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CHAPTER V. 



THE SEA. 



FROM the consideration of rivers, the transition is 

 natural to that of the sea, the grand parent and 

 destroyer of rivers, the source whence they derive 

 their waters pure and limpid, and into which they 

 discharge them to be cleansed from those impurities 

 which they have acquired in their progress through 

 decaying animal and vegetable substances, and their 

 motion along the surface of the earth. 



To those who are capable of only gazing upon its 

 surface, the ocean is a sublime sight. " The waste of 

 waters," as we are in the habit of calling it though it 

 be any thing but a waste, girdles the globe from pole 

 to pole, and occupies nearly three-fourths of its sur- 

 face. When, on some calm and pleasant day, when 

 there is not a cloud to dapple the sky, or a breath to 

 ruffle the waters, we look out from some lone pro- 

 montory or beetling rock, upon the soft green face 

 of ocean, and see it extending on and on in one glassy 

 level, till it blend its farther blue so softly with that 

 of the air, that we know not which is sea and which 

 sky, but are apt to fancy that this limpid watery 

 curtain is drawn over the universe ; and that the sun, 

 the planets, and the stars, are islands in the same sea 

 in which our own habitation is cast. In the soft but 



