152 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



might confront such awful purity and coldness. An 

 astronomic solitariness and remoteness encompasses 

 the sea. The earth and all remembrance of it is 

 blotted out ; there is no hint of it anywhere. This 

 is not water, this cold, blue-black, vitreous liquid. It 

 suggests not life but death. Indeed, the regions of 

 everlasting ice and snow are not more cold and in- 

 human than is the sea. 



Almost the only thing about my first sea voyage 

 that I remember with pleasure is the circumstance of 

 the little birds that, during the first few days out, 

 took refuge on the steamer. The first afternoon, 

 just as we were losing sight of land, a delicate little 

 wood bird, the black and white creeping warbler, 

 having lost its reckoning, in making perhaps its 

 first southern voyage, came aboard. It was much 

 fatigued and had a disheartened, demoralized look. 

 After an hour or two it disappeared, having, I fear, a 

 hard pull to reach the land in the face of the wind 

 that was blowing, if indeed it reached it at all. 



The next day, just at night, I observed a small 

 hawk sailing about conveniently near the vessel, but 

 with a very lofty, independent mien, as if he had just 

 happened that way on his travels, and was only 

 lingering to take a good view of us. It was amus- 

 ing to observe his coolness and haughty unconcern 

 in that sad plight he was in ; by nothing in his man- 

 ner betraying that he was several hundred miles at 

 sea, and did not know how he was going to get back 

 to land. But presently I noticed he found it not in- 



