take wing from her:  for she is greater than I, and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I know, my soul will dash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon pharos-lights, against her wild and mighty bosom.  Often a whole night through I lie open-eyed in the dark, with bursting brain, thinking of that hollow Gulf of Mexico, how identical in shape and size with the protuberance of Africa just opposite, and how the protuberance of the Venezuelan and Brazilian coast fits in with the in-curve of Africa:  so that it is obvious to me—­it is quite obvious—­that they once were one; and one night rushed so far apart; and the wild Atlantic knew that thing, and ran gladly, hasting in between:  and how if eye of flesh had been there to see, and ear to hear that cruel thundering, my God, my God—­what horror!  And if now they meet again, so long apart ...but that way fury lies.  Yet one cannot help but think:  I lie awake and think, for she fills my soul, and absorbs it, with all her moods and ways.  She has meanings, secrets, plans.  Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity between the scheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia:  each with three southern peninsulas pointing south:  Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy with India, the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth, corresponding with the Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf of Siam; each with two northern peninsulas pointing south, Sweden and Norway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each with two great islands similarly placed, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese Hondo and Yezo; the Old World and the New has each a peninsula pointing north—­Denmark and Yucatan:  a forefinger with long nail—­and a thumb—­pointing to the Pole.  What does she mean?  What can she mean, O Ye that made her?  Is she herself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said that ships were living entities?  And that thing that wheeled at the Pole, wheels it still yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy?  Strange that volcanoes are all near the sea:  I don’t know why; I don’t think that anyone ever knew.  This fact, in connection with submarine explosions, used to be cited in support of the chemical theory of volcanoes, which supposed the infiltration of the sea into ravines containing the materials which form the fuel of eruptions:  but God knows if that is true.  The lofty ones are intermittent—­a century, two, ten, of silent waiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; the low ones are constant in action.  Who could know the dark way of the world?  Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several vents which extend in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some long foundry beneath.  In mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes the presence of dolomites; rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles, crystalline schists.  The preponderance of land in the northern hemisphere denotes the greater intensity there of the causes of elevation at a remote geologic