A SALT BREEZE 151 



itself keep its equilibrium perpetually disturbed. 

 Thus, "the cradle endlessly rocking," of which our 

 poet sings, is not only bestrode by the winds and 

 swung by the punctual hand of the tides, but the 

 fairest summer weather gives it a nudge, and the 

 bending floor beneath it contributes an impulse. 

 Its rocking is secured beyond peradventure. Dar- 

 win seems to think it is the cradle where the pri- 

 mordial life of the globe had its infancy, — a conclu- 

 sion of science anticipated by an old Greek poet 



who said, — 



" Ocean, father of gods and men." 



Whether or not it rocked man, or the germ of man, 

 into being, there can be little doubt that it will 

 continue to rock after he and all things else are 

 wrapped in the final sleep. 



Its grandest swing, I found during a couple of 

 weeks' sojourn upon the coast, is often upon a fair 

 day. Local winds and storms make it spiteful and 

 angry. They break up and scatter the waves; but 

 some quiet morning you saunter down to the beach 

 and find the sea beating its long roll. The waves 

 run parallel to the shore and come in with great 

 regularity and deliberation, falling upon it in a suc- 

 cession of long, low cataracts, and you realize the 

 force of the Homeric epithet, "the far- resounding 

 sea." It is a sort of prostrate Niagara expiring 

 in intermittent torrents. Often there is a marked 

 explosion from the compression of the air in the 

 hollow cylinder of the curling wave. These long 

 swells are of the character of those which in the 



