122 



Idle Days in Patagonia. 



that of the landsman. Melville relates an anecdote 

 of an old sailor who swooned from terror at the 

 sight of an ocean white with the foam of breakers 

 among which the ship was driven. He afterwards 

 declared that it was not the thought of the danger, 

 for to danger he was accustomed, but the whiteness 

 of the sea that overcame him. And to his animistic 

 mind that whiteness was nothing but the sign 



A milky Sea. 



of ocean's wrath the sight of its tremendous 

 passion and deadly purpose proved too appalling. 



There is no doubt that the conditions of the 

 sailor's life tend to bring out and strengthen the 

 latent animism that is in all of us ; the very ship he 

 navigates is to his mind alive and intelligent, how 

 much more the ocean, which, even to landsmen on 

 each return to it after an interval, seems no mere 

 expanse of water, but a living conscious thing. It 



