërial reflections and colored mists appear solid

masses, castles, cathedrals, islands,--anything; and what you see

upright at one moment, is upside down a moment afterwards. The strata

of air which produce these effects, are in constant revolution, the

lightest ascends above the others, and in an instant the mirage

changes form, color, size, and character. The slightest variation of

the temperature, lowers, raises, or slopes, the huge mirror; the image

becomes confounded with the object; they separate, disperse, another

succeeds, and then a third, pale and feeble, appears, to disappear in

its turn.

It is a world of illusion. If you love to dream; if, especially, you

love day-dreaming, with fancies wild or tender, go to the North, and

there you will see real, yet no less fugitive, all that your waking

dreams have ever painted. In that world of mirages, the atmosphere

will put all your "castles in the air" to utter shame. No style of

architecture but that magical atmosphere can imitate. Now you have the

classic Greek, with its porticos and colonnades; anon, Egyptian

obelisks appear, the one pointing high and sharp, towards the sky, the

other lying prostrate, and in twain, at the base of the former. And,

then, mountain upon mountain appears, Pelion upon Ossa, a whole city

of giants, with Cyclopean walls, which change into the circular

sacrificial stones of the Druids, with dark, mysterious caves beneath.

Finally, all disappears; the wind rises, and the mists and atmospheric

reflections are dispersed. In this veritable world of the upside down,

the law of gravitation is repealed, or, at the least, disregarded; the

weak and the light, carrying the strong and the heavy; a spacious

church is seen on the top of a slender spire, an Egyptian pyramid

whirls, dances, upon the sharply pointed apex; it is an eccentric, a

mad, school of art, where you pass at once from the beautiful to the

terrible, from the terribly sublime to the absurdly fantastic.

Sometimes a terrible incident occurs. Against the great stream, which

flows majestically and slowly from the north, there suddenly comes,

from the south, a huge iceberg, whose base is some six or seven

hundred feet below the water. It is impelled by the strong under-tow,

and advances so swiftly that it dashes aside, or to pieces, whatever

it happens to encounter. Arrived at the plain of ice, this moving

giant, this terrible iceberg is not at all embarrassed. Thus, Duncan,

writing in 1826, describes a scene of the kind--"The field-ice was

broken up for miles in less than a minute, with reports loud as those

of a hundred pieces of artillery. As the mountainous heap approached

us, the space between it and us was filled with the mighty masses,

into which the shock of her collision had broken up the massive field

ice. We should assuredly have perished, but the huge mass suddenly

sheered off to the northeast, and we were saved."

It was in 1818, after the European war, that this war against nature,

this search after the north-western passage was resumed. It opened

with a serious and singular event. The gallant Captain Ross, being

sent with two ships into Baffin's Bay, was completely deceived by the

phantasmagoria of that world of spectral delusions. He distinctly saw,

as he thought, a land which has never existed, maintained that if he

proceeded he would certainly lay the bones of his ships on that

non-existent shore, and actually returned to England. There he was

laughed at, and accused of timidity, and he was refused by the

Admiralty, the command of another expedition, which he solicited, in

the interest of his honor. Sir Felix Booth, a London distiller and

liquor merchant, more liberal than the British Government, presented

Ross with a hundred thousand dollars, and Ross returned to the North,

determined to pass or die. Neither the one nor the other was granted

to him! But he remained during I know not how many winters, forgotten,

in those terrible solitudes. He had all the appearance of a mere

savage, so long and so horrible was his destitution, when he was saved

by some whalers, who, when they first saw him, asked him if he had,

by any chance, fallen in with _the late Captain John Ross_!

His Lieutenant, Parry, who confidently believed that he could pass,

made four attempts to do so; trying first by Baffin's Bay and the

West, and then by Spitzbergen and the North. He made some discoveries

by boldly pushing forward in a sledge-boat; a sledge on the ice, and a

boat in the water. But the ice always defeated his bold attempts, and

he was no more successful than Ross.

In 1882, a brave young Frenchman, Jules de Blassville, conceived that

France, in his person, might win the glory of discovering the

north-west passage. He risked, at once, money and life; and purchased

death. He could not even get the selection of a proper ship. They gave

him the _Lilloise_, which sprang a leak on her very first day out, and

he had her repaired and refitted, at his own cost of about eight

thousand dollars. In this unsafe vessel, he sailed for the iron-bound

coast of Greenland. According to all appearance, he did not get even

as far out as that. He has never since been heard of, nor has any

portion of his unseaworthy vessel been picked up. Most likely she

foundered, with all hands on board.

