'Who are those people, and what could have brought
them into that strange situation?' I asked of myself; and now the seed of
curiosity, which had so long lain dormant, began to expand, and I vowed
to myself to become speedily acquainted with the whole history of the
people in the boat. After looking on the picture till every mark and
line in it were familiar to me, I turned over various leaves till I came
to another engraving; a new source of wonder--a low sandy beach on which
the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack
deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and
other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the
tops of the maddening waves--'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I
exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving
to reach the shore; he was upon his legs but was evidently half-smothered
with the brine; high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to
engulf him for ever. 'He must be drowned! he must be drowned!' I almost
shrieked, and dropped the book. I soon snatched it up again, and now my
eye lighted on a third picture: again a shore, but what a sweet and
lovely one, and how I wished to be treading it; there were beautiful
shells lying on the smooth white sand, some were empty like those I had
occasionally seen on marble mantelpieces, but out of others peered the
heads and bodies of wondrous crayfish; a wood of thick green trees
skirted the beach and partly shaded it from the rays of the sun, which
shone hot above, while blue waves slightly crested with foam were gently
curling against it; there was a human figure upon the beach, wild and
uncouth, clad in the skins of animals, with a huge cap on his head, a
hatchet at his girdle, and in his hand a gun; his feet and legs were
bare; he stood in an attitude of horror and surprise; his body was bent
far back, and his eyes, which seemed starting out of his head, were fixed
upon a mark on the sand--a large distinct mark--a human footprint!
Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand,
and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had
produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely, for it was a
book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence
certainly greater than any other of modern times, which has been in most
people's hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read
are to a certain extent acquainted; a book from which the most luxuriant
and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk inspiration; a book,
moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the
spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken,
England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land,
and no inconsiderable part of her naval glory.
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