Ocean's Story; Or Triumphs of Thirty Centuries
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Ocean's Story; Or Triumphs Of Thirty Centuries By Edward Rowland Ocean's Story; Or Triumphs Of Thirty Centuries Section I. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. CHAPTER I. THE PURPOSE OF THIS WORK—THE OCEAN IN THE SCRIPTURAL PERIOD—THE MARVELS OF THE SEA—THE CLASSIC LEGENDS— THE FANTASTIC NOTIONS ENTERTAINED OF THE NORTH AND THE EQUATOR—THE GIANT OF THE CANARIES—THE SEA OF SEA- WEED—THE SPECTRE OF THE CAPE—THE GRADUAL SURRENDER OF THE SECRETS OF THE SEA—IT BECOMES THE HIGHWAY OF NATIONS—ITS PRESENT ASPECT—ITS POETICAL SIGNIFICANCE— ITS MORAL LESSONS. A history of the ocean from the Flood to the Atlantic Telegraph, with a parallel sketch of ship-building from the Ark to the Iron Clad; a narrative of the rise of commerce, from the days when Solomon's ships traded with Ophir, to the time when the steam whistle is heard on every open sea; a consecutive chronicle of the progress of navigation, from the day when the timid mariner hugged the coast by day and prudently cast anchor by night, to the time when the steamship, apparently endowed with reason, or at least guided by instinct, seems almost to dispense with the aid of man,— such a theme seems to offer topics of interest which it would be difficult to find in any other subject. The reader will readily perceive its scope when we have briefly rehearsed what the sea once was to man, and what it now is,—the purpose of the work being to narrate how from the one it has become the other. In early times, in the scriptural and classic periods, the great oceans were unknown. Mankind—at least that portion whose history has descended to us—dwelt upon the borders of an inland, mediterranean sea. They had never heard of such an expanse of water as the Atlantic, and certainly had never seen it. The land-locked sheet which lay spread out at their feet was at all times full of mystery, and often even of dread and secret misgiving. Those who ventured forth upon its bosom came home and told marvellous tales of the sights they had seen and the perils they had endured. Homer's heroes returned to Ithaca with the music of the sirens in their ears and the cruelties of the giants upon their lips. The Argonauts saw whirling rocks implanted in the sea, to warn and repel the approaching navigator; and, as if the mystery of the waters had tinged with fable even the dry land beyond it, they filled the Caucasus with wild stories of enchantresses, of bulls that breathed fire, and of a race of men that sprang, like a ripened harvest, from the prolific soil. If the ancients were ignorant of the shape of the earth, it was for the very reason that they were ignorant of the ocean. Their geographers and philosophers, whose observations were confined to fragments of Europe, Asia, and Africa, alternately made the world a cylinder, a flat surface begirt by water, a drum, a boat, a disk. The legends that sprang from these confused and contradictory notions made the land a scene of marvels and the water an abode of terrors. At a later period, when, with the progress of time, the love of adventure or the needs of commerce had drawn the navigator from the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic, and when some conception of the immensity of the waters had forced itself upon minds dwarfed by the contracted limits of the inland sea, then the ocean became in good earnest a receptacle of gloomy and appalling horrors, and the marvels narrated by those fortunate enough to return told how deeply the imagination had been stirred by the new scenes opened to their vision. Pytheas, who coasted from Marseilles to the Shetland Isles, and who there obtained a glance at the bleak and wintry desolation of the North Sea, declared, on reaching home, that his further progress was barred by an immense black mollusk, which hung suspended in the air, and in which a ship would be inextricably involved, and where no man could breathe. The menaces of the South were even more appalling than the perils of the North; for he who should venture, it was said, across the equator into the regions of the Sun, would be changed into a negro for his rashness: besides, in the popular belief, the waters there were not navigable. Upon the quaint charts of the Middle Ages, a giant located upon the Canary Islands forbade all farther venture westward, by brandishing his formidable club in the path of all vessels coming from the east. Upon these singular maps the concealed and treacherous horrors of the deep were displayed in the grotesque shapes of sea-monsters and distorted