396 THE SEA IN THE LIFE OF THE NATIONS. 



valley of the Eurotas, and further debarred from foreign traffic by the 

 artificial obstacle of iron coin not passing current abroad; the latter, 

 the Athenians, the Ionian race of progressive seamen, reveling in the 

 sea breezes of the Jl^gean, and, their ambition overleaping the bound- 

 aries of space, full of the joyous desire of achievement. 



Primitive man in all probability was barely acquainted with the 

 ocean. For later generations it was an object of fear and terror; but 

 when men began to inhabit the seacoast, drawing freely upon the 

 treasures of the deep and making its broad back amenable to their 

 pleasure in reaching distant shores, they approached it closer and 

 closer. Yet man never succeeded in confining the sea in the fetters of 

 slaverj'^; on the contrary, he came to worship it as a ci'eative deity. 

 The entrancing beauty of the sea when in calm weather the sails glide 

 peacefully across its mirror-like surface, genially reflecting by day 

 the brilliance of the sun, and by night the silvery sparkle of the star- 

 studded sky; or, when the storm whips up the waves, flaming streaks 

 of lightning flash through the livid dullness of cloud and water, the 

 breakers beat against the precipitous rock, and the vessel is tossed 

 about by the tempest; and again, when, after the gale subsides, 

 nature is once more serene, and deepening colors in many-hued play, 

 never seen in such perfection on land, are shed harmoniously over sea 

 and sky. All this not only inspired poetic descriptions in Homer's 

 and Ossian's epics, it reechoes in accents true to nature, in the simple 

 lyrics improvised by the strand folk; and the painters of all seafaring 

 nations that have attained to distinction in art have immortalized the 

 awe of man at first sight of the grandeur of the ocean. 



Closeness to the sea has powerfully promoted science and technical 

 skill, if only by urging both the construction of necessary vessels and 

 steady improvement in the art of building them. To adduce the com- 

 pletest instance, how multifarious have been the applications of scien- 

 tific principles and the demands made upon technical ingenuity since 

 the nineteenth century created the steamboat, which enables man to 

 cross the ocean in the face of wind and tide. The eflfort to make navi- 

 gation as secure as possible has indirectly had a furthering influence 

 upon a large number of the sciences. On the Caroline Islands there 

 are still living, hoary with age, a few members of the remarkable 

 guild in which certain astronomical knowledge valuable in steering 

 boats was hereditary. It knew accurately the position of the fixed 

 stars with regard to the summer and the winter horizon, and at the 

 same time it had a more precise acquaintance with the relative situa- 

 tion of islands for many miles around than the geography of the civil- 

 ized nations contemporary with it could boast. To Italian navigators 

 our sea service owes the introduction of the compass, based upon the 

 peculiarity of the magnetic needle, first noticed in China. Not only 

 has the compass kept numberless vessels from straying out of their 



