Twenty-two years ago, as I said, I was sketching, in London, the outlines of the _Natchez_ and of _Atala_; I have now, in my Memoirs, come to just the period of my travels in America: that fits in perfectly. Let us wipe out those two-and-twenty years, as they are, in fact, wiped out from my life, and start for the forests of the New World: the story of my embassy shall come at its own date when God pleases; but provided I remain here a few months, I shall have the pleasure of coming from the Falls of Niagara to the army of the Princes in Germany, and from the army of the Princes to my retirement in England. The Ambassador of the King of France will be able to tell the story of the French Emigrant in the very spot where the latter spent his exile. * The last book ended with my embarkation at Saint-Malo. Soon we left the Channel, and the immense swell from the west told us that we had reached the Atlantic. It is difficult for people who have never been to sea to imagine the feelings which one experiences when looking over the side of a ship and seeing nothing but the grave face of the deep on every hand. The dangerous life of the sailor has about it an independence which comes from the absence of land: the passions of mankind are left behind on shore; between the world which one is quitting and that for which one is making, one has no love and no country save the element upon which one is borne. No more duties to fulfill, no more visits to pay, no more newspapers, no more politics. The very language of the sailors is not the ordinary language: it is the language spoken by the ocean and the sky, the calm and the tempest. You inhabit a watery universe among creatures whose garments, tastes, manners, and faces are different from those of the auto-chthonic peoples; they combine the rudeness of the sea-wolf with the lightness of the bird. The cares of society are not seen upon their brow; the wrinkles which cross it resemble the folds of the lowered sail and are hollowed out less by age than by the north wind, as in the waves. The skin of these creatures, impregnated with salt, is red and hard, like the surface of the surge-swept rock. [Sidenote: Nautical talk.] The sailors become enamoured of their ship; they weep with regret on leaving her, with affection on rejoining her. They are unable to stay at home with their families; after swearing a hundred times that they will not again expose themselves to the sea, they find it impossible to live without it, like a youth who is unable to tear himself from the arms of a moody and faithless mistress.