TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
19 
who saw the floods come coursing down the rapids, bend 
upon the brink, and plunge with quickened speed into the 
vexed caldron, sending their peals to the rainbowed hea¬ 
ven, they must have borne an anthem as grand as his wild 
mind could compass—greater even. His bow must have 
dropped, and himself and the unharmed deer stood to¬ 
gether, in mute wonder at Niagara chanting to the shades 
and silence of the old American Wilderness ! 
But the song of the sea ! Is it not more than this ? Miles 
in depth ; hundreds of leagues in breadth ; an immensity 
drop on drop and mass on mass in motion ! The tempest 
piles up the surface into lofty ridges, every inch of which 
emits a peculiar liquid sound, which, mingling sweetly with 
each other far and wide, pulsates through the surrounding 
air and water ! Sweet and boundless melodies of the seas ! 
Ye know that the incumbent air takes up a part of them, 
while another part goes down into the still and motionless 
depths below; the sublime unbroken darkness of the sea! 
It was unpleasant to feel that the screaming cordage of our 
ships and the quarrelling of the hull and the waves, should 
deprive us of hearing the tones of the Pacific waters, during 
the strength of a hurricane, unmarred by any other sound. 
Can it ever be given man to hear it 1 It is the Creator’s 
great choir! Ocean tuned by His own hand, and swept by 
the fingers of His tempest! 
Our good ship, carrying barely sail enough to make 
her obey the helm, beat from the southeast to the north¬ 
west. On the outward tack we generally made a few miles 
on our course, a part of which vre lost on the other. It 
was vexatious to be buffetted thus to no purpose ; to have 
our stomachs in a tumult; our jaws grinding down our 
teeth instead of eating ; but withal it was very amusing. I 
had always thought men in a tolerable state of misery, pos¬ 
sessed increased capacities to render themselves ridiculous. 
A number of common-place things proved this idea to be 
true. Turning-in was one of these. This is a process of 
