Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/30

august surroundings may in itself, perhaps, be regarded as a tribute to their majesty. The mind may be only taking refuge in little things from the oppression of great ones, just as Charles Lamb had, he tells us, to counteract the awe-inspiring impression of the mountains in the Lake Country by "thinking of the ham and beef shop in Vinegar-yard." After all, too, Nature can better afford to put up with the indifference of man in this case than in almost any other; since there is no situation in which at her pleasure she can so easily compel his homage. Her skies have but to frown upon him, her sea has but to wrinkle its terrible brows, and puny man is at once recalled to a due sense of her awful presence. When that happens he more than makes up for his former irreverence; and happen it did to us some forty-eight hours before reaching our destination. We foolishly overtook a gale—an error inexcusable to so slow a boat—and from six o'clock of one night till about the