BEYOND THE REACH OF MAN’s BRAIN. 
379 
river*' was a moving ocean, the “stranded ship” a rough 
and towering mass of loosely-piled rocks, and the “gurg- 
ling and foaming of the unsteady eddy” was the surging 
of the tortui’ed waters, which, as we slowly neared in 
spite of rising steam, was fast increasing to a deafening 
roar. 
There are some throes of nature which God never in- 
tended man to describe. lie reserves them in the wan- 
dering air, in the boiling centre of our common earth, in 
the fathomless depths of the slumbering ocean, or in the 
misty depths of the failing imagination, until such time 
as he sees fit to bring them before us in the shape of 
agents in his own vast and inappreciable schemes. What 
pen ever yet did justice to the raging breath of the West 
India hurricane, to the destroying action of the great vol- 
cano of Hawaii, or to the scenes of ruin and desolation 
which follow in the trail of the mysterious “bore” of the 
Hoogly and other Eastern rivers? My pen also fails to do 
justice to the scene which I have attempted to place be- 
fore the reader. 
As I have already remarked, there were three of these 
rocks, — one immensely large, the others comparatively 
small. They were separated by passages of probably fifty 
or sixty feet in width, and were gaped and undermined 
at the w'ater’s edge by several gloomy-looking caves, 
through and down which the rushing sea seemed finding 
a channel to the very bowels of the earth. It was opposite 
the larger of these rocks, and distant from it only some 
three or four hundred yards, that we found ourselves after 
the steamer had rounded to and commenced to measure 
her speed with that of this moving ocean. Immediately 