The English expeditions have been fitted out in a very different

style; every thing was provided that prudence could suggest or

liberal-expenditure supply; yet they succeeded no better. The

gallant, scientific, and ill fated, Franklin, was blocked in by the

ice in 1845. For twelve years from that date the English, with an

honorable persistence, sent out expeditions in search of him. And not

England alone; France and America no less honorably assisted, and both

those great nations lost some of their brightest and best in the

brave, though fruitless, search. Side by side with the name of

Franklin, as connected with the icy peaks and capes of that desolate

region, our Belliot, and others, must be named, who devoted themselves

in hope to save him. And, on the other hand, Captain John Ross offered

to organize and lead an expedition to search for Blainville. Dark

Greenland is connected with a host of such brave, sad reminiscences,

and the desert is no longer quite a desert when connected with such

touching testimonies of _human brotherhood_.

There is something very touching in the persistent belief, the

inflexible affection, of Lady Franklin. She could not, would not,

believe herself widowed, but incessantly besought for further search

after her brave husband. She vowed that she was quite sure that he

still lived for his country and for her; and so well did she impress

her own belief upon the Admiralty board, that, seven years after he

was completely missing, he was officially named, not as _Captain_, but

as Vice Admiral. And she was right; he was then still living. The

Esquimaux saw him in 1850, and he had then sixty of his men with him.

Very soon after he had only thirty, and those so worn by fatigue and

want that they could not hunt, or even walk, and as each one died he

was eaten by his far more wretched survivors. If Lady Franklin's

advice had been duly attended to, her brave husband and most, perhaps

all, of his men would have been Saved. For she said--and the soundest

sense dictated her words--that he should be sought for to the

southward, inasmuch as it was to the last degree improbable that in

his desperate situation he should aggravate it by proceeding towards

the North. But the Admiralty, perhaps more anxious about the

north-west passage than about the lost Franklin, persisted in sending

expeditions to the North, and the afflicted lady did for herself what

the Admiralty would not do for her. At a great expense, she fitted out

a vessel to search to the southward of his last known or presumed

position. But it was already too late. Only the bones of Franklin were

found.

In the mean time longer, but more successful, voyages were made

towards the South pole. There we do not find the same commingling of

land and sea, ice and tempestuous thaws, that make up the great horror

of Greenland. There is a boundless sea of immense and mighty waves,

and a glacier far more extensive than ours of the North. Very few

islands; those which have been seen, or, rather fancied, have most

probably been only shifting and wandering icebergs. Everything there

varies with the varying character of the winters. Morel in 1820,

Weddell in 1824, and Ballery in 1839, found an opening, and made their

way into an open sea, which none since have been able to find.

The French Kerguelen and the English James Ross have, undoubtedly,

discovered lands. The first, in 1771, discovered the large island

which he named after himself, but to which the English have given the

appropriate title of _Desolation_. Two hundred leagues in length it

has some excellent ports, and, in spite of the severity of the

climate, it is tolerably prolific in seals and birds, with which a

ship can be plentifully provisioned. That glorious discovery which

Louis XVI., on his accession, rewarded with a peerage, was,

subsequently the ruin of Kerguelen. False charges were brought against

him, and the rivalry of noble officers overwhelmed him, jealous rivals

with a hateful intrepidity, bearing false witness against him. It was

from a dungeon of six feet square that, in 1782, he dated the

narrative of his discovery.

In 1838, America, France, and England each fitted out an expedition in

the interests of science. The illustrious Duperrey had pointed out the

way to important magnetic observations, and it was desired to continue

them under the very pole. The English expedition, with this object,

was entrusted to the command of James Ross, nephew and lieutenant of

the Captain John Ross of whom we have spoken. It was a model

expedition for which everything was foreseen, and provided, and James

Ross brought back his crew without having lost a man, or even had a

man sick.

The American Wilkes and the French Dumont d'Urville were not thus

admirably fitted out; and perils and sickness scourged them fearfully.

James Ross, more fortunate, doubled the Arctic circle and found real

land; but he confesses, with a really admirable modesty, that he

chiefly owed his success to the admirable manner in which his

government had fitted him out. The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ with

their powerful machines, their ice saw, and their iron shielded prow,

cut their way through the ice till they reached an open sea abounding

in birds, seals, and whales, and lighted up by a volcano of twelve

thousand feet in height, a northern Etna. But no vegetation, no

landing place, but an enormously high and sharply scarped granite upon

which not even the snows could retain their hold. But it _was_ land;

not a doubt of that. That Polar Etna, which they named after their

good ship Erebus, is there to prove it.

