And yet Columbus was a well-meaning man; and if he did
not discover a perfect continent, he found the only one that was
left.
Columbus made voyaging on the Atlantic popular, and is responsible
for much of the delusion concerning it. Its great practical use in
this fast age is to give one an idea of distance and of monotony.
I have listened in my time with more or less pleasure to very
rollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and the
tempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on the
ocean wave, and all the rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb,
let me write the songs of the sea, and I care not who goes to sea and
sings 'em. A square yard of solid ground is worth miles of the
pitching, turbulent stuff. Its inability to stand still for one
second is the plague of it. To lie on deck when the sun shines, and
swing up and down, while the waves run hither and thither and toss
their white caps, is all well enough to lie in your narrow berth and
roll from side to side all night long; to walk uphill to your
state-room door, and, when you get there, find you have got to the
bottom of the hill, and opening the door is like lifting up a
trap-door in the floor; to deliberately start for some object, and,
before you know it, to be flung against it like a bag of sand; to
attempt to sit down on your sofa, and find you are sitting up; to
slip and slide and grasp at everything within reach, and to meet
everybody leaning and walking on a slant, as if a heavy wind were
blowing, and the laws of gravitation were reversed; to lie in your
berth, and hear all the dishes on the cabin-table go sousing off
against the wall in a general smash; to sit at table holding your
soup-plate with one hand, and watching for a chance to put your spoon
in when it comes high tide on your side of the dish; to vigilantly
watch, the lurch of the heavy dishes while holding your glass and
your plate and your knife and fork, and not to notice it when Brown,
who sits next you, gets the whole swash of the gravy from the
roast-beef dish on his light-colored pantaloons, and see the look of
dismay that only Brown can assume on such an occasion; to see Mrs.
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