5 



Chapter 



THE RIVER OF OCEAN— PRIMITIVE 



I 



-T IS natural to feel that the literature of the sea begins with 

 Homer. He was the first to sing at length of the hopes and fears and 

 triumphs of one of the great seafaring people; his stories are full of 

 the wonder and beauty of "the wine-dark sea" and of the feelings of 

 seamen which are properly a mixture of fear and courage, of avoid- 

 ance and desire. He has the feeling of the sea and his characters are 

 often recognizable seamen. It seems reasonable to believe that where 

 his seamanship seems confused or wrong this is due to the scribes 

 and translators and not to the author. 



Homer reflects also the natural association between beautiful 

 women and the sea. It is inevitable that the goddesses of beauty, love 

 and fertility — Aphrodite of the Greeks and Venus of the Romans — 

 should be sea-born creatures. Beautiful mortals also have always been 

 associated with fine ships, and when Homer records the flight of 

 Helen with Paris he is contributing a link in a long chain of such 

 associations in fable and history which may have begun with the 

 fleet of exploration of Hatshepsut, the beautiful Egyptian queen, and 

 which continued with Cleopatra and her barge; Isolde and her fate- 

 ful voyage; Gudrun the fair, and the Norse dragon ships that car- 

 ried her on the first serious attempt to colonize America. Somehow 

 the history-making beauties have always succeeded in boarding the 

 record-breaking liners and the story continues to our own day when 

 yachts fast and beautiful have turned up in our anchorages with 

 appropriately qualified ladies. 



73 



