ew ahead.

It was impossible to behold, without a portion of romantic enthusiasm,
the dazzling radiance of the orb of day, as it went down in splendour
beyond the gleaming waves. A thousand affecting emotions are liable to
be excited by the prospect of that mighty sea whose farther boundaries
lie in another hemisphere--whose waters have witnessed the noblest feats
of maritime enterprise, and the fiercest conflicts of hostile fleets.
Where shall we find the man to whom science is dear, who dreams not of
Columbus, when he first feels himself rocked by the majestic billows
of the Atlantic--who regards not the golden line of light, which
the setting sun casts over the waste of waters, as a type of the
intellectual illumination experienced by the ocean pilgrim, when he
first steered his bark into its solitudes? Who can survey, even the
hither strand of that vast sea, without reflecting that the waves that
break at his feet have laved the palm-fringed shores of America; and
that the bones of millions--the pride, and pomp, and treasure of
nations--repose in the same capacious tomb?

Anxious to be a spectator of the perils that beset navigation among
these islands, I repaired to the deck before day-break, at which time,
according to our captain's calculation, we were likely to double the
Corbiere--a well-known promontory on the western side of Jersey--which
requires to be weathered with great circumspection. Jersey was already
visible on our larboard bow--a lofty precipitous coast. Wind and tide
were in our favour, and we swept smoothly and rapidly round the cape;
but the jagged summits of the reefs that environ it, and the impetuosity
of the currents, bore incontestable evidence to the verity of the tales
of misfortune which our captain associated with its name. The rock
which bears the appellation of the Corbiere, is close in shore, and
so grotesque in form, as to be readily singled out from the adjacent
cliffs. A reef, visible only at low water, shoots from it a considerable
distance into the sea, and another ledge of the same aspect, lies still
farther seaward; consequently the course of a careful pilot, is to hold
his way free through the channel between them. If a lands-*man may be
permitted to make an observation on a nautical point, I would say that
our steersman kept the peak of the Corbiere exactly on a level with the
adjacent precipices, till we were directly abreast of the headland, and
then stood abruptly in-shore