40 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
soul was taken from the symbol of the sea—saiws, the sea; saiwala, a 
little sea, a soul. And this symbolic connection has never been broken 
by the poets of Teutonic race.— 
Seele des Menschen, 
Wie gleichst du dem Wasser! 
Schicksal des Menschen, 
Wie gleichst du dem Wind! 
The mind, that ocean where each kind 
Doth straight its own resemblance find; 
Yet it creates—transcending these— 
Far other worlds and other seas. 
Can it be that the ear is duller than the eye to the infinite appeal 
of water? At least, I like to think it is not always so. Each year, 
when I go down the River, the different currents, eddies, reef-tail 
swirls and tide-rips greet me with voices as individual as those of any 
other life-long friends. I recognize them in the dark, as I should recog- 
nize the voices of my own relations. I know them in ebb and flood, 
in calm and storm, exactly as I know the varying moods and tones 
of men. And, knowing them thus, I love them through all their 
changes. And often, of a winter’s evening, they wake the ear of 
memory within me by a symphony of sound that has now become 
almost like a concerted piece of music. It steals in on me; swells, vibrates 
and thunders; and finally dies away again—much as a “ Patrol” grows 
from pianissimo, through moderato, to fortissimo, and then diminuen- 
does slowly into silence. 
Always, when it begins, I am in my canoe, and there is a universal 
calm. All I hear, aft, is the silken whisper of the tiny eddies drawn 
through the water by the paddle, and, forward, the intermittent purl 
of the cutwater, as it quickens and cleaves in response to every stroke. 
Next, alongshore, I hear the flood tide lipping the sand, pulsing slowly 
through reeds and sedges, and gurgling contentedly into a little half- 
filled cave. Then the stronger tidal currents join in, with the greater 
eddies, reef-tail swirls and tide-rips, “and all the choral waters sing.” 
Then comes the breeze; and, with it, I am in my yawl. It comes at 
first like that single sigh of the air which drifts across the stillest night, 
making the halyards tap the mast a little, the yacht sheer almost im- 
perceptibly, and the rudder swing just enough to make the main-piece 
and pintles whimper gently in their sleep. But it soon pipes up, and 
I am off, with the ripples lapping fast and faster as the yacht gathers 
way. Presently I am past the forelands, where the angry waves hiss 
away to leeward. Then, an ominous smooth and an apprehensive 
hush, as the huge, black-shrouded squall bears down on the wings of 
the wind, with a line of flying foam underneath, where its myriad feet 
