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Untitled Article
pass the objects on the shore ! Why is this ? Mark you not that the ocean stream is running like the race of Pentland past her bows , mocking the swift-heeled vessel , and robbing her of m ' ore than three-fourths of her speed . A scanty two knots is her progress over the ground , but heed it not , there is much to look on worthy the delay . Turn your gaze westward over the quarter . See you those lofty mountains in the distance , snow-covered like the land in which they are rooted ? The central one was in
former ages a volcano , whence the Spanish discoverers called the island domain which it overlooks , the ' Land of Fire . ' Have you ever beheld a more wild and desolate region ? Yet , ere you answer , look eastward . Behold yon horrid towering crags , whereon not even the snow can find a secure Testing-place . There offers not foothold for a human being , and the sharp angular points , rising on every side from amSst the cheerless snow , and glistening in the faint rays of the halflBbzen sun , look as though even a bird would be impaled whicn might essay to perch . It is Staaten Land , an island so wild and forlorn , that none but a Dutchman , accustomed to purloin land from the ocean , could be found even to bestow a name upon it . Strong
must have been the desire of possession , which could have induced human beings to lay claim to such a spot . The strait to which it forms the eastern border took its name from the navigator Le Maire . Look at the rocks on either hand , where the dashing surf has swept away the snowy crust . See the uncouth seals which here and there stretch their hairy length upon them , from
time to time tumbling awkwardly into the sea , in unwieldy sport . Here and there , where a patch of sand skirts the rocks , or a slope of shingle meets the plash of the wave , the absurd looking penguins show their painted necks . Were it summer , and you essayed to land , the stupid animals would endeavour to drive vou
from their territories with their outstretched flippers , and spoonlooking beaks . No slaughter you might make amongst them , would convince them of their folly . Had you slain an hundred , and but one were left , he would still press on to share the fate of his companions , as senselessly as a Russian soldier , and without any more apparent object .
The craft is in mid-channel . Birds innumerable , of many varieties , are floating on the waters , skimming their surface , hovering in the air , and cleaving the blue space with their wings . Geese , ducks , divers , gannets , and penguins , rest on the wave , while the peterel and pintado , or Cape-pigeon , follow in the wake ,
darting down each moment for their food . The turkey-buzzard hovers upwards , borne on his moveless pinions while wafted in the breeze , and the gallant ospray proudly cuts the air in his soaring flight , till his vigilant eye marks the track of the fish on the surface ,, and he stoops on his prey swiftly ns the lightning flash darting from on high . But , lo ! yonder comes the giant of the
Untitled Article
92 Beauty .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 92, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/24/
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