My imagination became fired with enthusiasm, and my heart elated with pride. I was about to secure to my name a conspicuous and imperishable place on the tablets of History, and a niche of the first order in the temple of Fame. I moved like one who trod on air; for whose achievements had equalled mine? The voyage of Columbus was but an excursion on a fish pond, and his discoveries, compared with mine, were but trifles; a summer sea and a strip of land, where common sense must have convinced any man of ordinary capacity that there must be land, unless Providence were in that one instance more wasteful of its works than in all its other doings. His was the discovery of a continent, mine of a new World! My mind flew on the wings of thought to my native country; I compared my doings and my sensations with those of that swarm of sordid beings who waste their lives in Wall-street, or in the purlieus of the courts intent on gain, and scrambling for the wrecks of the property of their unfortunate fellow beings, or hiring out the efforts of their minds to perform such loathsome work as their employers would pay them for;--men who feel themselves ennobled by their wealth, or by their technical knowledge; who think themselves superior to the useful classes of society; from whom I had often heard the scornful observation, 'he is nothing but a shipmaster;' as if those men who live and thrive but by the infirmities and vices of society were ennobled by their profession, and the hardy and adventurous mariner, whose occupation leads him to every climate and through every sea, to gather like the bee the useful and the delicious for the comfort and gratification of the native hive, should be degraded by his calling. CHAPTER VII. Description of the first view of the coast.--The Author names the discovered country Symzonia.--Enters the harbour.--His first interview with the Symzonians.--Sketch of their appearance.--He commences the study of the Symzonian language.--Wonderful powers of mind displayed by the natives.--Account of an ærial vessel. The mild oblique rays of the morning sun gilded to our view "A scene surpassing Fancy's vision."