THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 
171 
a breadth, of view which is almost equivalent to motion. 
In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as 
far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far 
as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or 
if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help 
hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. 
The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale 
or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in 
the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report 
the news it brings. No creature could move slowly 
where there was so much life around. The few wreck¬ 
ers were either going or coming, and the ships and the 
sand-pipers, and the screaming gulls overhead; nothing 
stood still but the shore. The little beach-birds trotted 
past close to the water’s edge, or paused but an instant 
to swallow their food, keeping time with the elements. 
I wondered how they ever got used to the sea, that they 
ventured so near the waves. Such tiny inhabitants the 
land brought forth! except one fox. And what could 
a fox do, looking on the Atlantic from that high bank ? 
What is the sea to a fox ? Sometimes we met a wrecker 
with his cart and dog, — and his dog’s faint bark at us 
wayfarers, heard through the roaring of the surf, sounded 
ridiculously faint. To see a little trembling dainty¬ 
footed cur stand on the margin of the ocean, and ineffec¬ 
tually bark at a beach-bird, amid the roar of the Atlan¬ 
tic ! Come with design to bark at a whale, perchance ! 
That sound will do for farmyards. All the dogs looked 
out of place there, naked and as if shuddering at the 
vastness; and I thought that they would not have been 
there had it not been for the countenance of their mas¬ 
ters. Still less could you think of a cat bending her 
steps that way, and shaking her wet foot over the 
