268 FKESH FIELDS 



For it must be admitted that a voyage at sea is 

 more impressive to the imagination than to the 

 actual sense. The world is left behind; all stand- 

 ards of size, of magnitude, of distance, are vanished; 

 there is no size, no f orm, no perspective ; the uni- 

 verse has dwindled to a little circle of crumpled 

 water, that journeys with you day after day, and to 

 which you seem bound by some enchantment. The 

 sky becomes a shallow, close-fitting dome, or else 

 a pall of cloud that seems ready to descend upon 

 you. You cannot see or realize the vast and vacant 

 surrounding; there is nothing to define it or set it 

 off. Three thousand miles of ocean space are less 

 impressive than three miles bounded by rugged 

 mountains walls. Indeed, the grandeur of form, 

 of magnitude, of distance, of proportion, are only 

 upon shore. A voyage across the Atlantic is an 

 eight or ten day sail through vacancy. There is 

 no sensible progress; you pass no fixed points. Is 

 it the steamer that is moving, or is it the sea? or 

 is it all a dance and illusion of the troubled brain ? 

 Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, you are in the 

 same parenthesis of nowhere. The three hundred 

 or more miles the ship daily makes is ideal, not 

 real. Every night the stars dance and reel there 

 in the same place amid the rigging; every morning 

 the sun comes up from behind the same wave, and 

 staggers slowly across the sinister sky. The eye 

 becomes a-hunger for form, for permanent lines, for 

 a horizon wall to lift up and keep off the sky, and 

 give it a sense of room. One understands why 



