University of Virginia Library

A VOYAGE TO EUROPE.

Washington Irving crossed the Atlantic, and
wrote a beautiful piece thereupon, entitled “The
Voyage,” which delighted every one. The natural
consequences ensued. All the gentlemen who
crossed the Atlantic afterwards, concluded to do as
Washington Irving had done, and delight every
one likewise, so that in the course of a short time
there was no scarcity of marine narratives; and
the dwellers in great cities, on both sides, had very
particular information afforded them of the perils
of such as “went down to the sea in ships” during
the summer months. These adventurous men and
predestined authors kept a regular diary of the days
on which they ate lamb, and the days on which
they ate chicken, and the days on which the pecuniary
concerns of the captain were benefited by
the disorganized state of their system, and they
subsisted on rice-water and hope: they severally

furnished a description of the ocean in a calm, and
a description of the ocean in a storm, for which latter
purpose the ocean was afflicted with more storms
from May to September than sailors ever heard tell
of. They stated, for the first time, that the sea was
the “symbol of immensity”—that the water was
green on soundings, and “cerulean blue” off; and
added their testimony, founded upon actual observation,
to the mass of evidence already before the
world, that it contained many whales, sharks, porpoises,
and other fishes, to which were appended
brief touches of natural history as they went along,
and invariably a piece of fine writing concerning
“sunset on the ocean,” giving an account how that
every-day luminary “goes down behind the wilderness
of waters.” They moreover let the reader have
a minute insight into the state of their feelings, the
workings of their bosoms, &c. as they leaned over
the ship's side, gazed upon the vasty deep, and
thought of the friends and home they had left behind
them; and also their vague and very extraordinary
speculations concerning the land that lay
before them—all which, is it not to be found expanded
over an infinite number of pages in the
infinite number of “Letters from Europe,” which
quietly repose on the back shelves of the establishments
of Messrs. Bliss and Carvill, Broadway, and
other incautious booksellers?

Such being the state of things, it would ill become
an humble individual to affect singularity by
breaking through an established rule; and the subscriber,
therefore, under the impression that it is a
debt due to decorum and mankind, proceeds to inform
the human race of what he saw and suffered.
If I am not as interestingly minute as some of
my predecessors, it must be attributed to the unfortunate
fact of having lost a valuable “daily journal”
overboard, in which the most trivial circumstances
were carefully noted down, with appropriate
moral reflections attached to each, and the following
are therefore merely general recollections thrown
together without order or discrimination.

In the first place, I hate the sea as much as Satan
is said, in catholic countries, to hate holy water;
and, notwithstanding all the fine poetry that has
been written about it, think it, in every respect, the
greatest bore in creation. To me, to be

brings a miserable feeling of lassitude and confinement,
rather than of freedom and exultation. It
is the most weary, dull, monotonous, unsociable
place upon which human beings, with any
kindly warmth in their hearts or blood, can sojourn.
There is not any thing with which the imprisoned
spirit can sympathize. On land, though that land
be as sterile and barren as the banks of the river
Jordan, or the most unfertile parts about Cape Cod,
there is still some inanimate object or other to which
the heart can attach itself—a rock, a tree, a bubbling
spring, which, after familiarity hath made it
pleasant to the eye, we are loth to leave behind and
glad to see again. Sterne hath beautifully, and no
less beautifully than truly said, that man must love
one thing or another, and that for his own part,
were he in a desert he would love some cypress; but
his affections would be sadly puzzled on what to
fix themselves in the watery deserts which separate
country from country. The dark waves keep
tumbling over and over each other, for ever changing
yet still the same, till the fatigued eye turns
sickeningly away from this very blue prospect.
You even feel sorry for the sullen, noiseless birds
that keep eternally wheeling and floating above the
curling billows, and regret the doom allotted them
figuratively to seek “their bread upon the waters,”
or, what is pretty much the same thing to them—
their fish. With all their exemption from the murderous
sports of man, how unenviable seems their
fate, compared with that of the land birds. They
have no constant mate expecting them at evening
time—no home—no warm nest into which they
may creep and fold their weary wings and be at
rest; but when the close of day puts an end to their
piscatory pursuits, they squat themselves down upon
the cheerless waters with but small assurance of
being a live bird in the morning, should some shark
or other fowl-loving fish pass that way before they
are awake and on the wing. Well; there is retribution
in the deed—why should not the destroyer
be destroyed? they have preyed upon fish, why not
fish prey upon them?

To all who rave and make poetry about the
beauty and delights of a summer sea, I especially
recommend the middle of the Atlantic during what
is appropriately enough termed “a dead calm”—
the ship rolling lazily and heavily from side to side,
the sails flapping drowsily against the masts, and a
burning, blistering sun sucking the melted pitch
and rosin out of the seams of the deck. Of all the
suicidal situations in which man can be placed, I
think this decidedly the most tempting; and believe,
if life could be ended by a wish, few of the
unhappy passengers would see the shore again; but
fortunately it requires some little energy—some
slight exertion to drown yourself, and really you
are so very listless—so completely unstrung, that a

man cannot be at the trouble of tumbling himself
overboard. But then, cries the landsman, what a
delightful resource must books be in such a situation.
Alas! alas! your mind is as debilitated as
your body, and just as incapable of bending its faculties
to a salutary purpose. Shakspeare, Milton,
Byron, or any thing nervous or exciting, is not to
be borne; and about the strongest mental food that
the mind can digest in this predicament is a diluted
love-story in an “Annual.” I, for one, am
very fond of reading, but I could not do it here: I
laid myself down on the deck, ate almonds and raisins,
and thought of Job.