A terrestrial nucleus, therefore, is girdled by the arctic sea.

April and May of 1853, were a grand date in the history of the arctic

pole.

In April that passage was found which had been so perseveringly and

vainly sought for during three centuries. The discovery resulted from

a bold stroke of desperation.

Captain Maclure having made his way in by Behring's strait was, for

two years, shut in by the ice. Finding it impossible to return, he

determined, at all hazards, to push forward. He did so and in only

forty miles further found himself along side of English ships in the

Eastern ocean. His boldness saved him and the great problem was at

length solved.

At that very time, May, 1858, New York sent out an expedition for the

extreme North. A young naval surgeon, Elisha Kent Kane, only about

thirty years old, but who had already sailed far and wide, announced

an idea which greatly excited the American mind. Just as Wilkes had

proposed to find a world, Kane proposed to find a sea, an open sea,

under the pole. The English, in their routine, had searched from East

to West; Kane proposed to sail due North and take possession, for his

country, of that, as yet, undiscovered open polar sea. The bold

proposal was enthusiastically hailed. Grinnell of New York, a great

ship owner, princely alike in fortune and in heart, generously gave

two ships; learned societies, and not a few of the general public,

assisted with pecuniary contributions, with a perfectly religious zeal

made up and contributed warm clothing. The crews, carefully selected

from volunteers, were sworn to three things; to be obedient to orders,

to abstain from spirituous liquors, and from profane language. A first

expedition failed, but its failure daunted neither Mr. Grinnell nor

the American public; and a second was fitted out, with the aid of

certain English societies, who had chiefly in view the propagation of

the gospel or a final search after Franklin.

Few voyages are more interesting than this second one of Kane's. We

can readily understand the ascendancy which young Kane acquired over

his followers. Every line of his book is marked by his strength, his

brilliant vivacity, and his practical exemplification of the bold

American watchword--_Go ahead._ He knows every thing; is confident of

everything; prudent, hopeful, more than hopeful,--positive. Every line

tells you that he is a man to be conquered by no obstacle. He will go

as far as mortal man can go. The combat is curious between such a

character and the pitiless and icy North, that rampart of terrible

obstacles. Scarcely has he sailed when he is already seized by the

cold hand of winter and detained for six months amidst the ice. Even

in the spring he had a cold of seventy degrees! At the approach of the

second winter, on the 28th of August, nine out of his seventeen men,

deserted him. But the fewer his men and resources, the bolder and

sterner he became, being determined, as he tells us, to make himself

the better respected. His good friends, the Esquimaux, who hunted or

fished for him, and from whom he is even compelled to take some small

objects, stole three copper vessels from him. In return he kidnapped

two of their women. An excessive and savage chastisement. It was

hardly prudent to bring these poor creatures among the eight seamen

who still remained with him; all the less prudent when we consider

that discipline was already so much relaxed. They were married women,

too. Siver, wife of Metek, and Aninqua, wife of Marsiqua, were in

tears for five days. Kane laughed at them and makes us laugh too, when

he says: "They wept and made terrible lamentation; _but they did not

lose their appetite_."

At length their husbands and friends took back the stolen articles and

took all that had passed in good part, with the native good sense of

men who had no weapons, but sharpened fish bones, to oppose to

revolvers. They agreed to every thing and promised the utmost

friendship and most faithful alliance. A week after, they disappeared

and we may easily imagine with what feelings of friendship! Of course,

wherever they went, they would warn the natives to shun the white man.

And thus it is that we close the uncivilized world alike against

ourselves and civilization.

The sequel is sad. So cruel are the sufferings of the seamen that some

die and others want to return. But Kane is of quite another mind, he

has promised to discover a new sea, and discover it he will. Plots,

desertions, treacheries, all add to the horrors of his situation. In

the third winter he must have died, destitute as he was of food and

fuel, had not other Esquimaux supplied him with fish; he aiding them

by hunting. In the mean time some of the men, who had been out

exploring, had the good fortune to find that sea about which he was so

anxious. At least they reported that they had seen a vast extent of

open unfrozen water, and, all around, birds which seemed to find there

the shelter of a less severe climate.

That was enough to warrant the return. Kane, saved by the Esquimaux,

who took no advantage either of their superior numbers or of his

extreme destitution, left there his vessel frozen up in the ice.

