88 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



speedily acquire the richest productions of more 

 favoured climes. Thus, too, we obtain for use in 

 winter the warm furs of the Antarctic seas or of 

 North America. In summer we procure the lighter 

 fabrics produced by warmer climates ; for all these 

 commodities we can exchange the productions of 

 our own ingenuity, which could not otherwise be 

 rendered available to distant nations. 



Thus the cotton of the West Indies is trans- 

 ported to the looms of Britain, and again in a 

 manufactured state sent to supply the inhabitants 

 of India and China. Thus the riches of the Indies 

 are wafted to our shores, and we are enabled to 

 reciprocate the benefit by a happy and beneficial 

 interchange. One of the most striking illustrations 

 of the importance of the ocean as the medium of 

 communication between remote countries is the 

 recent employment of steam navigation in our 

 intercourse with distant Australia. Over thousands 

 of leagues the steam-ship ploughs her way across 

 the pathless deep, carrying the manufactures of 

 Europe to supply the wants of those far-off colonies, 

 and bringing home their gold and their fleeces in 

 return. But these are by no means the only 

 advantages which the ocean confers by affording 

 the means of intercourse between parts of the earth 

 far removed from each other. In the earliest 

 history of civilised society, many centuries before 

 the discovery of the New World, the Mediter- 

 ranean and the adjoining seas, although traversed 

 by timid navigators who scarcely dared to venture 

 beyond sight of land, afforded the means by which 



