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HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



aromatic fragrance that blows from the land, are inexpressibly 



sweet and refreshing: 



Lovely seems any object that shall sweep 

 Away the vast — salt — dread — eternal deep ! 



And thus we find that the low sand-hills of Cape Cod, covered 

 with scrubby woods that descended to the margin of the sea, 

 seemed, at the first glance, a perfect paradise of verdure to the 

 eyes of these poor sea-beaten wanderers." 



The orator and statesman from whom we have already quoted 

 thus eloquently alludes to the providential circumstances attend- 

 ing the arrival of the Mayflower upon the American shore : — 

 "Let us go up in imagination to yonder hill and look out upon 

 the November scene. That single dark speck, just discernible 

 through the perspective glass on the waste of waters, is the 

 fated vessel. The storm moans through her tattered canvas, 

 as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage in Provincetown 

 Harbor ; and there she lies, with all her treasures, not of silver 

 and gold, — for of them she has none, — but of courage, of patience, 

 of zeal, of high spiritual daring. So often as I dwell in imagi- 

 nation on this scene, — when I consider the condition of the 

 Mayflower, utterly incapable as she was of living through 

 another gale, — when I survey the terrible front presented by our 

 coast to the navigator who, unacquainted with its channels and 

 roadsteads, should approach it in the stormy season, — I dare not 

 call it a mere piece of good fortune that the general north and 

 south wall of the shore of New England should be broken by 

 this extraordinary projection of the Cape, running out into the 

 ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to receive and encircle 

 the precious vessel. As I now see her, freighted with the des- 

 tinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep, 

 approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this 

 most remarkable headland presents almost the only point at 

 which, for hundreds of miles, she could with any ease have made 

 a harbor, and this perhaps the very best on the seaboard, I feel 



