Book Three—Chapter Four.
The Unknown Land.
“After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
After the white-grey sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below a myriad, myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,
Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.”
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Scene: The Gloaming Star standing in towards the land, which looks like a long low greenish cloud on the horizon. The sky is a burning blue, the day is hot and sultry, and the pitch boils in the seams of the deck. Land birds, some very pretty, and hosts of butterflies as large as small fans, and surpassingly radiant in colour, are hovering about the vessel. Medusae, like open umbrellas, and whose limbs seem studded with gems, float around the ship, while now and than huge turtles can be seen, each one as big and as broad as a blacksmith’s bellows.
The log before me is so water-stained, so yellow with age, and so worn, that I cannot make out—do what I may—the latitude and longitude of the Gloaming Star at this particular time. But from all I have read and from all I know of these oceans and islands, I think the land now in sight must have been either Tasmania itself or some of the isles not far off. Seeing, on a nearer approach, no signs of a harbour, nor any deep water, only the white foaming breakers booming on a low sandy beech; and the green woods beyond, and the wind coming on to blow higher and higher from the west, they put to sea again, and stood away still farther north.
In the morning, land was in sight again, and not far off, and the coast was rocky and wild; the wind, too, had gone down considerably, so sail was made, and seeing a wide gap in the rocks they made for it, and found themselves in an hour’s time in a lovely wood-girt bay. But wood is too tame a term to apply to it. Primeval forest is surely better. Never before had any one on board beheld such wondrous trees, nor such a wealth of vegetation. The ferns, which were of gigantic size, were a special feature in this tree-scape, while immense climbing plants, with gorgeous hanging flowers, made an intricate wildery of this forest land. Great flocks of pigeons sometimes rose into the air, which they almost darkened. Ibises grey and red sat and nodded on the rocks, looking like rows of soldiers and riflemen, while the woods resounded with the cries of strange birds and the chattering of innumerable monkeys.
Boats landed about noon, and came off laden with fruit, but they could find no water that was not brackish.