on the summer sea as it slept in those for- 

 gotten summers before a sail had ever 

 whitened the blue, or a keel cut evanescent 

 furrows in the trackless waste. 



Every hour has brought its change to 

 make this day memorable; hour by hour 

 the lights have transformed the waters and 

 hung over them a sky full of varied and 

 changeful radiance. Across the line of the 

 distant horizon white sails have come and 

 gone in broken and mysterious procession, 

 and the imagination has followed them far 

 in their unknown journeyings. As silently 

 as they passed from sight, all human 

 history enacted in this vast province of 

 Nature's empire has vanished, and left no 

 trace of itself save here and there a bit of 

 driftwood. There lies the unconquered 

 and forever inviolate kingdom of forces 

 over which no human skill will ever cast 

 the net of conquest. 



The sea speaks to the imagination as no 



other aspect of the natural world does, 



because of its vastness, its immeasurable 



and overwhelming power, its exclusion 



69 





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