Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau / By an Old Man.

by Sir Francis Bond Head

The gale now delightfully increased—(ages ago I had been too often exposed to it to suffer from its effect);—and, as wave after wave became tipt with white, there flitted before my mind a hundred recollections chasing one another, which I never thought to have re-enjoyed; occasionally they were interrupted by the salt spray, and as it dashed into my face, I felt my grizzled eyebrows curl themselves up, as if they wished me once again to view the world in the prismatic colours of “Auld Lang Syne.” Already was my cure half effected; and the soot of London being thus washed from my brow, I felt a reanimation of mind and a vigour of frame which made me long for the moment when, like the sun bursting from behind a cloud, I might cast aside my shadowy mantle: however, I never moved from my nook, until the darkness of night at last encouraging me, without fear of observation, to walk the deck, “I paced along upon the giddy footing of the hatches,” till tired of these vibrations, I stood for a few moments at the gangway.

There was no moon—a star only here and there was to be seen; yet, as the fire-propelled vessel cut her way, the paddles, by shivering in succession each wave to atoms, produced a phosphoric sparkling, resembling immense lanthorns at her side; and while these beacons distinctly proclaimed where the vessel actually was, a pale shining stream of light issued from her keel, which, for a ship’s length or two, told fainter and fainter where she had been.

The ideas which rush into the mind, on contemplating by night, out of sight of land, the sea, are as dark, as mysterious, as unfathomable, and as indescribable as the vast ocean itself. One sees but little,—yet that little, caught here and there, so much resembles some of the attributes of the Great Power which created us, that the mind, trembling under the immensity of the conceptions it engenders, is lost in feelings which human beings cannot impart to each other. In the hurricane which one meets with in southern latitudes, most of us have probably looked in vain for the waves which have been described to be “mountain high;” but, though the outline has been exaggerated, is there not a terror in the filling in of the picture which no human artist can delineate? and in the raging of the tempest—in the darkness which the lightning makes visible—who is there among us that has not fancied he has caught a shadow of the wrath, and a momentary glimmering of the mercy, of the Almighty?

Impressed with these hackneyed feelings, I slowly returned to my nook, and all being obscure, except just the red, rough countenance of the helmsman, feebly illuminated by the light in the binnacle, I laid myself down, and sometimes nodding a little and sometimes dozing, I enjoyed for many hours a sort of half sleep, of which I stood in no little need.

As soon as we had crossed the Briell, the vessel being at once in smooth water, the passengers successively emerged from their graves below, until, in a couple of hours, their ghastly countenances all were on deck.

A bell, as if in hysterics, now rang most violently, as a signal to the town of Rotterdam. The word of command, “STOP HER!” was loudly vociferated by a bluff, short, Dirk Hatteraick-looking pilot, who had come on board off the Briell. “Stop her!” was just heard faintly echoed from below, by the invisible exhausted sallow being who had had, during the voyage, charge of the engine. The paddles, in obedience to the mandate, ceased—then gave two turns—ceased,—turned once again—paused,—gave one last struggle, when, our voyage being over, the vessel’s side slightly bumped against the pier.

With a noise like one of Congreve’s rockets, the now useless steam was immediately exploded by the pale being below, and, in a few seconds, half the passengers were seen on shore, hurrying in different directions about a town full of canals and spirit shops.

“Compared with Greece and Italy—Holland is but a platter-faced, cold-gin-and-water country, after all!” said I to myself, as I entered the great gate of the Hôtel des Pays-Bas; “and a heavy, barge-built, web-footed race are its inhabitants,” I added, as I passed a huge amphibious wench on the stairs, who, with her stern towards me, was sluicing the windows with water: “however, there is fresh air, and that, with solitude, is all I here desire!” This frail sentimental sentence was hardly concluded, when a Dutch waiter (whose figure I will not misrepresent by calling him “garcon”) popped a long carte, or bill of fare, into my hands, which severely reproved me for having many other wants besides those so simply expressed in my soliloquy.

As I did not feel equal to appearing in public, I had dinner apart in my own room; and, as soon as I came to that part of the ceremony called dessert, I gradually raised my eyes from the field of battle, until leaning backwards in my chair to ruminate, I could not help first admiring, for a few moments, the height and immense size of an apartment, in which there seemed to be elbow-room for a giant.

Close before the window was the great river upon whose glassy surface I had often and often been a traveller; and, flowing beneath me, it occurred to me, as I sipped my wine, that in its transit, or course of existence, it had attained at Rotterdam, as nearly as possible, the same period in its life as my own. Its birth, its froward infancy, and its wayward youth, were remote distances to which even fancy could now scarcely re-transport us. In its full vigour, the Rhine had been doomed turbulently to struggle with difficulties and obstructions which had seemed almost capable of arresting it in its course; and if there was now nothing left in its existence worth admiring—if its best scenery had vanished—if its boundaries had become flat, and its banks insipid, still there was an expansion in its broader surface, and a deep-settled stillness in its course, which seemed to offer tranquillity instead of ecstasy, and perfect contentment instead of imperfect joy. I felt that in the whole course of the river there was no part of it I desired to exchange for the water flowing slowly before me; and though it must very shortly, I knew, be lost in the ocean, that great emblem of eternity, yet in every yard of its existence that fate had been foretold to it.