Weak and exhausted, he yet contrived, in eighty-two days, to get back

to the South. But he got back only to die. That intrepid young man,

who approached nearer to the pole than any other man had ever done,

dying, carried off the prize which the learned societies of France

laid upon his tomb--the great geographical prize.

In his narrative, which contains so many terrible things, there is one

which seems to me to be very touching. It enables us to estimate the

exceeding sufferings of such an expedition; I allude to the death of

his dogs. He had some excellent ones of the Newfoundland breed, and

some of the Esquimaux; they, rather than men, were his companions and

his friends. During his long winter nights, those nights of months,

they watched around his ship, and when he sallied out in the dense

darkness he recognized the brave brutes by their warm breath as they

came and licked his hands.

The Newfoundlanders were the first to grow sick. He fancied that they

suffered less from the cold than from the privation of light; when the

lanterns were shown to them they seemed to revive. But, by degrees, a

strange melancholy grew upon them, and they went mad. Next followed,

in the same sad course, the Esquimaux dogs, and none remained but his

little slut, Flora, _the wisest_ little thing--as he calls her--and

she neither went mad nor died. I believe this is the only point, in

his fearfully interesting narrative, at which you can perceive that

that brave, stern heart, for an instant sank.

CHAPTER V.

MAN'S WAR UPON THE RACES OF THE SEA.

On reviewing the whole history of Voyages, we are impressed by two

quite contrary feelings:

1. We admire the courage and genius with which man has conquered the

seas, and dominated his whole planet.

2. We are astonished to find him so unskilful in all that concerns the

conciliation of the inhabitants of the various seas and lands, that he

has conquered. Every where, the voyager has gone, as the enemy of the

young populations, whether human or brute, whether terrestrial or

maritime, which, properly treated, would have been, each in its own

limited sphere, so servicable to him. Man, as to the globe on which he

has made such grand discoveries, is like a musical novice, before some

immense Organ, from which he can produce but a few notes. Emerging

from the middle ages, after so much of philosophy and theology, he

still remained barbarous; of the sacred instrument, he only knew how

to break the keys.

The gold seekers, as we have seen, sought only gold, nothing but that;

man they pitilessly crushed. Columbus, though the last of them, shows

this with a quite terrible plainness and simplicity, in his own

journal. His words make us shudder, anticipating, prophesying, as they

do, what would be done by his successors. No sooner has he landed in

Haiti, than he enquires, "where is the gold? Who has got gold?" The

natives smiled, in their innocent astonishment, at this fierce desire

for gold. They promised him that they would search for it for him, and

in the mean time, gave their rings and ornaments to satisfy the

earlier, that eager appetite.

He gives us a most touching description of that unfortunate race, so

interesting for its beauty, its kindness, and its tender confidence.

But the Geonese, touchingly as he described that people, had his own

mission of avarice, his hard, stern habits of thought. The Turkish

wars, the atrocious galleys, and their wretched slaves, piracy and

manstealing, were the common life of that day. The sight of that

young, unarmed community, those poor, naked children, and lovely and

innocent women, inspired him only with the horrible mercantile

thought, that they might be very easily enslaved.

He would not, however, consent to have them carried away from the

beautiful island; they and it, belonged, said he, to the King and

Queen, Ferdinand and Isabella. But he said these darkly and terribly

significant words--"They are timid and well fitted for obedience. They

will do whatever they are ordered to do; a thousand of them would

retreat before three or four of ours. If your Highnesses give me the

order to carry them off or to enslave them here, there is nothing to

hinder it; fifty men will suffice to do it." Thus wrote he in his

Journal, or Despatch, of 14 and 16, December.

Presently came from Europe the wholesale sentence of that whole poor

innocent people. They were ordered to be the slaves of gold--all

subjected to compulsory labor, some to seek gold, and others to feed

the goldseekers.

Columbus confesses that in twelve years, six sevenths of that once

happy population had perished; and Herrera adds that in twenty-five

years, that population had fallen from a million of souls to fourteen

thousand.

What followed, is only too well known. The gold seeker and the planter

exterminated the natives and incessantly replaced them at the expense

of the negroes. And what has been the consequence? That in the low,

hot, immensely fecund countries, the black race alone, are permanent.

America will belong to that race; Europe has achieved precisely the

opposite of that which it intended.

