THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 189 



" Down dropp'd the breeze, the sails dropp'd down ; 

 'Twas sad as sad could be : 

 And we did speak only to break 

 The silence of the sea. 



"Day after day, day after day, 



We stuck, nor breath nor motion j 

 As idle as a painted ship 

 Upon a painted ocean." 



Not a cloud tempers the fierce burning rajs of 

 the sun, which shoot directly on our heads ; the deck 

 becomes scalding hot to the feet, the melting pitch 

 boils up from the seams, the tar continually drops 

 from the rigging, the masts and booms display 

 gaping cracks, and the flukes of the anchors are too 

 hot to be touched with impunity. In vain, if we 

 happen to be sailing in a small vessel, which has 

 no awning on board to spread over the quarter- 

 deck, we seek for refuge beneath the sails which 

 hang lazily from the yards and gaffs, inviting the 

 desired gales; for so perpendicular are the fiery 

 beams in the heat of the day, that very little shadow 

 is afforded by the sails, and even that little is con- 

 stantly shifting from the vessel's change of position 

 in the swell. In such circumstances, I have in some 

 measure felt the force of those similitudes in the 

 Sacred Prophets, in which the blessings of the 

 coming reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, after the 

 long apostacy, are likened to "the shadow of a 

 great rock in a weary land." "Thou hast been a 

 shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible 

 ones is as a storm against the wall. Thou shalt 

 bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in 



