152 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



Hudson follow the passage of one of the great 

 steamers, — large, measured, uniform. Something 

 here has passed, probably a cyclone far at sea; and 

 these breakers, with their epic swing, are the echo 

 of its retreating footsteps. 



Nothing is more singular and unexpected to 

 the landsman than the combing of the waves, — a 

 momentary perpendicular or incurving wall of water, 

 a few yards from shore, with other water spilling 

 or pouring over it as over a milldam, thus exhib- 

 iting for an instant a clear, perfectly-formed cata- 

 ract. But instantly the wall crumbles, or is crushed 

 down, and in place of it there is a wild caldron of 

 foaming, boiling water and sand. 



There seems to be something more cosmic, or shall 

 I say astronomic, in the sea than in the shore. Here 

 you behold the round back of the globe: the lines 

 are planetary. You feel that here is the true sur- 

 face of the sphere, the curving, delicate sides of 

 this huge bubble. On the land, amid the wrinkles 

 of the hills, you have place, fixedness, locality, a 

 nook in the chimney-corner; but upon the sea you 

 are literally adrift; place is not, boundaries are not, 

 space is vacant. You are upon the smooth disk 

 of the planet, like a man bestriding the moon. 

 Under your feet runs the line of the earth's rotund- 

 ity, and round about you the same curve bounds 

 your vision. 



Then the sea brings us nearer that time when 

 the earth was without form and void, — a vast, 

 shoreless, and therefore voiceless, sea. You look 



