gh and I would not look back. Although I had passed many happy hours
in the forecastle, free from care and responsibility, and associating
with men whose minds, if may be, were uncultivated, but whose heads were
well furnished and whose hearts were in the right place, yet visions of
an important station on "the quarter-deck," at no distant period, were
often conjured up by my imagination; and I resolved that many day
should not pass before I would again brave the perils, share the strange
excitement, and court the joys which accompany life on the sea.

Chapter XXXVIII. THE SEA, AND SAILORS

When we embark on the ocean, we are astonished at its immensity, bounded
only by the horizon, with not a speck of land, a solitary rock, or
landmark of any description, to guide the adventurers cast adrift on
its broad surface, with "water, water, every where;" and when we see its
face agitated by storms, and listen to the thunder of its billows, and
reflect on its uncertain and mysterious character, and on the dangers
with which it has been associated in every age, we wonder at the courage
and enterprise of those early navigators, strangers to science,
who dared embark on the waste of waters in vessels of the frailest
construction, to explore the expanse of ocean and make discovery of,

"New lands,
Rivers and mountains on the spotted globe."

Even familiarity with the sea, which has become the great highway
of nations, does not diminish its sublimity, its wild beauties, its
grandeur, and the terrible power of its wrath.

The immensity of the sea, notwithstanding its surface has been
traversed and measured by thousands of voyagers for centuries, fills the
contemplative mind with awe, as a wonderful creation of Almighty Power.
One can hardly realize its vast extent from figures and calculations,
without sailing over its surface and witnessing its immensity, as day
after day passes away, the cry being still "onward, onward!" and the
view bounded on every side by the distant horizon.

On gazing down into its depths, when not a breath of wind sweeps over
its surface, when its face is like a polished mirror, we find the water
almost as transparent as the air we breathe, yet the keenest optics
can penetrate but a few fathoms below the surface. The movements, the
operations instinct with life, that are constantly taking place in that
body of water, and the mighty changes which are going on in the vast
tract of earth on