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Page 51
Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings
with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy
I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the
triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their
pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.
A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They
were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an
angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft,
riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a
scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon
lot of the fisherman:
Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
Our sports begin with the beginning year;
In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea
around them, I could hardly realize that these were the "still vexed
Bermoothes" of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in
the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in
their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with
them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of
the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts,
in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from
the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of
Virginia.
At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and
seizing upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination,
the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among
people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the
court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year
1609 a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the
relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral,
a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and
possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and
ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.
On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas
Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and
boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was
separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven
about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her
seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm
subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the
hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with
kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them,
while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of
keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and
wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up
all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to
Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or "comfortable waters,"
as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared
them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one
another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.
In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless
watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of
"land!" All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to
be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if
rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in
ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be
nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one
Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those
days as "the islands of devils!" "For the islands of the Bermudas," says
the old narrative of this voyage, "as every man knoweth that hath heard
or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen
people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself." [Footnote: "A
Plaine Description of the Barmudas."]
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