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 soPacificthat 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 profoundlylabors 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 capeFarewell, 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 coulddareall—as they did—but coulddowhat 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 hisday. 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—theLaw 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 theyfought shadowsandwalked in the darkness, so! then, those terrible facts have a certain regularity of recurrence, and the seaman, resolute and strong, calmly considers whether hecannot oppose to those regular attacks a defence no less regular. In brief, if the Tempest has itsscience, can we not create and use anart? 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 arenotcapricious, that they are the accident, sometimes, also, the agent of the Tempest, but that, generally speaking, the Tempest is anelectrical 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, awhirlwind. The greatwhirlingtempests 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 Americaand 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 aWhirl-wind, advancing, and at the same timerevolving 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 thatin 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 insouthern 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 theirMotion, not the explanation of theircause; it told nothing, either, of what Storms do, or of what they are.
Here France came to the rescue. In 1840, Peltier published hisCauses of Whirlwinds, and his ingenious and numerous experiments established the fact that whirlwinds, whether at sea or on shore, wereelectrical phenomena, in which the winds play only a secondary part. Beccaria, a full century earlier, had suspectedthat 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, hisDirections, and hisGeography of the Sea. Piddington, less artistical, but not less learned, in hisSeaman'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 sensitivenessgives 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 theupas, the fierce compound ofsimoomandtornado. 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 ghastlylights. 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 notionof the terrible motherTyphon, who, hovering in the sky, picks out her victims and is ever conceiving and bearing theKen Woo, whirlwinds of fire and iron. To that terribleTyphonthey 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 witha good wind. Avoid that samegood 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. Thegreat point to be ascertained is,where is the centre, the nucleus, the terrible home, of this terribleTyphon. 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, theExperience 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 andconfidently."
This is truly sublime. The Tempest is not abolished, it is true; but ignorance, bewilderment, that terriblebewilderment 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 beinguseless, 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 oftreasure 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 thosewho 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 manœuvre 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 thewatch 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, theAurora 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 littlecrystals. 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 mountainappears, 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, intowhich 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 sawhim, asked him if he had, by any chance, fallen in withthe 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 theLilloise, 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 ofhuman 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 asCaptain, but as Vice Admiral. And she was right; he was then still living. TheEsquimaux 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 whichhave 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 ofDesolation. 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. TheErebusand theTerrorwith 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 itwasland; 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 warmclothing. 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 tellsus, 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. ButKane 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 deathof 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 wisestlittle 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 impotencyof 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 wenten 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 theybeen 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 huntsnot, 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 theGenius 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 theman!
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, thesanctity 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 betrue 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 everythingseems 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 werethe 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, andoften 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, toheave, rather than draw them in, brought the poor creatures into that beautiful bay, to them, a veritablechamber 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—Womanlooks 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 extractfrom 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, avast trade is done in Fishfry, 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 fishcanbecome fish in fresh water." In the last century, a German, by the name of Jacobi, discovered, or rather, revived, the art ofartificial 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 becomea 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 mostnutritious 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 theSalmon Leapsof Scotland, Ireland, and Northern England)leap, springing from the tail, over seemingly insurmountable obstacles! Such are the Fish!
Upon land, we take care of ourHorses; why notPRESERVE THE SEA? Why notprotect 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 ofpreservingthat we may the more plentifully kill. We may, if we prudentlyas 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 thepole. 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 theTruce 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 individualSelf, 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.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF SEA BATHING.
The Sea, so ill treated by man, in this pitiless warfare, has been to him most generously kind. When Earth, which he loves so much, when that rude Earth wears, weakens, exhausts him, it is that so much feared, so much abused Sea, which takes him to her bosom, and restores him to new life.
And, in fact, is it not from her that life primitively sprang? She contains within her all the elements of life in a quite marvellous plenitude. Why, then, when we feel ourselves sinking, do we not repair for restoration to the abounding source of life?
That source has space and kindness enough for all, but is especially kind to the too civilized children of men, for the sons and daughters who are suffering for the fathers and mothers, victims of mistaken or sinning Love, less culpable than the sinning parents, yet a thousand fold more punished. The Sea, that vast female, delights to restore them; to their weakness shegives her strength; and restores them young, beautiful, healthful, from the boundless stores of her wide expanse and fathomless depths. Venus, who was born of Ocean, is from Ocean reborn every moment, and not a sick, suffering, peevish, pale, and melancholy Venus, but the triumphant, Venus full of passion and certain of fecundity.
How between this great and salutary, but somewhat rude, strength and our weakness, can there be any connection? What union can there be between elements so greatly disproportioned? That was a serious and difficult question; to solve it required an art, an initiation. To understand that question thoroughly, we must make ourselves acquainted with the time and occasion when this art first revealed itself. Between two ages of strength, the strength of the age of the Renaissance and that of the Revolution, there was a period of depression both moral and physical. The old world had died, the new one was not yet born, and the misbegotten children of worn out parents were weak and unhealthy. On the one hand, the excessive indulgence of the rich; on the other hand, the awful privations of the poor, decimated the nations, and most decimated, precisely those nations which most boasted their civilization. France thrice ruined, from base to apex, in a single century succumbed beneath the orgies of the Regency. England triumphed over our ruin, yet had death anddestruction within her own bosom. Her Puritan idea had departed, and another had not yet come. Weakened by the fierce lusts of Charles II., she was still farther degraded by the paltry briberies of Walpole; and in the debasement of the Public the worst passions of the Individual came to light. The fine book ofRobinsonexhibits the horrors of the terrible Lust of Strong Drink;—a terrible book, that, in which Medicine calls to its aid all the denunciations of Religion, and denounces the gloomy suicide of celibatism.