Читать книгу Round the Galley Fire онлайн

48 страница из 68

When this story was told me I could not help thinking of what the Horn route was in Dana’s time, and the very small chance that brig’s crew would have had for their lives had her name been the Pilgrim, and had she been beating to the westward forty years ago. Certain it is, that however ships may come and go, and change the nature of their material and the form of their fabrics, the weather in the Pacific down there is very much what it was in Anson’s time, and as it has been, in all probability, since the creation of the world. Other climates may vary in the lapse of ages, and south-easters may in places be found to work themselves into north-westers. But the Horn remains always the same harsh, tempestuous, frozen headland, echoing at this hour the hurricane notes which reverberated over it centuries ago, and grimly overlooking the stormiest space of waters in the world. Who, then, does not hope that the final construction of the Panama Canal may abridge the bleak and icebound horrors of that point of continent which looks on the chart to stretch its leagues and leagues of tongue into the very heart of the southern frozen waters? To be sure, the passage of the famous cape has long since ceased to be a wonder; but none the less is it full of perils to vessels which, like the brig I have written about, are at the mercy of the monstrous seas and furious gales of that formidable tract of Pacific waters.