Ocean's Story; or, Triumphs of Thirty Centuries: Maritime Adventures, Achievements, Explorations, Discoveries and Inventions; and of the Rise and Progress of Ship-Building and Ocean Navigation, from the Ark to the Iron SteamshipsGoodrich, Frank B. (Frank Boott)
History
Ocean's Story; or, Triumphs of Thirty Centuries: Maritime Adventures, Achievements, Explorations, Discoveries and Inventions; and of the Rise and Progress of Ship-Building and Ocean Navigation, from the Ark to the Iron Steamships
Goodrich, Frank B. (Frank Boott)
Discoveries in geography; Voyages and travels
The orator and statesman from whom we have already quoted thus
eloquently alludes to the providential circumstances attending the
arrival of the Mayflower upon the American shore:--"Let us go up in
imagination to yonder hill and look out upon the November scene. That
single dark speck, just discernible through the perspective glass on
the waste of waters, is the fated vessel. The storm moans through
her tattered canvas, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage
in Provincetown Harbor; and there she lies, with all her treasures,
not of silver and gold,--for of them she has none,--but of courage,
of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring. So often as I dwell
in imagination on this scene,--when I consider the condition of the
Mayflower, utterly incapable as she was of living through another
gale,--when I survey the terrible front presented by our coast to the
navigator who, unacquainted with its channels and roadsteads, should
approach it in the stormy season,--I dare not call it a mere piece of
good fortune that the general north and south wall of the shore of
New England should be broken by this extraordinary projection of the
Cape, running out into the ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to
receive and encircle the precious vessel. As I now see her, freighted
with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of
the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of
this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point at which,
for hundreds of miles, she could with any ease have made a harbor,
and this perhaps the very best on the sea-board, I feel my spirit
raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies. I see the mountains
of New England rising from their rocky thrones: they rush forward
into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range
themselves, a mighty bulwark, around the Heaven-directed vessel. Yes!
the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his
power in substantial manifestations, and gathers the meek company of
his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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