DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN CAMOENs's LUSIAD, 69 



of the surface of the ocean. He describes this surface when, 

 curled by gentle breezes, the short waves flash beneath the 

 play of the reflected beams of light, and again when the ships 

 of Coelho and Paul de Gama contend in a fearful storm against 

 the wildly-agitated elements.* Camoens is, in the strictest 

 sense of the word, a great sea painter. He had served as a 

 soldier, and fought in the Empire of Morocco, at the foot of 

 Atlas, in the Red Sea, and on the Persian Gulf; twice he 

 had doubled the Cape, and, inspired by a deep love of nature, 

 he passed sixteen years in observing the phenomena of the 

 ocean on the Indian and Chinese shores. He describes the 

 electric fires of St. Elmo (the Castor and Pollux of the ancient 

 Greek mariners), " the living light, t sacred to the seaman." 

 He depicts the threatening water-spout in its gradual devel- 

 opment, " how the cloud woven from fine vapor revolves in a 

 circle, and, letting down a slender tube, thirstily, as it were, 

 sucks up the water, and how, when the black cloud is filled, 

 the foot of the cone recedes, and, flying upward to the sky, 

 gives back in its flight, as fresh water, that which it had 

 drawn from the waves with a surging noise. "| "Let the 

 book-leamed," says the poet, and his taunting words might 

 almost be applied to the present age, " try to explain the hid- 

 den wonders of this world, since, trusting to reason and science 

 alone, they are so ready to pronounce as false what is heard 

 from the lips of the sailor, whose only guide is experience." 



The talent of the enthusiastic poet for describing nature is 

 not limited to separate phenomena, but is very conspicuous in 

 the passages in which he comprehends large masses at one 

 glance. The third book sketches, in a few strokes, the form 



* Os Lusiadas de Camoes, canto i., est. 19 ; canto vi., est. 71-82. See, 

 also, the comparison in the description of a tempest raging in a forest, 

 canto i., est. 35. 



t The fire of St. Elmo, " o lume vivo que a maritima genie tern por 

 santo, em tempo de tormenta^^ (canto v., est. 18). One flame, the Hel- 

 ena of the Greek mariners, brings misfortune (Plin., ii., 37) ; two flames, 

 Castor and Pollux, appearing with a rustling noise, " like fluttering 

 birds," are good omens (Stob., Eclog. Phys., i., p. 514; Seneca, Nat. 

 Qucsst., i., 1). On the eminently graphical character of Camoeus's de- 

 scriptions of nature, see the great Paris edition of 1818, in the Vida de 

 Camoes, by Dom Joze Maria de Souza, p. cii. 



t The water-spout in canto v., est. 19-22, may be compared with the 

 equally poetic and faithful description o^ Lucretius, vi., 423-442. On 

 the fresh water, which, toward the close of the phenomenon, appears 

 to fall from the upper part of the column of water, see Ogden On Wa- 

 ter Spouts (from observations made in 1820, during a voyage from Ha- 

 vana to Norfolk), in Silliman's American Journal of Science, vol. xxix., 

 1836, p. 254-260. 



