26 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



The sailor, to whom once the route was trackless and un- 

 trodden, now consults a volume of charts which he has obtained 

 from the National Observatory, and finds his course laid out 

 upon data derived from analogy and oft-repeated experience. 

 He takes this or that direction in accordance with known facts 

 of the prevalence of winds or the motion of currents. He 

 keeps a record of his own experience, that in its turn it may 

 be useful to others. He has plans and surveys which give him 

 the bearings of every port, the indentations of every coast, the 

 soundings of every pass. Beacons warn him of reefs and 

 sunken rocks, and buoys mark out his course through the shal- 

 lows of sounds and straits. A modern light-house costs a million 

 dollars, and a breakwater involves the finances of a state. If a 

 new light-house is erected, or is the warning lamp for any reason 

 discontinued, upon any coast, the fact is made known to the 

 commerce of all nations by a "Notice to Mariners," inserted in 

 the marine department of the newspapers most likely to meet 

 their eye. A vessel at sea is safer from spoliation than is the 

 traveller upon the high road or the sojourner in a city ; for 

 there are robbers and depredators everywhere upon the land, 

 while there is not a pirate on the ocean. There are well-laden 

 treasure-ships in the Panama and California waters, as in the 

 times of Drake and Anson ; but the world is much older than it 

 was, and buccaneers and flibustiers now only infest the land. 



In short, the ocean, once a formidable and repellant element, 

 now furnishes Christian food and healthful employment to 

 millions. Instead of serving to affright and appall the dwellers 

 upon the continents which it surrounds, it renders their atmo- 

 sphere more respirable, it affords them safe conveyance, and 

 raises for them a school of heroes. The ocean, then, has a 

 history : it has a past worth narrating, adventures worth telling, 

 and it has played a part in the advancement of science, in the 

 extension of geographical knowledge, in the spread of civiliza- 

 tion and the progress of discovery, which it is eminently worth 



