f Biscay were gradually subsiding, after a
gale of wind as violent as it was unusual during that period of the
year. Still they rolled heavily; and, at times, the wind blew up in
fitful, angry gusts, as if it would fain renew the elemental combat; but
each effort was more feeble, and the dark clouds which had been summoned
to the storm now fled in every quarter before the powerful rays of the
sun, who burst their masses asunder with a glorious flood of light and
heat; and, as he poured down his resplendent beams, piercing deep into
the waters of that portion of the Atlantic to which we now refer, with
the exception of one object, hardly visible, as at creation, there was a
vast circumference of water, bounded by the fancied canopy of heaven. We
have said, with the exception of one object; for in the centre of this
picture, so simple, yet so sublime, composed of the three great
elements, there was a remnant of the fourth. We say a remnant, for it
was but the hull of a vessel, dismasted, water-logged, its upper works
only floating occasionally above the waves, when a transient repose from
their still violent undulation permitted it to reassume its buoyancy.
But this was seldom; one moment it was deluged by the seas, which broke
as they poured over its gunwale; and the next it rose from its
submersion, as the water escaped from the portholes at its sides.

How many thousands of vessels--how many millions of property--have been
abandoned, and eventually consigned to the all-receiving depths of the
ocean, through ignorance or through fear! What a mine of wealth must lie
buried in its sands! what riches lie entangled amongst its rocks, or
remain suspended in its unfathomable gulf, where the compressed fluid is
equal in gravity to that which it encircles, there to remain secured in
its embedment from corruption and decay, until the destruction of the
universe and the return of chaos! Yet, immense as the accumulated loss
may be, the major part of it has been occasioned from an ignorance of
one of the first laws of nature, that of specific gravity. The vessel to
which we have referred was, to all appearance, in a situation of as
extreme hazard as that of a drowning man clinging to a single rope-yarn;
yet, in reality, she was more secure from descending to the abyss below
than many gallantly careering on the waters, their occupants dismissing
all fear, and only calculating upon a quick arrival into port.

The _Circassian_ had sai