Every where, in all directions, the colonizing impotency of Europe

has displayed itself in America. The French adventurer has not

survived; he took thither no family, and did take thither all the

worst vices of his native land. As a natural consequence, instead of

civilizing the barbarians, he added their vices to his own, and sank

to their barbarous level. With the exception of two temperate

countries into which they went _en masse_, and in families, the

English have not been much more successful than the French in planting

their race permanently and healthily in transmarine colonies. In

another century, India will scarcely know that the Englishmen once

lived there. Have the Missionaries, whether Catholic or Protestant,

made any converts? Dumont, the thoroughly well-informed Dumont, tells

me--"_not one_!"

Between them and us, there are thirty centuries and thirty religions.

Try to force their intellect, and the result will be that which the

truly great Humboldt observed in those American villages which are to

this day called "_Missions_;" that, having lost their own native

energies and traditions, without acquiring ours, they will sink into a

sort of stupefaction, become merely so many children of a larger

growth, alive in body, but dead in mind,--all but idiots, useless

alike to themselves and to others.

Our voyages, upon which we moderns, and more especially the learned,

so plume ourselves, have they been really, or at all, servicable to

the savages? I really cannot see it. While, on the one hand, the

heroic races of North America have perished of hunger and

wretchedness, the soft, effeminate, gentle races of the South, perish,

too, to the great shame of our seamen, who, in that distant part of

the world, have thrown off even the very mask of decency. Population

at once kindly and weak, in whom Bourgainville discerned such excess

of complaisance, among whom the English Missionaries have gained much

profit, but not a single soul,--kindly and weak people, they are

perishing miserably beneath the double scourge of the worst vices and

the most loathsome diseases of the old world.

Formerly, the long coast of Siberia was well peopled. Under that

terribly hard climate, the nomadic natives hunted the richly, the

preciously, furred animals which at once fed and clothed them. The

Russian despotism, at once strong and senseless, compelled them to

adopt the settled life of agriculturists, in a climate, and upon a

soil, where agriculture is an absurdity, an impossibility. The

consequence is that these peoples have gradually died off. On the

other hand, the trading spirit, that greedy and insatiable devourer,

has refused to spare the brutes in their breeding seasons, and as a

necessary consequence, the brutes have disappeared with the men; and

now, for a thousand miles along that coast, you have a terrible

solitude, where man hunts not, and where the brutes are not. The

winds may whistle shrilly, the frost may be bitter and biting as ever,

but there is neither man nor beast to listen to the one or to shudder

beneath the other.

Had our voyagers to the North been truly wise, their very first care

should have been to form a good, firm friendship with the Esquimaux,

to mitigate their miseries, to adopt some of their children and have

them well instructed in Europe, and thus lay the foundation of a great

indigenous race of discoverers. We learn from Captain John Ross, and

from not a few others, that they are very intelligent, and very

readily acquire the knowledge and the arts of Europe. Marriages would

have been contracted between European sailors and the native women; a

mixed population would thus have sprung up, to which all that northern

portion of the American continent would have been "native and to the

manor born." And that would have been the, at once, safe and sure way

of discovering the much coveted North-western passage. Thirty years--a

single generation--would have done it effectually--and in three

hundred years it has been done only uselessly because you have

terrified those poor savages; because you have destroyed alike the man

of the soil and the _Genius Loci_. What is the use of merely seeing

that desert, when, in the very act of seeing it you make it either

depopulated or hostile?

We may be quite sure that if man, civilized man, has thus ill treated

his uncivilized brother man, he has been neither more friendly nor

more merciful for the brutes. He has converted the gentlest and the

most affectionate of them forever, irreclaimably, into savage and

merciless foes to man. And man, civilized man, has done this. All the

old authors concur in telling us that when these poor brutes first

(most unluckily for themselves!) made the acquaintance of man, they

exhibited nothing but the most confident and inquisitive sympathy. He

could walk past and through whole families of Sea Cows and Seals, and

they never fled from him. The Penguins, and their kindred species,

followed him, begged a share of his shelter, yea, even nestled at

night beneath his garments.

Our forefathers, quite justly, believed that, to a very great extent,

the animals feel and love, even as we do. Certain it is that they have

a singular and very decided taste for music. The very Shad, simple as

they seem, will follow you to the sound of bells; Valence tells us;

and Noël tells us that he has often seen the poor Whale, the Joubarde

roll and frolic around the bark, delighted with the music, and,

fearless of the _man_!

