THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 189 
“Down dropp’d the breeze, the sails dropp’d down : 
’Twas sad as sad could be: 
And we did speak only to break 
The silence of the sea. 
“Day after day, day after day, 
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean.” 
Not a cloud tempers the fierce burning rays of 
the sun, which shoot directly on our heads; the deck 
becomes scalding hot to the feet, the melting pitch 
boils up from the seams, the tar continually drops 
from the rigging, the masts and booms display 
gaping cracks, and the flukes of the anchors are too 
hot to be touched with impunity. In vain, if we 
happen to be sailing in a small vessel, which has 
no awning on board to spread over the quarter- 
deck, we seek for refuge beneath the sails which 
hang lazily from the yards and gaffs, inviting the 
desired gales; for so perpendicular are the fiery 
beams in the heat of the day, that very little shadow 
is afforded by the sails, and even that little is con- 
stantly shifting from the vessel’s change of position 
in the swell. In such circumstances, I have in some 
measure felt the force of those similitudes in the 
Sacred Prophets, in which the blessings of the 
coming reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, after the 
long apostacy, are likened to “the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land.” “Thou hast been a 
shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible 
ones is as a storm against the wall. Thou shalt 
bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in 
