The Sea Lions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 610 pages of information about The Sea Lions.

The Sea Lions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 610 pages of information about The Sea Lions.
steering directly for the islands, as a sort of compromise between the two opinions.  The distance from the main to the Bermudas is computed at about six hundred miles, which gave sufficient leisure for the discussion of the subject in all its bearings.  The conversations were amicable, and the weather continuing mild, and the wind standing, they were renewed each afternoon, when the vessels closed, as if expressly to admit of the dialogue.  In all this time, five days altogether, it was farther ascertained that the difference in sailing between the Twin Lions, as the sailors now began to call the two schooners, was barely perceptible.  If anything, it was slightly in favour of the Vineyard craft, though there yet remained many of the vicissitudes of the seas, in which to make the trial.  While this uncertainty as to the course prevailed, the low land appeared directly ahead, when Daggett consented to pass it to the southward, keeping the cluster in sight, however, as they went steadily on towards the southward and eastward.

Chapter XI.

  “With glossy skin, and dripping mane,
    And reeling limbs, and reeking flank,
  The wild steed’s sinewy nerves still strain
    Up the repelling bank.”

  Mazeppa.

Roswell Gardiner felt as if he could breathe more freely when they had run the Summers Group fairly out of sight, and the last hummock had sunk into the waves of the west.  He was now fairly quit of America, and hoped to see no more of it, until he made the well-known rock that points the way into that most magnificent of all the havens of the earth, the bay of Rio de Janeiro.  Travellers dispute whether the palm ought to be given to this port, or to those of Naples and Constantinople.  Each, certainly, has its particular claims to surpassing beauty, which ought to be kept in view in coming to a decision.  Seen from its outside, with its minarets, and Golden Horn, and Bosphorus, Constantinople is, probably, the most glorious spot on earth.  Ascend its mountains, and overlook the gulfs of Salerno and Gaeta, as well as its own waters, the Campugna Felici and the memorials of the past, all seen in the witchery of an Italian atmosphere, and the mind becomes perfectly satisfied that nothing equal is to be found elsewhere; but enter the bay of Rio, and take the whole of the noble panorama in at a glance, and even the experienced traveller is staggered with the stupendous as well as bewitching character of the loveliness that meets his eye.  Witchery is a charm that peculiarly belongs to Italy, as all must feel who have ever been brought within its influence; but it is a witchery that is more or less shared by all regions of low latitudes.

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The Sea Lions from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.