water-unicorns, which were represented as careering through space and waylaying the navigator. Even in the time of Columbus, and when the introduction of the compass into European ships should have somewhat diminished the fantastic terrors of the sea, we find that the Arabians, the best geographers of the time, represented the bony and gnarled hand of Satan as rising from the waves of the Sea of Darkness,—as the Atlantic was then called,—ready to seize and engulf the presumptuous mariner. The sailors of Columbus, on reaching the Sargasso Sea, where the collected weeds offered an impediment to their progress, thought they had arrived at the limit of navigation and the end of the world. Five years later, the crew of da Gama, on doubling the Cape of Good Hope, imagined they saw, in the threatening clouds that gathered about Table Rock, the form of a spectre waving off their vessel and crying woe to all who should thus invade his dread dominion. The Neptune of the classics, in short, who disported himself in the narrow waters of the Mediterranean, and of whose wrath we have read the famous mythologic accounts, was a deity altogether bland and debonnaire compared to the gloomy and revengeful monopolist of the seas, such as the historians and geographers of the Middle Ages painted him. And now Columbus had discovered the Western Continent, da Gama had found an ocean route to the Indies, and Magellan, sailing around the world, had proved its sphericity and approached the Spice Islands from the east. For centuries, now, the two great oceans were the scenes of grand and useful maritime expeditions. The tropical islands of the Pacific arose, one by one, from the bosom of the sea, to reward the navigator or relieve the outcast. The Spanish, by dint of cruelty and rapacity, filled their famous Manilla galleons and Acapulco treasure-ships with the spoils of warfare and the legitimate fruits of trade. The English, seeking to annoy a nation with whom, though not at war, they were certainly not at peace, sent against their golden fleets the piratical squadrons of Anson, Drake, and Hawkins. For years property was not safe upon the sea, and trading-ships went armed, while the armed vessels of nations turned buccaneers. The Portuguese and Dutch colonized the coasts and islands of India, Spain sent Cortez and Pizarro to Mexico and Peru, and England drove the Puritans across a stormy sea to Plymouth. Commerce was spread over the world, and Civilization and Christianity were introduced into the desert and the wilderness. Two centuries more, and steam made the Atlantic Ocean a ferry-transit, and the electric telegraph has now made its three thousand miles of salt water but as one link in that girdle which Shakspeare foresaw and which Puck promised to perform. The cable is complete and in working-order from New Orleans to Sebastopol. Having thus rapidly described what the ocean once was in man's estimation, and having cursorily traced the steps by which it has taken its place in the world's economy, it remains for us to say what the ocean now is, and what place it now holds. It is the peaceful Highway of Nations,—a highway without tax or toll. Were the noble idea of the late Secretary Marcy adopted by all nations, private property upon the sea would be sacred even in time of war. If the distances be considered, the sea is the safest and most commodious route from spot to spot, whether for merchandise or man. It has given up its secrets, with perhaps the single exception of its depth, and, like the lightning and the thunderbolt, has submitted to the yoke. Though still sublime in its immensity and its power, it has lost those features of character which once made it mysterious and fantastic, and has become the sober and humdrum pathway of traffic. Mail- routes are as distinctly marked upon its surface as the equator, or the meridian of Greenwich: steamships leave their docks punctually at the stroke of noon. The monsters that plough its waters have been hunted by man till the race is well nigh exhausted; for the leviathan which frightened the ancients is the whale which has illuminated the moderns. The chant of the sirens is hushed, and in its place are heard the clatter of rushing paddle-wheels, the fog-whistle on the banks, the song of the forecastle, the yo-ho of sailors toiling at the ropes, the salute in mid-ocean,—sometimes— alas!—the minute-gun at sea. The romance and fable that once had here their chosen home, have fled to the caves and taken refuge amid the grottos; and the legends that were lately told of the ocean would now be out of place even in a graveyard or a haunted house.