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296 THE OCEAN. 



lamps of heaven and the luminous appearances of the 

 deep. The silence was only broken by the murmurs 

 of the breeze passing through our matting sails, or 

 the dashing of the spray from the bows of our boat, 

 excepting at times, when we heard, or fancied we 

 heard, the blowing of a shoal of porpoises, or the 

 more alarming sounds of a spouting whale. 



" At a season such as this, when I have reflected 

 on our actual situation, so far removed, in the event 

 of any casualty, from human observation and assist- 

 ance, and preserved from certain death only by a few 

 feet of thin board, which my own unskilful hands 

 had nailed together, a sense of the wakeful care of 

 the Almighty has alone afforded composure. 



"The contemplation of the heavenly bodies, al- 

 though they exhibit the wisdom and majesty of God, 

 who 'bringeth out their host by number, and call- 

 eth them all by names, by the greatness of His 

 might,' impressed at the same time the conviction 

 that I was far from home, and those scenes which 

 in memory were associated with a starlight evening 

 in the land I had left. Many of the stars which 

 I had beheld in England were visible here: the 

 constellations of the zodiac, the splendours of Orion, 

 and the mild twinkling of the Pleiades, were seen ; 

 but the northern pole-star, the steady beacon of 

 juvenile astronomical observation, the Great Bear, 

 and much that was peculiar to a northern sky, were 

 wanting. The effect of mental associations, con- 

 nected with the appearance of the heavens, is sin- 

 gular and impressive. During a voyage which I 

 subsequently made to the Sandwich Islands, many 



