ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 161 



and the vast, heat scorched plains of the interior 

 and find renewed life and vitality on the borders 

 of the Atlantic seaboard. The sea in the begin- 

 ning was the mother of all life and we do not 

 know what forms of future perfection she is now 

 nourishing as filmy protoplasm in her depths. 

 She gives us cool fogs to the reopening of our 

 shrivelled pores and just by walking along shore 

 we are touched by this vivific principle which 

 gives such riotous life to all things. There is a 

 saying among Eastern Massachusetts farmer 

 folk that if you will bathe three times in the salt 

 water during the summer you will not feel the 

 cold of the coming winter. Thus is the old myth 

 revived and the modern Achilles may find in- 

 vulnerability beneath the Styx, nor need his heel 

 be left above the tide for his undoing. And the 

 sea has more than that to give us, more than 

 physical well-being and invulnerability to the ar- 

 rows of the winter winds. Out of the green 

 depths come still the mysterious and the unknown 

 and up over the blue rim sail day by day argosies 

 laden with romance. Thus it has always been 

 nor can the peopling of many lands and the find- 

 ing and exploring of all continents and islands. 



