THE MARINER.
1. The business of the mariner consists in navigating ships and other vessels from one port to another. This is an employment that requires much decisive resolution; and Horace has well said, that "his breast must have been bound with oak and triple brass, who first committed his frail bark to the tempestuous sea." There is certainly nothing which speaks louder in praise of human ingenuity, than that art by which man is able to forsake the land, contend successfully with winds and waves, and reach, with unerring certainty, his destined port in some distant part of the world.
2. Nor are the skill and intrepidity exhibited in this arduous employment, more worthy of our admiration, than the wonderful advantages resulting from it; for, we are indebted to the exercise of this art, for those improvements in our condition, which arise from the exchange of the superfluities of one country for those of another, and, above all, for the interchange of sentiments, which renders human knowledge coextensive with the world.
3. Ship-building is so intimately connected with the art of navigation, that the historical part of the former subject is equally applicable to the latter. It is, therefore, unnecessary to be particular on this point. We shall merely supply some omissions in the preceding article.
4. The sailors of antiquity confined their navigation chiefly to the rivers, lakes, and inland seas, seldom venturing out of sight of land, unless, from their knowledge of the coasts ahead, they were certain to meet with it again in a short time. When they thus ventured from the land, or were driven from it by tempests, the stars and planets were their only guides.
5. The qualifications of a skilful pilot or master, even for the Mediterranean seas, in those days, required more study and more practical information, than are necessary to render a mariner a complete general navigator, in the present improved state of the science of navigation; for then he must needs be acquainted, not only with the general management of the ship, but also with all the ports, land-marks, rocks, quicksands, and other dangers, which lay in the track of his course. Besides this, he was required to be familiar with the course of the winds, and the indications that preceded them, together with the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the influence which they were supposed to exert on the weather. Nor was the ability to read the various omens which were gathered from the sighing of the wind in the trees, the murmurs of the waters, and their dash upon the shore, the flight of birds, and the gambol of fishes, a qualification to be dispensed with.