92 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



change with .the phases of the moon. For "sweet as 

 the moonlight sleeps upon this bank," it is nevertheless 

 full of silent power. Stronger even than the larger sun, 

 because so much nearer to the earth, it raises upon the 

 boundless plains of the Pacific a wave only a few feet 

 high, -but extending down to the bottom of the sea, and 

 moves it onwards, chained as it were to its own path 

 high in heaven. Harmless and powerless this wave rolls 

 along the placid surface of the ocean. But lands arise, 

 New Holland on one side, southern Asia on the other, 

 and the low but immensely broad tidal wave is pressed 

 together and rises upwards, racing rapidly round the sharp 

 point of Africa. Quickly it reaches Fez and Morocco; 

 a few hours later it passes through the Straits of Gibral- 

 tar, and along the coast of Portugal. From thence it 

 rushes, with increased force, into the Channel and past the 

 western coast of England. There the rocky cliffs of Ire- 

 land, and the numerous islands of the northern seas, 

 arrest its rapid course, so that it reaches Norway only 

 after an eight hours' headlong race. Another branch of 

 the same wave hurries along the eastern coast of America, 

 in almost furious haste, often amounting to one hundred 

 and twenty miles an hour; from thence it passes on to 

 the north, where, hemmed in on all sides, it rises here 

 and there to the enormous height of eighty feet. Such 

 is not rarely the case in the Bay of Fundy a circum- 

 stance which shows us forcibly the vast superiority of 

 this silent, steady movement over that of the fiercest tem- 

 pest. For even at that most stormy and most dreaded 

 spot on earth, Cape Horn, all the violence of raging tern- 



