234 The Pole;-Geographical Activity of the English.

with the Mediterranean, by forming a canal in the Isthmus of Suez. Seleucus Nicator entertained the design of joining the Euxine with the Caspian; and a similar wish has often been expressed to cut through the Isthmus of Darien. And to find a passage to Japan, China, and the whole of the eastern Asiatic coast, by means of the North Seas, has long been a favourite hope with modern governments.

It was once believed, that the region under the North Pole was one vast continent:-now it is thought to be a polar basin. The principal argument for this idea arises out of the communication from Adams to Daines Barrington, that Captain Guy had reached the eighty-third degree of latitude; and, from the mast head of his ship had discovered a clear and unincumbered sea, as far as the eye could reach: the idea is also confirmed by the circumstance, generally agreed upon, that after having passed the ice barrier of Spitzbergen, the sea is open; and that the north winds not only produce the greatest swell, but bring more clear and warm weather, than from any other point of the compass. One cause for the North Polar Sea being so little determined arises out of an apprehension, formerly entertained, that if a ship should be able to reach the pole, as soon as it should stand there, it would fall to pieces; "since the Pole would draw out of her all the iron work."

The ancients explored the land; the moderns explore the sea the English explore both land and sea. Το them there is no boundary. Even the Pacific, magnificent as it is, is but a surface leading to Asia; the Indian a liquid plain leading to Africa; the Atlantic a waste leading to America. They enter every harbour; they bathe in every river; they climb every moun

tain; and penetrate every desert. The ancients improved the science of geography at the time in which they were making every country a desert, by force of arms; and for the gratification of military purposes. The moderns take more extensive strides; and from wiser and more liberal motives;-the extension of commerce. The one discovered seas by exploring the land1; the other discover lands by exploring the sea.

The possession of internal seas has rendered Europe the most favoured people on the globe. The Levant, the Adriatic, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic-the three first having small tides, and the latter none,— resemble four large lakes. And the facility, they have given to the communion of ideas, manners, sentiments, arts, sciences, conveniences and luxuries, has done that for them, which in Asia and Africa is less perfectly performed by caravans; and that, which will, one day, still more adequately be accomplished in America, by vast rivers, having innumerable tributaries flowing into them.

VII.

The Greeks and Romans had the greatest possible horror of dying by shipwreck. They dreaded being dashed against rocks; of being devoured by fishes; and, above all, of remaining unburied for a hundred years. Hence the terror of Eneas, when he had reason to fear, his fleet would be wrecked; hence Horace3 represents the

Montesquieu, with his usual acuteness, has availed himself of this contrast, B. xxi. ch. 7.

spirit of Archytas addressing itself, from the gulf of Venice, where he had been drowned, to a mariner, earnestly desiring him to strew light sand over his body, which lay unburied on the beach. And hence the Romans were accustomed, when they escaped from shipwreck, to hang up their wet clothes in the temple of Neptune, with an inscription, written on a tablet, commemorating their escape1. In case of absolute death, their friends raised to them a cenotaph, and called upon their names with a loud voice, three separate times, with great solemnity.

The Mauritanian deities were chiefly deities of the sea: the Carthaginians, and indeed all the maritime pagan world, worshipped marine powers; and the Romans even sacrificed horses and bullocks, by throwing them into the ocean. The Persians, however, had a great dread of the ocean. This feeling, continuing to increase to the present times, determines them from maritime commerce. The profession of a seaman, therefore, is looked upon with contempt3: and Sadi carried his aversion so far as to exclaim, "I would rather give one hundred tomauns, than

1 Od. ad Pyrrham. These were called Votiva Tabella. The Japanese hang up the Lilium Superbum in vessels, as offerings to their sea-gods.—Vid. Thunberg, vol. iv. p. 119. When a poor man of Rome was saved from this most dreaded of all deaths, he caused a representation to be painted on a tablet, with which he travelled from place to place, procuring alms from the charity of passengers.-Vid. Juven. Sat. xiv. Persons, who were initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri, were supposed to be supernaturally protected from storms and shipwrecks.

2 Aurelius Victor has a passage, confirmative of this. “ Cùm (Pompeius) mari feliciter uteretur, Neptuni se filium confessus est, cumque bobus auratis et equo placavit."

'Morier's second Journey, 4to.

pass over a single wave of the sea!" The Persians seldom eat fish on account of this dislike. The Japanese1, on the contrary, devour every thing their coasts produce: fish of all kinds; sea weeds, and even sea plants.

This dread, on the part of the Persians, may possibly have arisen out of the many shipwrecks on their coast. That they were frequent in the Straits of Babel Mandel is evident from the name, which signifies "the Gate of Lamentation." The Persians frequently apply the term atheist to those who go to sea. They have an invincible aversion to maritime pursuits3; and never sail even upon their own rivers, lest they should defile them: but Sir John Chardin says, there is only one navigable river in all Persia.

Several tribes on the slave-coast of Guinea1 worship the sea as a deity: the natives of Great Benin believe it to be the seat of bliss: and the Maldivians put a quantity of spices, flowers, perfumes, gums, and odoriferous woods into a boat, every year; and leave it to sail at the discretion of the waves, as an offering sometimes to the god of the sea; and at others to the spirit of the wind.

VIII.

When the sea rises in mountains, "Ye carry Cæsar and his fortunes,” frequently rush into the mind. Then is remembered Virgil's admirable description of a storm;

1 Golownin's Nar. Capt. Japan. i. p. 118.

"Bab-al-Mandeb.-Vid. Ouseley's Travels in various Countries in the East, 4to. vol. i. 23.

3 Hyde.-Religion of the Persians.

4 Bosman, p. 349. 362. Ed. 1721.

5 Ibid. p. 424.

6 Leyden on the Languages of the Indo-chinese Nations.

excelled only by Falconer: St. Paul's shipwreck on the island of Malta; and Telemachus, cast upon the island of Calypso. Then the type of Jonah; and the Christian Messiah stilling the storm, and walking on the waters. Then, by the power of association,—the life and paradise of the mind, we remember that passage in Seneca, where he says, that in the progress of life, childhood, youth, manhood and age, follow in succession, as objects pass before our eyes, during a voyage. Or we meditate on the truth and beauty of those similes, which compare the murmur and instability of the waves to the fickle and tumultuous resolutions of the people; and the sea, agitated by different winds, to an army1 confused with various passions.

Addison says, that the sixth book of the Paradise Lost is like a troubled ocean, exhibiting greatness in confusion; while the seventh affects the imagination, like the ocean in a calm. Young likens a man, in the last moments of life, to a ship driven out to sea; and Milton compares the hallelujahs, sung by a multitude of angels, to the murmuring of its waves. Sachsius says, the ocean has a circular motion, like that of the blood; and that the sea is to rivers what the human heart is to the veins and arteries. While some2 have esteemed the soul of the world an ocean; vast and unfathomable; whence proceed angels and the souls of men; all which return to it, as waters return to the bosom of the sea.

In a Javanese inscription, found on a stone in the district of Surabaya, it is said, "the king's army was thrown into confusion with a noise, like the sea inundating a city."

Gassendi, p. 430.