aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

120 AROUISnD THE WOELD.
clouds, surging waves or dead calms, finny tribes, sailing
sea-birds, chattering Chinamen, and stale, ship-scented food.
Sea-birds, weary with flight, light in the rigging.
The sailors
pet them. Oh for the wings of—well, any thing that
would drop me down upon terra jirma! I term this, cabalistically,
" concession " route. The luckless position is not
without rich lessons ; the blue, unfathomed depths beneath,
and the infinite expanse above, kindling the fires of the
ideal, incite me to self-examination, to meditation, and hopeful
conceptions of a social state to be ultimately realized by
aU nations, — a peaceful state rivahng in moral excellence
the Eden of the poets, and the Zion of the prophets. But
to contemplation.
May 14. — Forty-seven
AN ECLIPSE AT SEA.
days from New Zealand, and no
land seen since the seventh day out. Any thing for a
change ! — a calm, a storm, rainbows, lightning, sea-birds on
the yard-arms, whales spouting, sharks following the ship,
one of which Dr. Dunn and the sailors caught ; and now
an eclipse. Last night, in long. 134°, 22' east, and lat. 16°,
11' north, the moon rose at seven o'clock full and fair.
Soon a dark shadow was seen creeping slowly over the
eastern
Jimb. Our China passengers were quite frightened.
The coolies are ignorant and superstitious. At nine o'clock
the scene was absolutely magnificent, — the shadow-draped
moon in the east ;
at the right, in the south-west, the Southern
Cross ; at the left, and nearly opposite the cross, the
North Star ; while rushing planets poured their shimmering
beams down through abysmal spaces into the mirror-polished
ocean. The grandeur of the scene can never fade from my
memory.