Nature s Music, Art, and Industry 67 



toad, and yet the toad is a beauty compared with 

 some of the reptilian and aquatic forms. Leaning 

 over the guards of a sub-arctic ship, I saw leaping 

 salmon showing their yellow sides, and glossy fur- 

 seals making their curving leaps in the air, while a 

 cold, clammy, horrible devil-fish rose to the surface 

 near the ship's side. 



Saint John had a poet's idea of distances and 

 perspectives. His glassy sea was wide. He had 

 to listen for the voices. His strong angels would 

 not have flown had the space they traversed been 

 narrow. His river diminished in its vista of ever- 

 blooming and ever-fruiting trees, and reappeared 

 far away, its silver toned by the blue. The notes of 

 the harp were borne to him on waves of voices, so 

 softened that he compared the music to the sound 

 of breakers on a distant shore. The near-by crash 

 startles and shocks; far away, it soothes. A near-by 

 thunder-crash is not thunder. It is the sharp 

 "crack" of a rifle multiplied a hundred times; 

 and the sound is gone as instantly. To hear the 

 thunder we must wait for the return of the echoes. 

 If the situation be favorable, we shall learn into 

 what music Nature will convert that deafening and 

 shocking explosion. From side to side of the 

 ravine or valley, from cloud to cloud, and from 

 cloud to forest, it strikes the keys of continually 

 diminishing and softening notes, till at last it is no 

 more than the sough of a gentle breeze in the top 

 of a pine. 



