THE TIDES AT ST. MALO. 39 
are the only visible signs of the vicinity of the ocean, whose hoarse 
murmurs are heard resounding from afar. But an astonishing 
change takes place a few hours after, when the town, surrounded 
by the sea, would be a complete island, but for a long, narrow 
causeway called “the Sillon,” which connects it with the main- 
land. On the side fronting the open sea, the tide breaks with 
tremendous rage against the strong buttresses that have been 
raised to oppose its fury, rises foamingly to a height of thirty or 
forty feet, and threatens the tardy wanderer as he loiters on the 
narrow causeway. The cliffs that erewhile were seen to sur- 
round the town are now hidden under the waters, some few 
excepted, that raise their rugged heads like minute islands above 
the circumambient floods. The opposite side of the cause- 
way is also washed by the sea; but here its motions are less 
tumultuous, for after having broken against numberless rocks and 
made a vast circuit, it scarce retains a vestige of its primitive 
strength. On this side lies the vast, but deserted harbour of 
St. Malo, completely dry at ebb-tide; a wide sea during the 
flood. 
Two eminent French authors, Chateaubriand and Lamennais, 
were born at St. Malo, and there can be no doubt that the 
imposing spectacle I have briefly described must have greatly 
contributed to the widening of their intellectual horizon. Daily 
witnesses from their early childhood of one of the grandest phe- 
nomena of nature in all its wild sublimity, the boundless and 
the infinite soon grew familiar to their mind, enriching it with 
splendid imagery and bold conceptions. 
Although the sun and the moon exert some attraction upon 
the smaller and inclosed seas, yet the development of a power- 
ful flood-wave necessarily requires that the moon should act 
upon a sufficiently wide and deep expanse of ocean. Even the 
Atlantic is not broad enough for this purpose, as its equatorial 
width measures no more than one eighth of the earth’s circum- 
ference: and the Pacific itself, notwithstanding its vast area, is 
so studded with islands and shallows, that it presents a much 
more obstructed basin for the action of the tide-wave than 
might be expected, from its apparent dimensions and equatorial 
position. 
Thus it is in the Southern Ocean, where the greatest unin- 
terrupted surface of deep water is exposed to the influence 
