250 • CLASSICAL ABNORMITIES.
All sprinkled \vas the wide ocean with ships, the wavy plains with moving congregations. One is the counterpart of the other ; the ocean is but billowy hills and restful plains, the mountains petrified waves. All the world was up, and every man wished to be a-top of it; for long ages ago the golden crop was sown, and now the golden harvest is to be gathered. Following the phantom hope, following the fantastic visions of his brain, starboard, larboard, now to the south, now to the west and north, fitful fate leading, ten thousand men were on these ships whose thousand roads were here converging. Virtue, health, knowl- edge, fame, wealth, and heavenly expectation all lay in this one direction. Drifting south toward the burningr sun, I beingf also there, softer and warmer broke the breeze upon our brow, and warmer grew the waves as, sailing southward from out the black night and thundering sky, we dashed into the day- light. The sky was studded with new stars; and nightly came the bashful moon creeping timidly up from the horizon far behind the clouds, trembling at her own presumption after so gorgeous a display of the sun's majesty. Round the land's end and steering northward, with certain thousand leagues yet to sail, three several times with chafing spirits in unwel- come rest we lay twelve days wasting of famine and weariness, waiting the tardy wind. Yet presently with fresh wind we onward swiftly drive again as if for our ship, as for that of the ancient mariner, the wind opened before and closed behind. As Anaxa- goras remarked of hades, the distance to California in those days was about the same from one place as from another.
There are evils springing from ocean travel, yet one cannot but be unproved by it. Go on board a steamer, shut yourself in your room, throw yourself on your bunk, and even amidst the frequent paroxysms arising from troublous unrest, the intellect seems to enlarge and become luminous like the phos
