60 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMA.C. [November, 
yielding the valuable article from which its name is derived. But, 
so changeable are the scenes of a sailor's life, so fickle and 
treacherous the elements above and beneath him, that even this 
passage was not without its soul-touching and heart-thrilling inci- 
dents, embracing in their extremes, and in the highest possible 
degree, the essential qualities of the beautiful and the sublime. 
There are but few, perhaps, who have not experienced and felt 
the charms of evening, as the last golden beams of the setting 
sun cast a milder glow of mellowing light and shade on all 
around. It is not romance : — there is a high-wrought sympathy 
— a pure and holy feeling, which often passes over the mind 
in contemplation of such a scene. We had enjoyed it on 
shore ; but never dreamed that the ocean-tossed mariner was 
favoured with aught so lovely. It was an evening when the 
troubled waters of the ocean had not wholly subsided from the 
effects produced by a heavy blow of several days. The sun was 
slowly declining in the west, making his passage through numer- 
ous silvery and golden clouds, which threw upon a bank of other 
dark vapours which were still hovering in the east, an appearance 
not unlike billows of fire, undulating like the sea beneath them. 
" The sun's bright orb, dech'ning all serene, 
Now. glanced obliquely o'er the watery scene : 
Its heaving surface, lovely to behold, 
Glows in the west, a sea of living gold." 
Falconee. 
To the north and to the south rose masses of beautiful clouds 
of snowy whiteness, whose upper edges were tinged with gold ; 
these changing into every form above, while the dark red tinge 
upon the water, or sparkling sea beneath, presented, altogether, a 
picture so beautiful, that language has not power to describe it; 
nor could the pencil command sufiiciently varied colours, though 
dipped in the teints of the rainbow, and touched by the hand of a 
Raphael, to delineate the scene, or impart its beauties to the 
glowing canvass. None will call this language too strong except 
such as have not seen, and of course cannot appreciate, the 
grandeur of ocean's landscape, upon which the oldest and roughest 
sailor cannot look without a brighter countenance, and a silent but 
heartfelt acknowledgment of that Being " who stretcheth out the 
firmament, and holdeth the ocean in the hollow of his hand !" 
