The sea-sufferings of this constant creature, and the resignation with which she endured them, sufficiently manifested the strength of her affections; for she was obliged to keep below all the time, and could afford but very little assistance in reducing the prodigious depot of bread which we had on board.
Credulous mariners describe a species of the fair sex (I believe the only one) who appear to much advantage upon the briny wave; but the nature of our commander's lady not happening to be amphibious, she gave such unequivocal proofs of being out of her proper element, that my wishes for shore increased upon me every minute.
During our passage, I could not help contrasting the habits of the english with the french sailors. The british tar thinks his allowance of salt beef scarcely digestible without a copious libation of ardent spirits, whilst the gallic mariner is satisfied with a little meagre soup, an immoderate share of bread, and a beverage of water, poor cider, or spiritless wine.
At length, after a passage of a day and a night, in which we experienced the vicissitudes of a stiff breeze, and a dead calm, we beheld
——"That pale, that white-fac'd shore, Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, And coops from other lands her islanders, That water-walled bulwark, still secure And confident from foreign purposes."
After passing another tedious night on board, owing to our being becalmed within the Needles, I stepped upon the same landing stone from which I first embarked for a country, where, in the centre of proscriptions, instability and desolation, those arts which are said to flourish only in the regions of repose, have, by their vigour and unrivalled bloom, excited the wonder and admiration of surrounding nations; where Peace, by her sudden and cherished reappearance, is calling forth all the virtues from their hiding places, to aid in effacing the corroding stains of a barbarous revolution, and in restoring the moral and social character to its pristine polish, rank and estimation.
GENERAL REMARKS.
The fact seems at first singular. Two of the greatest nations under Heaven, whose shores almost touch, and, if ancient tales be true, were once unsevered, call the natives of each other foreigners.
Jealousy, competition, and consequent warfare, have, for ages, produced an artificial distance and separation, much wider, and more impassable, than nature ever intended, by the division which she has framed; hence, whilst the unassisted eye of the islander can, from his own shores, with "unwet feet," behold the natural barrier of his continental neighbour, he knows but little more of his real character and habits, than of those of beings, who are more distantly removed from him, by many degrees of the great circle.