Some people prefer a strom to a calm; but their
demerits are so equally balanced, that, like the
Frenchman who had to choose between hanging
and drowning. I cannot make up my mind to give
the preference to either. True, the roaring of the
wind, the tearing and splitting of the sails, the violent
evolutions of the vessel, and the unique blasphemies
which strike the ear from various quarters,
with the probability of speedily being among
the fishes, tend to arouse the spirit, and stir up, as
counsellor Phillips might say, “the green and stagnant
waters of the soul;” while the yesty ocean,
ever and anon dashing over the ship and wetting
you to the skin, is unquestionably sublime; but

some how or other I never could relish the sublime
much when it interfered materially with my personal
comforts; and am unromantic enough to own
that I would rather be seated snugly in a decent
inn at the foot of a Swiss mountain than identify
myself with the icicles at the top of it; so, in a storm
I hold it to be a better thing to go below, doff your
drenched garments, fix your berth so that you cannot
roll an inch either one way or the other, and
quietly betake yourself to the arms of Morpheus,
rather than stand gaping at the unceremonious
ocean, who repays your sincere admiration in a
very unhandsome manner by throwing cold water
in your face.

No—the sea, whether in storm or calm, or enveloped
in fog, or in its most favorable state curled
with a fresh fair breeze, has few attractions to those
who spend more than six hours upon it at a time.
Our captain, an old sailor, declared that every
day he passed there he considered a blank in
his existence. What is there in this be-praised
element to give pleasure? In crossing the Atlantic
all your amusements are not such as are connected
with the sea, but such as serve to draw your attention
from it. Chess or drafts, backgammon or
cards, are the resources called in to while away the
tedious hours; for after you have seen one of mother

Carey's chickens, a shoal of porpoises, a shark,
and a whale, you have seen about all that is to be
seen. At first, like other landsmen, I was very desirous
to “see a whale;” but I soon found that,
according to the laws of optics, a porpoise alongside
of the ship was just as large and as good a sight as
a whale half a mile off, which is about as near as
they generally venture; while all you mostly see
of the rascally sharks is a fin, or the ridge of a
brown back peeping above the water. The eye
tires of even the finest prospect; but here you are
compelled to gaze day after day on water and
sky, and all that can be said of the latter is, that
it is very blue and that there is a great quantity
of it.

It may be thought from this that I am no friend
or admirer of the sea; but few like it more than I
do on the land, the only place, I believe, where people
really fall in love with it. Nothing can be finer
than to live in a highly cultivated tract of country
merely separated from the sea-coast by a high range
of sand-hills. The change in the scenery is so instantaneous,
and so complete—so very different, yet
both so surpassingly beautiful, for few things can
excel, in picturesque effect, a bold and animated
line of coast. How freshening it is in the summer
time, after roaming through orchards, meadows,

and cornfields, to cross the barren sand-hills and
find yourself on the lone sea-beach, with no human
being within sight or hearing. How pleasant to
roam to some favorite spot and there lie and
watch the clear sparkling tide come rolling in over
the smooth sand, forcing its way swiftly up a hundred
tiny channels—to dream over again all the
wild legends of the mighty element before you—
the storm the battle and the wreck, and the hair-breadth
escapes of those who have been cast away
upon it—to be lulled to slumber by the murmur of
the slight waves breaking upon the shore, and making
most sweet yet drowsy music in your ear—this
is delightful; and I have even enough of the hardi-hood
of boyhood to love it in its rougher moods—
on a raw and gusty November day, when the seagull
comes screaming to the cliffs for shelter, when
the wave bursts in thunder at your feet, and the
thick fog is whirled from the water like smoke by
the tempest—on such a day there is something far
from unpleasant in standing on terra firma and
watching its manœuvres. Besides, it is such a
glorious preparative for a warm, comfortable fire-side
and a hearty supper—but from passing any
length of time on it in ships, or other smaller vessels
called, for unknown reasons, pleasure-boats,
heaven preserve me and my posterity, (should I
have any.)

I have by no means drawn a jaundiced picture,
discolored through the agency of disturbed bile, for
though occasionally visited by that most horrible of
afflictions, sea-sickness, I am better off in that respect
than nineteen out of twenty. What must be
the state of those wretched individuals who add enduring
sickness or continual qualmishness to their
other stock of sea comforts, I cannot even venture
to conjecture. Persons thoroughly in this state will
receive any intimation of the ship's going down
with perfect unconcern—they do not set their life
at a “pin's fee.” Some Athenian said, when he
found the comfortless way in which the Spartans
lived, that he no longer wondered at their fearing
death so little; and it is only on this principle that
I can account for the unnatural tranquillity with
which men hear of the chance of running foul of
an iceberg, or any other agreeable casualty; while
half the peril, when on land quietly enjoying the
good things of the world, would perturb their spirits
considerably, and cause many retrospective glances
towards their past state of existence, and great dubiosity
touching their future prospects.

Land ho! we have just come in sight of the
southern point of Ireland—a few more hours will

bring us into the English channel, and the unbounded
joy of all on board is the best commentary
on the pleasures of the sea. Ah! land, land! we
all gaze upon the country of turf and potatoes as
wistfully as if it were one of the “islands of the
blest;” and the snuffing of the cow in the long
boat, as she scents the green herbage afar off, approximates
towards the borders of the pathetic. I
am circumspect in the choice of my company, and
it is consequently seldom that I have any thing to
say to the “heavenly nine” or they to me; but on
the present occasion I felt something unusual the
matter with my brain, and as soon as the evening
shades fell, and I could see land no longer, it relieved
itself by the following effervescence: