When the elders of the generation now passing away read Schiller’s tragic story of “The Diver,” they recall the teachings in their childhood’s geographies of the Maelstrom off the northwestern coast of Norway. A late report on the fisheries of the Lofoten Archipelago says that the Maelstrom is only one of many whirlpools between the islands, and that it is so lightly regarded by the sailors that they pass and repass it in their little vessels at all stages of the tide, only avoiding it in fogs or storms. So far from drawing whales into its vortex, it is a favorite resort of the fish, and the fishermen reap a rich piscatorial harvest from its bosom. Even in stormy weather the rate of the tide does not exceed six miles an hour.
Don’t Give Up the Ship
Among famous battle sayings is the well-known phrase attributed to the dying Lawrence. Some years ago a daughter of the late Major Benjamin Russell, for many years editor of the Boston Centinel, a bright, interesting woman and a brilliant raconteur, told numerous anecdotes of her father, who was a strongly individualized and notable character for a long period. Among them was the following:
“The battle between the Chesapeake and the Shannon took place just off the Massachusetts coast, and a sailor in some way got ashore and hurried to Boston with the news. It was in the night and he went straight to the Centinel office, where he found Major Russell, to whom he told the story, including the death of Lawrence. ‘What were his last words?’ said the major. ‘Don’t know,’ said the man. ‘Didn’t he say, “Don’t give up the ship?”’ ‘Don’t know,’ said the man. ‘Oh, he did,’ said the major, ‘I’ll make him say it’—and he did—so much for history.”
At the time of the battle of Allatoona Pass, General Sherman sent a dispatch to General Corse, saying, “Hold Allatoona, and I will assist you.” But the genius of history, with his facile pen, made Sherman say, “Hold the fort, for I am coming.”
Specific Gravity
Considering the vigorous condition of the myth of the Connecticut Blue Laws, in spite of the repeated exposure of its falsity, this gem from “A General History of Connecticut,” written by the original Blue Law manufacturer, the Rev. Samuel Peters, is valuable. It is quoted in Goodspeed’s catalogue, and is part of the veracious author’s description of the Connecticut River:
“Two hundred miles from the Sound is a narrow of five yards only, formed by two shelving mountains of solid rock, whose tops intercept the clouds. Through this chasm are compelled to pass all the waters which in the time of floods bury the northern country. Here water is consolidated without frost, by pressure, by swiftness, between the pinching sturdy rocks to such a degree of induration that an iron crow floats smoothly down its current—here iron, lead, and cork have one common weight; here steady as time and harder than marble, the stream passes, irresistible if not swift as lightning.”
Pocahontas
The rescue of Captain Smith by Pocahontas, according to his assertion, took place in 1607, when she was a child not quite ten years of age. No mention was made of it until eight years afterwards, and the first circumstantial account of it was not published until seventeen years later, when it appeared in Smith’s “General Historie of Virginia.” According to the 1624 folio, Smith’s narrative of the tableau in which he was a central figure runs thus: