Satisfied with our piscatorial sports, we concluded to spend the rest of the day quietly gathering shells upon the beach; but causes of excitement were still around us. No sooner had we reached the water’s edge, than we discovered a group of hardy men standing on a little knoll, in earnest conversation, while some of them were pointing towards the sea. “To the boat—to the boat,” suddenly shouted their leader, when they all descended with the speed of Swiss mountaineers; and on reaching a boat which had been made ready, they pushed her into the surf, when three of them jumped in, and thus commenced the interesting scene of hauling the seine. There was something new and romantic to us in the thought, that the keen and intelligent eye of man could even penetrate into the deep, so far as to designate the course of travel of the tribes of the sea. And when the seine was drawn, it was a thrilling sight to see those fishermen tugging at the lines, leaping into the surf, which sometimes completely covered them, to secure the tens of thousands of fish which they had caught. There was a grace and beauty about the whole scene, which made me long for the genius of a Mount or a Bingham.
A little before sunset, I was again strolling along the shore, when the following incident occurred. The reader will please return with me to the spot. Yonder on that fisherman’s stake, a little sparrow has just alighted, facing the main. It has been lured away from the green bowers of home by the music of the sea, and is now gazing, perhaps with feelings kindred to my own, upon this most magnificent structure of the Almighty hand. See! it spreads its wing, and is now darting towards the water—fearless and free. Ah! it has gone too near! for the spray moistens its plumes! There—there it goes, frightened back to its native woodland. That little bird, so far as its power and importance are concerned, seems to me a fit emblem of the mind of man, and this great ocean an appropriate symbol of the mind of God.
The achievements of the human mind “have their passing paragraphs of praise, and are forgotten.” Man may point to the Pyramids of Egypt, which are the admiration of the world, and exclaim, “Behold the symbols of my power and importance!” But most impotent is the boast. Those mighty mysteries stand in the solitude of the desert, and the glory of their destiny is fulfilled, in casting a temporary shadow over the tent of the wandering Arab.