What the poor, dumb creatures most enjoy; what they most possess of

intelligent life; what they have most been deprived of by dint of

human and very cruel persecution;--is the right, the security, the

sanctity of marriage! Fugitive and isolated, they now only retain that

which we, most cruelly, have left to them; temporary concubinage, that

miserable temporary concubinage which makes sterile every creature

that is subjected to it.

Marriage, fixed, settled, faithful, is the very life of nature,--and

we find it in even the poorest living tribes on which man's tyranny

has not yet imposed unnatural laws. The Roebuck, the Pigeon, that

prettiest of the Parrot family, the "Love Bird," and hundreds of other

species, which we, in our profound ignorance and fancied learning,

despise, have this instinctive love of marriage. You may notice that,

even among the other and wilder birds and beasts, the matrimonial tie

is inseparable, at least, until the young family is old enough to take

care of itself.

The Hare, in its timid and ever anxious life, the Bat, that strange

prowler in the dark night hours, are very very tender of their

families. The Crustaceæ, even, nay, even the very Poulpes have their

marital affection; take the female and the male is sure to be there,

to combat vainly, and to be taken with her.

How much more, then, shall Love, the Family, _Marriage_, in the true

sense of that word, exist among our gentle, truly gentle, till

brutally persecuted, amphibious creatures! Slow, sedentary, attached

to home, how natural, how inevitable it is, that, the male should be

true to his mate,--and she to him! Among them the husband will die

for, or with, the wife, either for the young one. And, among them,

too, we find what we too often, only in vain look for among what we

presumptuously term the higher animals, the young one will boldly

leave its shelter and fight for the mother that has previously rescued

him.

Steller and Hartwig mention a strange, an almost human scene enacted

in the family of the Otarie, another amphibious creature. The female

had allowed her young to be stolen from her. The male, furious, beat

her severely, and she grovelled and wept.

The Whales, which have not the fixed abode of the amphibii, yet cross

the Ocean in couples. Duhamel and Lacepede say, that in 1723, two

Whales being attacked kept firmly side by side. One of them being

killed, the other, with terrible moanings of mingled despair and

grief, of sympathy and rage, threw itself upon the dead body of its

mate and died, rather than retreat. If there was in the world one

being which, even more than any other ought to have been spared, it

was the free Whale, that admirable creature so abounding in value;

that most inoffensive of all the creatures of the Ocean whose very

food is different from that of man. Excepting its terribly strong

tail, this creature has not even a weapon of defence. And, then, the

poor thing has such a host of enemies! Every one and everything seems

to be hostile to it. Its parasites establish themselves, not only on,

but in its vast gnawing, even its very tongue. The Narvel, with its

terrible tusks pierces it, the Dolphins gnaw it, and the bold, ever

hungry, swiftly swimming, Shark tears huge bleeding morsels from it.

And, then, there are two blinded and ferocious foes that, in most

dastardly fashion, thin that inoffensive race even anticipatively;

killing the pregnant mother. First, there is the horrible Cachalot,

whose head makes a full third of its entire frame. This horrid

creature, with its crushing jaws, armed with forty-eight teeth,

literally eats the unborn young one. Man, still more cruel, causes the

poor creature a more prolonged suffering. The cruel harpoon, plunged

again and again into that quivering and sensitive body inflicts

suffering, such as we cannot even think of, without blushing for that

human nature of which we so often and so unblushingly boast.

Dying slowly, and in the long agony of many wounds, and of many

convulsions, she writhes, shudders, lashes the sea into a mad foam

with her terrible tail, and, even as she dies, feels about with her

poor hand-fins, as though striving once more to embrace and caress her

little one. Something dreadfully human, as it seems to me, is that

death scene of the poor Whale!

At this day we can scarcely even imagine what were the scenes of

butchery some two hundred years ago; while the Whales swam in shoals

and every shore swarmed with the amphibii. The enormous massacres

polluted the ocean with blood to an extent such as our human battles,

from the earliest day, cannot even begin to compare with. In a single

day, from fifteen to twenty Whales were killed, and fifteen hundred

Sea Elephants! And this was mere killing for the sake of killing. For

what was to be done with so many of those huge creatures, each of

which had so much blood and so much oil? What was the meaning of all

this cruel slaughter? What the result? Just simply, to redden and

pollute so many miles of the pure Ocean! To have the cold and cruel

enjoyment of most brutal tyrants; to watch, with cruel eye, the

lingering agonies and the fierce, but impotent struggles, of one of

God's noblest and most inoffensive creatures! Peron relates, with a

disgust which does him honor, that he saw a brutal sailor thus slowly

and brutally butcher a female Seal. She groaned and writhed like

something human; and whenever she opened her poor, bleeding mouth, he

dashed the oar into it, breaking her poor teeth at every thrust.

