250 TEE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



carry it they would consider it a feat, as the bringing 

 of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a feat. 

 The petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they ? 

 This red bowsprit at its roots is high enough to 

 suspend a trapeze; at its head a ladder would be 

 required to mount it from the quay ; yet by-and-by, 

 when the tide at last comes, and its time arrives to 

 move outwards in the dance of a million tons, this 

 mighty bowsprit, meeting the Atlantic rollers in the 

 Bay of Biscay, will dip and bury itself in foam under 

 the stress of the vast sails aloft. The forty-feet 

 billows of the Pacific will swing these three or four 

 thousand or more tons, this giant hull which must be 

 moored even stem to shore, up and down and side to 

 side as a handful in the grasp of the sea. Now, each 

 night as the clouds part, the north star looks down 

 upon the deck; then, the Southern Cross will be 

 visible in the sky, words quickly written, but half a 

 globe apart What was there in Venice to arouse 

 thoughts such as spring from the sight of this red 

 bowsprit? In two voyages my Australian clipper 

 shall carry as much merchandise as shall equal the 

 entire commerce of Venice for a year. 



Yet it is not the volume, not the bulk only; 

 cannot you see the white sails swelling, and the 

 proud vessel rising to the Pacific billows, the north 

 star sinking, and the advent of the Southern Cross ; 

 the thousand miles of ocean without land around, the 

 voyage through space made visible as sea, the far, far 

 south, the transit around a world ? If Italian painters 

 had had such things as these to paint, if poets of old 

 time had had such things as these to sing, do you 



