"And as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion.
"The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four; it was open; servants and postilions wore wedding-favors; that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near; Du Himmel! It was Herr Towgood and—Blumine!
"With slight unrecognizing salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring thickets, onward, to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, I remained alone, behind them, with the Night!"
THE ACTUAL HEIGHT OF SEA WAVES.
Average in Different Oceans—Fifty-Two Feet the Height of the Tallest Billow Yet
Measured—Not More Than Thirty Feet in North Atlantic.
Waves are the agents of tremendous force, as the batterings received by the big ocean liners in the winter storms tend to prove. But in spite of the stories told by timid or imaginative passengers on the Europe-America ferry, the surges of the North Atlantic are not the highest waves nor the most forcible. The most tremendous of seas are those that form south of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, where the oceanic belt is unbroken by land.
How high those southern waves rise has not been accurately measured, so far as can be discovered; but probably they are not very much higher than the waves farther north. Says the New York Sun:
Sailors in modern times have never seen such waves as those which the early navigators declared attained heights of one hundred to one hundred and thirty feet. La Perouse asserted that he saw waves towering in the Pacific to a height of nearly two hundred feet. In these more scientific days we may say that the highest wave yet measured had an altitude of about fifty-two feet.
This was in the southern ocean, a little north of the Antarctic regions; and it is quite certain that the highest waves ever seen in that region did not surpass fifty-eight feet in altitude. A wave of that height would certainly be a formidable looking object, and its crest would wash the windows of the fifth story of many New York buildings.