Durville tells us that at the new Shetland isles, in the South Seas,

the English and Americans actually exterminated the Seals in four

years; killing, in their blind rage, alike the newly born and

parturient female, and often they killed only for the skin, losing

the vast and very precious amount of oil.

Such slaughter as that is really a disgrace to our common humanity;

such butchery reveals a terrible, a loathsome, instinct, that makes us

shudder as we look around upon even our best and kindliest, and

reflect how soon and upon what slight temptation they, too, may become

cruel! On a smiling shore and among a notably amiable people, we

remember one of these murderous massacres to have taken place. Some

five or six hundred Tunnies were driven into a lovely bay that they

might be ignominiously murdered in a single day. The drag nets, so

vast that the capstan and the bars had to be brought into requisition,

to _heave_, rather than draw them in, brought the poor creatures into

that beautiful bay, to them, a veritable _chamber of death_, and all

around were bronzed, hardy, and cruel men, armed with harpoons and

pikes. And from distances of even twenty leagues around, fair

women--shame to our nature!--yea, women sat or stood to witness that

truly brutal butchery. The signal is given and the dastardly butchers

strike, and the pierced and bleeding victims writhe, bound,

agonize--as though they were human, and pitiless woman applauds the

prowess--Godwot!--of pitiless man! The waters, agitated by the vain,

though mighty struggle of the victims, is polluted and discolored with

blood and foam, and woman--Woman looks on this horrid scene and, when

the last victim has given its last gasp, sighs deeply and departs,

wearied, but not satisfied, and whispers--Is that all? And yet we call

ourselves only, "a little lower than the angels!"

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAW OF THE OCEAN.

A great and deservedly popular writer, Eugene Noël, who throws a

bright, broad light upon every subject which he touches, most truly

says, in his important work on Pisciculture, the following words: "We

might make the Ocean an immense food-factory, more productive than

even our earth itself, fertilizing and supporting everything, seas,

rivers, lakes, and Lands. Hitherto we have cultivated only the

lands--let us now cultivate the waters. Nations! Attention!"

More productive than the land? Eh! How is that to be?

M. Baude explains the matter very clearly, in his recently published

and very important work on Fishery. He shows very clearly that, of all

creatures, the fish consumes the least, and produces the most. Merely

to keep that creature alive, nothing, or next to nothing, is required.

Rondelet kept a carp three years in a bottle of water, and gave it

nothing save what it could extract from that water; yet, in that

time, it so increased in bulk that he could not get it out of the

bottle! The Salmon, during its stay, of two months, in fresh water,

scarcely feeds at all, and yet in that time scarcely loses flesh. Its

stay in salt water, during the same space of time, gives it the

enormous increase of six pounds in weight. How little that resembles

the slow growth of our land animals! If we were to pile up into one

heap all that it takes to fatten an Ox or a Pig, we should actually be

astounded at the amount of food required for the like increase of

weight.

And, accordingly, those people whose demand most urgently presses upon

their power of supply, the Chinese, with their three hundred millions

of ever craving appetites, have directly applied themselves to the art

of promoting that great power of reproduction, that richest

manufacture of nourishing food. On all the great rivers of China,

prodigious multitudes find in the waters, the food which they would

but vainly ask from the land. Agriculture is always more or less

precarious; a blighting wind, a frost, the slightest accident, can

sentence a whole nation to all the horrors of Famine. But, on the

contrary, the living and teeming, the exulting and abounding, harvest

beneath the waters, nourishes innumerable families, and makes those

families almost as prolific and abounding as itself.

In May, on the great central river of the Empire, a vast trade is

done in Fish _fry_, which is bought, sold, and resold, for the purpose

of stocking the fish-ponds of private persons, who feed their fish

from the mere offal of the household.

The Romans,--so long ago!--had the same wise system;--only they,

sometimes, were barbarous enough to feed their fish with slaves! Bad

enough, that, and to spare; but at least they left us the precious

legacy of these words--"The spawn of the sea fish _can_ become fish in

fresh water." In the last century, a German, by the name of Jacobi,

discovered, or rather, revived, the art of _artificial fecundation_;

and, in our own century, and with still more productive effect,

France, copying from England, has done the same thing. A fisherman of

Bresse, Remy, has practised, since 1840, the art which has now become

European.

Taken in hand by such men as Coste, Pouchet, &c., this art has ceased

to be merely empirical--it has become _a Science_. Among other things,

it has become known that there are certain regular connections between

the salt and the fresh water; the fish from the former, coming, at

certain seasons, to spawn in the latter. The Eel, wherever bred, as

soon as it has the thickness of a needle, hastens to ascend the river,

and in such numbers that it actually whitens the whole stream. This

treasure, which, if properly taken care of, would give many thousands

of pounds of the most nutritious food is unworthily, shamefully,

destroyed; sold as so much mere manure. The Salmon is no less

faithful; invariably it comes from the sea back to the river in which

it had its birth. Mark hundreds of them, and not one of them shall be

missing. Their love of their native river is such that they will even,

(see the _Salmon Leaps_ of Scotland, Ireland, and Northern England)

_leap_, springing from the tail, over seemingly insurmountable

obstacles! Such are the Fish!

Upon land, we take care of our _Horses_; why not PRESERVE THE SEA? Why

not _protect the breeding Season of the Ocean_? The young and the

pregnant females, should be held sacred, more especially as to those

species which are not superabundantly productive, such as the Cetacæ,

and the Amphibii. To kill, is a necessity of our nature, our teeth and

stomach sufficiently testify to that; but that very necessity obliges

us to preserve life.

On the land, we feed and protect our flocks and herds. But for the

food and protection which we give to them, most of them would not

exist at all, or would have been devoured by wild beasts. We have a

right, or at least, a plausible excuse, for killing them, but we take

care to spare the young and the pregnant.

In the seas there are still more young lives annihilated when we

depart from this law of _preserving_ that we may the more plentifully

kill. We may, if we prudently as well as mercifully so will it, make

the generation of the inferior animals, an element almost infinitely

productive. In our seas and rivers, chiefly, it is, that Man appears

the Magician. High time it surely is, that he should unite to his

power both kindness and wisdom. He is in reality, the opponent of

death; for, though appetite compels him to kill, his skill and care

can create torrents of teeming life.

As regards those precious species which, foolishly, as well as

cruelly, we have almost annihilated, and especially for that greatest

and most precious life of all, the Whale, there should be an absolute

peace, for at least half a century. That great, that really

magnificent species, will then repair its losses. Being no longer

persecuted, it will return to the temperate zone, which is its natural

climate, where it will find its natural food in the abounding

animalculæ of the comparatively warm waters. Being thus restored to

its natural climate and its natural food, it will regain its old

gigantic proportions. Let the old rendezvous of their Love be held

sacred, and again we shall see the Leviathan, the whale of two or

three hundred feet long. Let this magnificent creature's haunts be

respected, especially in its breeding season, and in half a century it

would be as plentiful as of old. Formerly it abounded in a bay of

California. Why not make that bay sacred to it? Then it would not seek

shelter among the horrid glaciers of the pole. Let us respect their

reason of Love, and enormous will be the benefit to ourselves.

Peace! I say again; peace for the Whale, the Sea-Cow, the

Sea-Elephant; peace for all those precious species which man's

inhumanity has so nearly crushed out of existence. A long, a sacred

peace should be granted to them; like that which the Swiss so wisely

granted to the Chamois, which, when almost extinct, was thus rendered

numerous as ever. For all, whether Fish or Amphibii there is needed a

season of perfect rest, like the _Truce of God_, which in the olden

day prevented the chivalry of Europe from butchering each other.

These creatures themselves instinctively comprehend what we either

know not or neglect; for, at their season of maternity, they lose

their timidity, and venture to our shores, as though certain that at

such a season, they will be held sacred. At that season, they are in

their greatest beauty a id their greatest strength. Their brilliant

color and their flashing phosphorence indicate the utmost vigor of

their existence, and in every species that is not menacingly

superabundant, that season of reproduction should be respected. Kill

them afterwards? By all means--but pray do not anticipatively kill in

the one fish a whole shoal of fishes.

Every unoffending creature has a right to the moment of happiness, to

that moment when the individual, however lowly placed, goes beyond

the narrow limits of his individual _Self_, and from his dark

individuality, glances into and feels the Infinite Future.

And let us aid Nature; then shall we be blessed, from the lowest

depths to the starry heights; then shall we receive the blessing

glance of that God who hath made both great and small, and who has

commanded us to imitate Him.

BOOK FOURTH.

THE RESTORATION OF THE SEA.